Windows 8 RC To Get Flatter Explorer UI, Other Changes

[Anthonyd]

I expect the Metro CP to replace the default AERO CP. Most likely by Windows 9. I really wish Microsoft would kill off the classic Control Panel for Windows 8's release, but I don't think that's going to happen.

I'm pretty sure that would make a few people's heads explode here. :rolleyes:

The Desktop/Aero isn't aimed to disappear. It looks like you think that it's here for legacy reasons, but it's not.

For that reason and others, like the fact that you can't break 20+ yrs of retro-compatibility, you won't see the control panel to disappear.

[Dot Matrix]

The Desktop/Aero isn't aimed to disappear. It looks like you think that it's here for legacy reasons, but it's not.

For that reason and others, like the fact that you can't break 20+ yrs of retro-compatibility, you won't see the control panel to disappear.

One of them needs to disappear. You can't have all these widgets thrown all over the place.

[Active.]

Rest i leave to your eyes.

It's an improvement. As long as they're going to keep this kind of dialogue, i'd like them to change it a bit more though. Just a rough idea:

->

Now that the title is centered, I don't see why the tabs should be left-aligned. The titlebar seems a bit too large and the scrollbar a bit too wide. I also don't see a reason for giving the scheme selection or cursor preview area its own box - and it should be clear from the context what it is you're selecting, so it's pretty redundant to give the box its own name ("scheme").

Anyway. That's just my opinion. Considering how radical a departure the Metro UI is from the windows UI as we know it, it would be nice if the changes to the "legacy" UI were a bit more dramatic as well. ...

[bogas04]

^ Replacing every single legacy UI element is surely a tedious work and then to make sure you did not break anything is again a tough call. I don't think they would go for that in development of a nearly half baked OS. Lets hope we see that in Windows 9 development :)

[Anthonyd]

One of them needs to disappear. You can't have all these widgets thrown all over the place.

Yes you can, see Windows 8.

[George P Global Moderator]

Never mind those new cursors. My concern is why the mouse and cursor setting is still a separate dialog and has not been fully integrated into the control panel window. Wasn?t that Microsoft?s original plan, to eventually do away with dialogs all over the place?

That's what I want to see, cut down on all the dialog boxes for settings and so on. They started to integrate a bit of the basic stuff with Windows 7 but I don't see much more, at least on the desktop side, in Windows 8.

[George P Global Moderator]

Yes you can, see Windows 8.

While I'm not disagreeing with your stance on the desktop and why it's there the thing is they can drop the old dialog windows and, like they started in Win7, put more of them into the main/central control panel window. There really is no reason for "advanced settings" to bring up a dialog etc, imo.

While I agree that having just the metro CP isn't enough they should also add more options/settings into it as well unless they want to keep to the line that the desktop is where you'd go for more advanced options thus keeping the metro CP more basic. If so that's fine with me as well and I figure having both is fine and not just a way to keep legacy compatibility going. That said, the desktop, which I to don't think will be vanishing etc, will change more, probably in Windows 9 to better fit with the new start screen.

At that point all those old 9x UI elements like the dialog boxes/windows etc probably won't fit and look very out of place. Remember how everyone, or at least a vocal minority, tossed a fit over Windows still having the old add fonts dialog from Win 3.11 around? Remember how off that looked with the new Aero UI etc? Finally MS just got rid of it fully and now you actually don't see anything when you add new fonts to the OS. I think we're going to run into that same type of issue soon.

[Anthonyd]

While I'm not disagreeing with your stance on the desktop and why it's there the thing is they can drop the old dialog windows and, like they started in Win7, put more of them into the main/central control panel window. There really is no reason for "advanced settings" to bring up a dialog etc, imo.

While I agree that having just the metro CP isn't enough they should also add more options/settings into it as well unless they want to keep to the line that the desktop is where you'd go for more advanced options thus keeping the metro CP more basic.

Can you find some advanced options that should be added into metro CP ? I can't find any that really applies to metro/tablet. For instance, there's no place for a mouse cursor option in metro CP, that's why it isn't there.

