Or, My 3-Year-Old Can Use Windows 8 With a Mouse. So Can You.
I’ve used Windows 8 as my daily driver for a couple of months and it’s time to review how well it works on a computer without touch. In short, after brief adjustment period, I’ve completely acclimated to the duality that is Windows 8. I am just as skilled using Windows 8 as I am in Windows 7. I’m constantly asking myself how my parents would fare on Windows 8 and my 3-year-old daughter’s experience is a hint at the answer.
For reference, I’m using Windows 8 on my Asus Zenbook UX31E with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB SSD meaning there is no touch screen and Asus hasn’t updated the touchpad drivers to use some of the Windows 8 gestures. It’s all touchpad, keyboard, and mouse control. I also use it on a 2011 MacBook Pro and a Samsung Series 7 Slate.
The Edge
The Windows 8 or Metro style applications take up the entire screen. All of it. There are no menu bars. There is no status bar. The main way Microsoft dealt with accessing “chrome” of the OS such as the App Bar, Charms Bar, and window list without being able to touch the screen is with hot corners. You can quickly move your pointer to a corner of the screen to manipulate an app or the OS.
At first, using the hot corners on an Ultrabook took some getting used to. Ironically, any Mac OS X users who use the Expose hot corners feature would be right at home in Windows 8. Instead of seeing the windows tiled across the display like on the Mac, the windows are listed in a bar on the left.
Window in the Skies
Putting the mouse pointer in the upper-left corner brings up a thumbnail of the last window you used and the sharp-eyed will see a visual cue that there are more windows below. A slight movement down with the mouse displays the available windows. This becomes a very natural movement after minimal use and the gesture is the same on both sides of the screen. It has an “up-down” tempo.
Yes, the desktop is really good at displaying multiple windows at the same time. Yay for it.
About to snap Wordament
Also in this corner comes one of my favorite features: the Snap. This lets you run multiple metro apps on the screen at the same time. “Big deal!” you say. “This is what the desktop is for.” Yes, the desktop is really good at displaying multiple windows at the same time. Yay for it. Snap is for Metro apps and it’s great. I’ll never forget the first time my daughter was able to play a puzzle game while I watched a video.
Stranger in a Strange Land
A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft talked about why they took out the Start Button. Simply, people didn’t use it and my daughter is a testament to that. She is too young to know what the start button was, but she knows full well what the Windows key on the keyboard does.
The lower left “start button” corner is excellent. I usually hit the Windows key to get back to the start screen but the lower left hot corner is a super quick way to get there. Anyone who already has that habit will not be affected (though they’ll wonder where it went for a couple of seconds).
If you go back to that hot corner while in the Start screen, you’re taken back to the app you were just on. Same goes for the keyboard: hit the Windows key while in the start screen, go back to the app you were just on. This will end up being useful as more app developers create live tiles and people learn to quickly view the Start screen for status updates.
A quick hit of the Windows key will let you glance at updated information and another hit will take you right back.
Once my daughter is back on the start screen, she can launch any of the metro apps with ease because of the large target. She’s just learning to use a track pad and is a little shaky at times. The large tiles lets her use the apps she wants to use without being very precise. Windows 8 should be an easier experience for people with less than maximum hand coordination.
A Sort of Homecoming
Proficient Windows 7 users know that to run an application, you just need to hit the start key and just start typing. I am one of those and Windows 8 is exactly the same. If I want to run the Chrome web browser, I hit the Windows key and start typing “chr”. By then the tile for Google Chome has popped up and I hit enter. Exactly as before.
The right hot corners activate the charms bar and I freely admit that all the bar activation gestures are much more natural on a touch screen. However, there are two other ways of getting to the Charms bar even if without a touchscreen. The one I use the most is the keyboard shortcut Win-C. This brings up the charms bar and the date/time overlay. It’s this date/time overlay that I’m usually interested in.
Back on Windows 7, I often looked at the lower right hand side of the screen to get the current time. Given that Metro apps are full-screen, this is no longer an option. I adapted to the change and now hit Win-C when I want to check the time. Sure, it’s not there all the time.
I don’t need to see what time it is all the time, and indeed not having a clock staring at you has some benefits to productivity. How else do you explain all the distraction free writing software out there?
Sweetest Thing
Search
I love the search charm. It works exactly how you want a system wide search to work. I’ve come to rely on it often. By default it will search the app you’re using, but with a simple mouse click or keyboard arrow tap you can search any of the available apps that support search as well as your files. Brilliant.
Sharing
On any mobile OS, sharing links has been a part of the experience for a while now. On the iPad, using Flipboard, Zite, or Safari, sending an email or a tweet about a given article or web page has always been a simple experience. This same simplicity is now available all the time in Windows 8.
Before, if I wanted to send my wife a link to an article, it was always easier on the iPad or Kindle Fire than it was in Windows. But now, regardless of the app I’m in, I can easily send an email or a tweet exactly like I’d expect to. This, of course, is dependent on app developers using the feature, but most quality apps will (assuming their content makes sense to share).
Lemon
Probably my biggest complaint is the keyboard shortcut required for the app bar. Some of the shortcuts, like the Charms bar (Win-C), are easy for me to execute. For some reason, the app bar’s shortcut (Win-Z) is difficult for me to pull off. I think it’s because the Win key is right next to the Z key.
Whenever I hit the Windows key, I use my left pinkie finger, so that’s the natural movement. But when I try to do Win-Z, hitting the Windows key with my pinkie causes my hand to rotate to the left. I end up putting my thumb on the Win key which completely takes me out of my normal hand position.
You can also right-click on the screen to show the app bar. Overall, I think the steps required to pull up the app bar don’t lend themselves to the desktop experience. The motions on a touch device are excellent. I taught my daughter the charms bar and app bar motion in under 30 seconds. So, if my 3-year-old can learn it in under a minute, you can figure it out too.
Is That All?
I believe that, given enough time, desktop apps as we know them will disappear. Sure, some things will have to change before that’s a possibility, but it will happen. Already, apps that run in the desktop seem outdated and old compared to the Windows 8 apps. The desktop is now awkward.
Clearly, developers do not want to give up 20 or 30% of their sales to Microsoft and I completely understand that. But normal consumers are going to start looking in the Windows Store for apps, and if your app isn’t there, you’re missing 100% of sales. If Windows RT machines take off, desktop apps won’t work at all, so it’s imperative to developers that they pick up the flag and go. There’s new cheese. Go find it.
The future will be full-screen, or something like it.
In 10 years, my daughter will be 13 and look at pictures of Windows 7 and laugh the same way a kid who would look at DOS or Windows 1.0 would laugh today. In 20 years things will look radically different. To get there, we need to start somewhere. Here.
Windows 3.1 was also a dual OS, Windows running on top of DOS. Windows 95 got rid of DOS (sort of) and most applications are now Windows desktop applications. In that sense, Windows 8 is actually a mash of three different application platforms: DOS, Desktop, and Metro. Similarly Mac OS X is a dual OS. You can use the terminal if you want.
The future will be full-screen, or something like it. There may still be a way for us to run desktop applications in a metro app that emulates the old desktop, but for the most part, we’ll stay in Metro mode. And I can’t wait.