Alone or not, we had a thread about this (more precisely a thread that turned to be about this), which ended in a war, so I guess people are a bit tired of the topic.

The major problem I see in the new Microsoft UIs is that they do not hint you enough:
Explained:
When you look at the file menu, the underlined F tells you that alt-f will open it. No such things in ribbons for example, they just assume that you know that alt-f opens the menu.
In Windows-95 the "start" button hints that this is how you start a program, although win 3.11 had no start button I sort of knew that's where I would find my apps. (Sadly in windows-7 they just replaced it with a logo, assuming you have already been using windows).

So when I got to windows 8 I was appalled. Nothing even tells you that you can switch to classic desktop, and no hints on how to switch back once you accidentaly get there. I had to take out my phone and Google it to figure out how to switch back. Now I've been into computers and Microsoft ever since Dos 3.0, and I've never had to resort to reading the manual, just imagine the reaction of a non-techie using this.

I have to wonder if I am alone in this perception of the new interface.

Not really, see below, but personally, I liked it very much.


On a survey of 2963 PCWorld readers who tried the Windows 8 Consumer Preview., the votes were:

Metro interface: 47% Negative, 12% Neutral, 44% Positive
Windows App store: 20% Negative, 23% Neutral, 36% Positive
Mail, Calendar and people apps: 25% Negative, 20% Neutral, 41% Positive
Internet Explorer: 20% Negative, 22% Neutral, 53% Positive
Windows Explorer: 14% Negative, 23% Neutral, 60% Positive
Restart/Restore feature: 14% Negative, 15% Neutral, 47% Positive

Overall Satisfaction: 34% Negative, 13% Neutral, 52% Positive
(The missing % are the people who voted as "Don't know")

The problem as I see it is it's a huge change in usability, and it seems more like a sideways change, rather than a leap forward. Yes I am certain there will be kewl new features (like a zoomable desktop and synchronized settings), but at the moment that only allows me to fit all of the extremely and pointlessly large tiles on the screen at once.

The problem is that a sideways change was required. There is only so far you can push the existing desktop model, and it doesn't scale at all well to NUI interfaces. Just like every change, people will complain because it is different, but technology and hardware is changing and software needs to adapt to those changes also.

These new large tiles are not displaying me any extra information, so there is no reason for them to be so large. I don't see the death of overlapped windows as a good thing either.[/quote]
How can you say there is not more information on the tiles? That's patently false.

How does scrolling sideways with a vertical mouse wheel feel at all natural? Well it doesn't to me anyway. Now, if they added left click + drag, I could probably get used to that quite quickly, as that is working like a tablet device and makes sense.[/quote]
There is a scroll bar on the bottom of the screen you can click and drag also. I don't really find scrolling sideways unnatural; there are existing applications that do the same thing, so it just doesn't bug me that much. Honestly if scrolling confusing you is a sticking point for functionality, maybe it's a good thing you're being forced out of your comfort zone.

This kind or issue suggests a much more insidious problem imo; either that you have already decided to dislike Windows 8 and are looking for any reason to be vindicated, or you really can't adapt using a scroll wheel as a horizontal scrolling device, which feels worse to me.

edit: @ SillyCow: I think that's going to be the hardest part for Windows 8. The functionality that most people want is there, the problem is teaching people where that functionality is. It's a non-trivial hurdle and something I hope Microsoft addresses.

It doesn't work in classic either, for two reasons, the first being it needs .net 3.5 (not pre-installed in the preview, but we can fix that) and secondly WinPCAP wont install on it.

I'm not at all surprised that your app won't work on Windows 8 if it depends on WinPCAP. WinPCAP is a system-level library and API that hooks into the deepest layers of the network stack, facilitated by a driver. Drivers usually don't work on different OS versions.

[quote name='BLiTZWiNG' timestamp='1338788085' post='4946013']
The problem as I see it is it's a huge change in usability, and it seems more like a sideways change, rather than a leap forward. Yes I am certain there will be kewl new features (like a zoomable desktop and synchronized settings), but at the moment that only allows me to fit all of the extremely and pointlessly large tiles on the screen at once.

The problem is that a sideways change was required. There is only so far you can push the existing desktop model, and it doesn't scale at all well to NUI interfaces. Just like every change, people will complain because it is different, but technology and hardware is changing and software needs to adapt to those changes also.

These new large tiles are not displaying me any extra information, so there is no reason for them to be so large. I don't see the death of overlapped windows as a good thing either.[/quote]
How can you say there is not more information on the tiles? That's patently false.

How does scrolling sideways with a vertical mouse wheel feel at all natural? Well it doesn't to me anyway. Now, if they added left click + drag, I could probably get used to that quite quickly, as that is working like a tablet device and makes sense.[/quote]
There is a scroll bar on the bottom of the screen you can click and drag also. I don't really find scrolling sideways unnatural; there are existing applications that do the same thing, so it just doesn't bug me that much. Honestly if scrolling confusing you is a sticking point for functionality, maybe it's a good thing you're being forced out of your comfort zone.