[George P Global Moderator]

Can you find some advanced options that should be added into metro CP ? I can't find any that really applies to metro/tablet. For instance, there's no place for a mouse cursor option in metro CP, that's why it isn't there.

I agree, which is why I said if they want to keep it basic then fine, but you're kinda sidestepping my point about the dialogs being dropped. The new metro CP does a good enough job of bringing it's settings into one main window which is what the desktop CP should do. That's all I'm really saying here. They started the trend in Windows 7 but it doesn't seem like they've built on it in Windows 8 at this point.

[Anthonyd]

I don't see why they should rewamp it totally. Power user will complains about it because they won't find the settings back where they are used to and newb won't even try to find them.

There are always some minor improvements here & there. Windows 8 has new settings inside the device manager (event history) for example.

With the action center, the network center and the device center, I don't see what else they can do. What do you want to see improved?

[George P Global Moderator]

I don't see why they should rewamp it totally. Power user will complains about it because they won't find the settings back where they are used to and newb won't even try to find them.

There are always some minor improvements here & there. Windows 8 has new settings inside the device manager (event history) for example.

With the action center, the network center and the device center, I don't see what else they can do. What do you want to see improved?

Since you bring it up here's my example. Using the network center as an example, if you open it up a number of the different settings are stored inside it's window while some other things toss up an old dialog window that's been around since Windows 98. Since they've already started to put most things into the main window why just stop and leave things out in their own dialog windows/boxes etc? Like when you click on Local Area connection in the Network Center and you get the old dialog box that's more or less the same that it's been for 10+ years? Why shouldn't that info just be put inside the main Network Center window like other things have, like for example Windows Firewall, that's been placed inside the main window and no longer brings up it's own separate dialog window.

Another example is what they're doing in office, most if not all of the different office options/settings appear inside the main office apps window, they don't bring up another window/box or w/e. In contrast we still have something like Internet Explorer that's been using the same old Internet Options dialog since IE5, if not older. I just think that the desktop CP should contain all of the different settings areas inside it's main Window, which is the same main window that Network Center and Device Center etc show up in, look at the address bar and you can see the path listed. I believe it's time to ditch the old dialog boxes that have been around since the 90s.

[bogas04]

All Aero bugs fixed on latest builds, now only AeroLite looks like unfinished, we will see it in later pics

now vs WCP (just in case you wanna see the difference)

Originally Posted by eze310

canouna, I wanted to ask if the new messenger (beta) change the interface because the latter turned out to not be as good at least in my opinion,thanks anyway

Yes UI changed, better than the previous release.

Keep following http://winunleakedfo...-Preview/page28 for more news and please post them here to keep the Neowin forums up to date (at least)

/no i am not promoting that site but the info it contains ;)

[Anthonyd]

Since you bring it up here's my example. Using the network center as an example, if you open it up a number of the different settings are stored inside it's window while some other things toss up an old dialog window that's been around since Windows 98. Since they've already started to put most things into the main window why just stop and leave things out in their own dialog windows/boxes etc? Like when you click on Local Area connection in the Network Center and you get the old dialog box that's more or less the same that it's been for 10+ years? Why shouldn't that info just be put inside the main Network Center window like other things have, like for example Windows Firewall, that's been placed inside the main window and no longer brings up it's own separate dialog window.

I don't see what's wrong with the current UI. They are working fine for 10+ years, don't break what is working fine just for the sake of "let's change it".

If you go to the network center, you have at a glance all the infos that newbs needs. And with 1 or 2 clicks, you have the advanced infos for power user, nothing is wrong here. There's no need to overload the UI.

Another example is what they're doing in office, most if not all of the different office options/settings appear inside the main office apps window, they don't bring up another window/box or w/e. In contrast we still have something like Internet Explorer that's been using the same old Internet Options dialog since IE5, if not older. I just think that the desktop CP should contain all of the different settings areas inside it's main Window, which is the same main window that Network Center and Device Center etc show up in, look at the address bar and you can see the path listed. I believe it's time to ditch the old dialog boxes that have been around since the 90s.

