redfish Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 I've been a fan of the Start Screen, but have been frustrated by some of the limits for customization. Below are a few suggestions. If any of you have your own, please add to the list in this thread. 1. Vertically stackable groups. Currently, a lot of space is wasted if you have groups with only a few tiles or you use small-sized tiles. Being able to stack them vertically where you want to would allow users the option of taking better advantage of space. 2. Staggerable tiles. The Start Screen interface won't let you place tiles in any way where they don't align along a set grid. For instance, small tiles have to fit into the space of a medium tile and be placed in a 4?4 configuration, and wide tiles can't start after a single medium tile. There's no real reason for this, and it limits your ability to set up your tiles in a way that you think looks good. 3. Universal or group-specific tile background colors. Some people like the look on Windows phones where all app tiles are a uniform color. It would be easy to provide this option, as well as an option to set a uniform color that would apply for a single group only, rather than universally across all tiles. 4. Dual or multi-tone customizable pattern backgrounds. Rather than complex visual backgrounds, which are often very noisy and visually distract from the tiles, it would be nice to be able to set pattern backgrounds with customizable colors. These can be dual-tone, and automatically inherit the Background and Accent colors you've set for your Start Screen, or they can be multi-tone and either guess the appropriate extra colors from the two options you set, or allow you additional customization options. The text color on the Start Screen could easily adapt to be readable, since the system knows what colors are being used. These might be: geometric patterns, abstract patterns like traditional Japanese fabric patterns, damask patterns, and so on. DConnell, Eric, pookie62 and 3 others 6 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+virtorio MVC Posted December 10, 2013 MVC Share Posted December 10, 2013 Great ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forjo Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 Agreed -- all great ideas. -Forjo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaP Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 All great ideas but sadly they are not metro enough to be part of the start screen. Metro is a way of life. It defines who you are. What you can be. Your potential as a human being. Metro is everything. It's the future and it's the past at the same time. If it's no metro then it has no place in a computer. Here's the three laws of the Metro Design Principles. 1. A Metro UI must not use any highlight, shadow or gradient or, through passive design elements, allow the UI to not be totally flat. 2. A Metro UI must obey the square shaped objects rule and use only squares across the UI. 3. A Metro UI must protect the single foreground and single background color rule and thus never use more than two colors at the same time. Sadly your ideas while really great from my opinion don't follow the 3rd law of the metro design principles. On a more serious note great work. I like the idea of the start screen but MS has a lot of work to do with Windows 9. Hope MS will listen to people having great ideas like you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George P Global Moderator Posted December 12, 2013 Global Moderator Share Posted December 12, 2013 All those ideas are doable and I think we might see them all or most at least, the new guys in charge of the OS group are the WP devs so I bet things we have in WP will make it into Windows as well. Like having one tile color for everything, I bet that comes as a option for sure. Also being able to set tiles how you want and the vertical idea should be easy to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_dandy_ Posted December 12, 2013 Share Posted December 12, 2013 I've only just started pinning shortcuts to folders on the start screen (local or network shares)--it works, even with the current constraints, but not in a terribly efficient way. What I'd like to be able to do is have tiles that are roughly double-width, half-height, a customizable icon to the left, and a customizable caption to its right filling the rest of the tile. Right now, it seems that folder tile sizes are limited to Small or Medium only...when using Small, there's no caption; the target folder shows up as a tooltip (if using a mouse); otherwise you're left guessing what each folder is pointing to. When using Medium, there's a caption, but it appears below the icon and left-justified, and wraps if too long, and wastes a lot of screen real-estate. While icons can be customized (if you have a desktop.ini in the target folder), the tile's background color is determined by the icon's most prominent color--this needs to be customizable too IMO, so users could make some logical grouping with colors. To me, that would make the start screen a lot more usable. [Edit] Now that I think of it...I'd like a layout similar to the one you get when you press the down arrow button from the main Start screen...but I wouldn't want every item looking like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeChipshop Member Posted December 12, 2013 Member Share Posted December 12, 2013 Good ideas, however number three is wrong. It may seem on Windows Phone that the tiles are uniform, but just like Windows 8, it's down to the developer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dot Matrix Posted December 12, 2013 Share Posted December 12, 2013 This would look great on Windows Phone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJerman Posted December 12, 2013 Share Posted December 12, 2013 Can't disagree with any of these. I beg of them to put some light gradient backgrounds on the tiles like you showed. Every time someone has done a mock up like that it looks 100 times better than the current set up. With just some small tweaks they can improve looks drastically. MS seems stuck in thinking that a clean minimalistic look has to be barren and monochrome on all the tiles and such, and they are just overdoing it in my opinion. I like a lot of the new customization stuff they added in 8.1, and hopefully they'll continue like that. They're getting closer, pick up some of these suggestions and I'd be a lot more happy with the "Modern UI" stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McKay Posted December 13, 2013 Share Posted December 13, 2013 For once I feel like someone has suggested some good ideas :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sekyal Posted December 14, 2013 Share Posted December 14, 2013 I agree with them all except #4, just looks bizarre. The Start Screen is a bit too restrictive and I do hope they make it more like the Windows Phone one in the areas you pointed out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts