It was an exciting week. Bangladesh cricket team reached the final of the Asia Cup 2012 one-day international (ODI) cricket championship. We enjoyed an exhilarating performances from the boys against some of the best cricket teams in the world. They beat the both finalists of the last ODI world cup and narrowly lost the final to another former world champion Pakistan just by 2 runs. So much enthusiasm was rarely seen in this country in the recent days.
Let's go back to my Windows 8 experience again. In my previous post Windows 8 - Was it the right way?, I tried to figure out if the Windows 8 was the right answer for Microsoft against iPad or Android based tablets. Since it's still in alpha stage, a lot of changes are expected to appear in the final version. I am concentrating on what I have in my tablet at this moment. I am going to briefly write on the usability of the operating system from the perspectives of different type of users, more specifically end-users and developers.
End-users
The end-users accomplishes usual daily tasks and entertainments.They expect comfortable user interface with stunning graphics. The frequently used programs must be easily locatable and under their fingertips. The Window 8 UI would be an attractive medium if you are already a smartphone user.
Windows 8 presents a very slick user interfaces. The links to the available and frequently usable programs are nicely wrapped all around your screen as large and colorful blocks. You don't need to click the small Start button at the corner of the screen to run a program. Microsoft has done some really good jobs to tweak the application resolution adjusted to your monitor.
The user interface is in reality designed for touch screen. Since now-a-days, many consumers are very much accustomed to smart phone, they might feel comfortable with this interface. If you don't have a touch screen, it's probably better to switch to the classic mode where you have familiar Windows 7 interface.
It is clear that Microsoft has used iPad as example and extended the features in order to streamline the user experience. MS is proud of the Metro and has done a brave job restructuring typical OS interface into smartphone style user interface and introducing this interface in the desktop PCs. The smartphone enthusiasts will definitely welcome that. But from other end-user perspectives, the following questions need to be answered:
Let's go back to my Windows 8 experience again. In my previous post Windows 8 - Was it the right way?, I tried to figure out if the Windows 8 was the right answer for Microsoft against iPad or Android based tablets. Since it's still in alpha stage, a lot of changes are expected to appear in the final version. I am concentrating on what I have in my tablet at this moment. I am going to briefly write on the usability of the operating system from the perspectives of different type of users, more specifically end-users and developers.
End-users
The end-users accomplishes usual daily tasks and entertainments.They expect comfortable user interface with stunning graphics. The frequently used programs must be easily locatable and under their fingertips. The Window 8 UI would be an attractive medium if you are already a smartphone user.
Windows 8 presents a very slick user interfaces. The links to the available and frequently usable programs are nicely wrapped all around your screen as large and colorful blocks. You don't need to click the small Start button at the corner of the screen to run a program. Microsoft has done some really good jobs to tweak the application resolution adjusted to your monitor.
The user interface is in reality designed for touch screen. Since now-a-days, many consumers are very much accustomed to smart phone, they might feel comfortable with this interface. If you don't have a touch screen, it's probably better to switch to the classic mode where you have familiar Windows 7 interface.
- All applications run in full screen mode. So you have no concept of maximizing or minimizing the application. MS is somehow backtracking to simpler and neater user experience removing all distracting elements from your sight so that you can concentrate to your real work.
- Only one application is active at a certain period of time. Starting another application will switch the current application to suspended mode where it will use almost no CPU cycles. When there are so many applications in running and suspended modes that the system memory can no more accommodate, older applications are shut down. That said there are some special mechanisms if you have some long running jobs like checking emails or copying large files to a network folder.
It is clear that Microsoft has used iPad as example and extended the features in order to streamline the user experience. MS is proud of the Metro and has done a brave job restructuring typical OS interface into smartphone style user interface and introducing this interface in the desktop PCs. The smartphone enthusiasts will definitely welcome that. But from other end-user perspectives, the following questions need to be answered:
- Is Touch the future of interaction? Will there be an emergence of other interaction/input mechanism? Microsoft has focused exclusively on touch screen influenced by the widespread success of iPhone and Android-based products. But which interaction/input technology should evolve as the dominating medium is the consumers to decide.
- Is only a single application at once is the best approach? Many users run multiple applications simultaneously and drag information from one application to another.
- Is MS delaying the release of Windows 8 as they did with Windows Vista? The competitor is seizing the market rapidly. Apple released the new iPad (previously known as iPad3) on March 7, 2012 and New iPad tops 3 millions sales only in 3 days - a staggering figure. MS must find a good slot in this year before the market is already saturated with iPad and android-based tablet.
Those who develop applications for the Windows operating systems belong to this group. Many of the developers also belong to the end-users category as well since they also use their development computer to accomplish day-to-day tasks. Microsoft has done some exciting staff in Windows 8 and Microsoft Visual Studio 11 (VS11) for application development. The most admirable staff is releasing the beta of VS11 and Windows 8 developer preview so that the developers can start with application development. The success of an operating system depends on the number of quality applications available on that system. The public availability of prerelease versions of them enabled the programmers to develop and deploy their own applications.
The metro style application development has been integrated into the VS11. The most exciting news is that JavaScript is now considered as a first class citizen for metro application software development. You can build applications similar to familiar web programming using JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3 thanks to the Windows Library for JavaScript (WinJS) built on top of Windows Runtime (WinRT), a native API built into the operating system and accessible from C++, VB, C#, JavaScript.
A lot of enhancements have been made to C++ compiler to comply with the C++11 standard as much as they could. Concurrency is now an integral part of the language. You can access a lot of user interface elements using WinRT which are tedious to program in C++. Microsoft has introduced automatic garbage collection for WinRT objects through several Microsoft-specific C++ extensions.
The metro style application development has been integrated into the VS11. The most exciting news is that JavaScript is now considered as a first class citizen for metro application software development. You can build applications similar to familiar web programming using JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3 thanks to the Windows Library for JavaScript (WinJS) built on top of Windows Runtime (WinRT), a native API built into the operating system and accessible from C++, VB, C#, JavaScript.
A lot of enhancements have been made to C++ compiler to comply with the C++11 standard as much as they could. Concurrency is now an integral part of the language. You can access a lot of user interface elements using WinRT which are tedious to program in C++. Microsoft has introduced automatic garbage collection for WinRT objects through several Microsoft-specific C++ extensions.
These are the positive parts of Windows 8 and VS 11 for the developers. The "single application" feature will negatively affect the productivity of the developers most. In this multitasking world, everyone wants to do multiple tasks at the same time. Developers starts C++ compilation, browse the Internet for reference, check email or edit icons all at the same time. If they need to switch here and there for doing these tasks, frustration will be certain.
As already mentioned, a lot of changes are expected in the final release of Windows 8 and there will definitely be a gigantic marketing efforts in the coming months. MS will compel the OEMs to support their plan and eventually force the consumers to move to the new OS.
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