Applications != OS. We aren't debating about IE vs Office UI here. :/

[Active.]

The control panel is a mess in my opinion. You can usually get to what you're looking for with a bit of searching and looking and running across options by accident, and after having used it for so long you basically know where things are anyway. But it's not completely logically organized and its hierarchical structure isn't very well thought out at all. Take this screenshot as an example:

In some cases, the blue links simply take me to the very same place that clicking on the category header they're listed under does, in some cases they act as a shortcut for performing an operation that would be accessible from there, and in some cases they take me to options that are not accessible at all if you first clicked on the category header. Then, on the left side bar you can switch between different categories one level up, yet when you click on e.g. "Display", the left side bar starts to list options for that control panel pane there (that may or may not have already been listed one level up, below the category header)?! It all seems very disorganized to me...

[Anthonyd]

That's why you have to use the search through the start menu/screen if you don't know what you are looking for :)

[Subhadip]

I rarely open the Control Panel for years, I simply use the Search. And with Windows 8 that got a whole lot better.

[freak180]

Years? I highly doubt that.

[.Neo]

I can see the pixels in my Windows 7 curosrs too... No biggie.

Don't forget that some cursors have gradients while some don't. :D

It just shows that Microsoft still doesn't pay much, if any at all, attention to detail or consistency for that matter.

[floopydoodle]

The new cursors look pathetic. I didn't like them.

Though I would've loved the circular dots animation at windows startup to be used in cursors.

I agree. The dots animation is really beautiful. Something I wouldn't mind staring at.

There's so much inconsistency between the desktop UI and metro. The boot loading animation is different from the loading cursor, the buttons are different, so are the scroll bars, thr icon style etc...

[.Neo]

The revised Aero with the Watercolor-style widgets would look much better if the title bar weren't quite as tall. As it is the proportions between title bar and rest of the GUI are out of whack.

Agreed. The Aero titlebar is disproportionally large compared to the rest of the interface elements.

[bogas04]

Well it was needed , good they are kinda ready with it for RC. I guess by the time RTM comes most of the people would be familiar with it.

[Buendia]

New screenshot featuring "new icon for Windows Update, Add features, and new style for Windows Color"

[Dot Matrix]

This new AERO revision looks great! Soft, sharp, and clean, just like a UI should be!

[George P Global Moderator]

New screenshot featuring "new icon for Windows Update, Add features, and new style for Windows Color"

One thing I do think would help overall is with the title bar size, if those could take up less space it'd look overall better IMO.

[theyarecomingforyou]

The control panel is a mess in my opinion. You can usually get to what you're looking for with a bit of searching and looking and running across options by accident, and after having used it for so long you basically know where things are anyway. But it's not completely logically organized and its hierarchical structure isn't very well thought out at all.

I completely agree. I was never a fan of the modern Control Panel since it was introduced in Vista and it's a shame to see remain virtually unchanged in yet another version of Windows. One of the biggest problems is that it's not consistent - some functions will open up in the same window, while others will launch separate windows in different locations on the screen (e.g. click 'Taskbar', 'Change sound effects' or 'Folder Options'). Not only that but it's basically a wall of text with a few small and unhelpful icons to the left. There is also a lot of duplication.

When Microsoft decided to port a lot of Control Panel functionality to Metro they should have also taken a serious look at the Control Panel. One option would have been to move the Control Panel completely to Metro - for the desktop they could have gone for a side-snapped app with conventional sized text and images, while for Metro they could have gone for the full-sized approach see in More PC Settings. I still think it was a mistake to not allow Metro apps to co-exist with regular windows (so they could scale down, yet still keep the same dimensions), which would have been especially beneficial for high resolution displays. I have a 2560x1600 display and I hate what they've done to Solitaire, as it simply cannot co-exist with other apps (the side-snapped mode is horrible). Microsoft has put a lot of work into Metro but I just don't see full-sized Metro apps being used much on desktop systems - although I quite often use side-snapped apps I rarely ever use any fullscreen and most have a decided lack of content, largely due to the design constraints associated with supporting low resolution displays and touch.