This kind or issue suggests a much more insidious problem imo; either that you have already decided to dislike Windows 8 and are looking for any reason to be vindicated, or you really can't adapt using a scroll wheel as a horizontal scrolling device, which feels worse to me.

edit: @ SillyCow: I think that's going to be the hardest part for Windows 8. The functionality that most people want is there, the problem is teaching people where that functionality is. It's a non-trivial hurdle and something I hope Microsoft addresses.
[/quote]

I think you're mistaking me for some kind of hater, but I guess that could be construed from the type of post this is. I'm with SillyCow, in that a massive change like this, in this day and age, should be accompanied with loads of hints, or be completely intuitive. Android was about 75% intuitive for me, having never used a touch screen phone before, I got most of it within seconds, but there was definitely some confusion about what would happen when I touched certain icons if I didn't get what they represented. Windows 8 has been about 25% intuitive, and it feels incredibly frustrating to have to resort to the keyboard to switch apps or get back to the start menu, or just see the time. For completeness, the iPad was about 25% intuitive as well. I had to ask our Apple person for correct gestures, but after that they make sense, though I forget some of them occaisonally, but that is because I use Android daily, not iDevices.

Scrolling sideways makes sense on a tablet, not so much on a desktop. That's not the sticking point though, the sticking point is the "ease of access" to my computer that I currently have with Windows 7 and have had with every previous version of Windows, that is now gone. That is not a change for the better no matter how you look at it. Also, most of the information on the start menu is actually off my display area, when I have a 24" monitor. No previous version of Windows has this problem.

Edit: Actually the biggest sticking point for me is the lack of windows in.. uh, Windows.

If this were an operating system purely for a tablet, I'd say yeah, it's good. Not great, but good.

Now, as for my claim about tiles, It's not patently false at all.
http://croppy.me/zpk17tjr.png

Alone or not, we had a thread about this (more precisely a thread that turned to be about this), which ended in a war, so I guess people are a bit tired of the topic.

Yeah, I should have looked a bit harder before I posted, though was surprised to see no flame war on the front page. I certainly don't want to start one, and it's clear that people are passionate about their different opinions. I hope Microsoft address many of the concerns I am experiencing and have read about, and I realise this is not the final product, but in my experience, the UI rarely changes much in the last year before release.

I think you're mistaking me for some kind of hater, but I guess that could be construed from the type of post this is. I'm with SillyCow, in that a massive change like this, in this day and age, should be accompanied with loads of hints, or be completely intuitive. Android was about 75% intuitive for me, having never used a touch screen phone before, I got most of it within seconds, but there was definitely some confusion about what would happen when I touched certain icons if I didn't get what they represented. Windows 8 has been about 25% intuitive, and it feels incredibly frustrating to have to resort to the keyboard to switch apps or get back to the start menu, or just see the time. For completeness, the iPad was about 25% intuitive as well. I had to ask our Apple person for correct gestures, but after that they make sense, though I forget some of them occaisonally, but that is because I use Android daily, not iDevices.

That's a reasonable position to have. It's definitely different. Sorry I mistook you for being more extreme than you meant to be, and I'm sorry if I came off more extreme than I mean to be. I just get tired of people saying that Windows 8 is bad for not having features it definitely has or not giving any reasons at all other than it being different.

Microsoft definitely has some polishing to do, and definitely has a significant hurdle in training new users. I have to believe they're on top of this though, because these problems are just so obvious and significant that they have to be dealt with. For the most part though, I still think the interface is a step forward for the average consumer without making too many sacrifices for the outliers.

Now, as for my claim about tiles, It's not patently false at all.
http://croppy.me/zpk17tjr.png
[/quote]
Hmm that's odd. It looks like none of your apps have permissions to become pretty yet. At least the weather app makes me think that, because that one should definitely be populated.

Metro interface: 47% Negative, 12% Neutral, 44% Positive =[color=#ff0000] 103%
Windows App store: 20% Negative, 23% Neutral, 36% Positive
Mail, Calendar and people apps: 25% Negative, 20% Neutral, 41% Positive
Internet Explorer: 20% Negative, 22% Neutral, 53% Positive
Windows Explorer: 14% Negative, 23% Neutral, 60% Positive
Restart/Restore feature: 14% Negative, 15% Neutral, 47% Positive

Overall Satisfaction: 34% Negative, 13% Neutral, 52% Positive
(The missing % are the people who voted as "Don't know")

[quote name='BLiTZWiNG' timestamp='1338851607' post='4946257']
I think you're mistaking me for some kind of hater, but I guess that could be construed from the type of post this is. I'm with SillyCow, in that a massive change like this, in this day and age, should be accompanied with loads of hints, or be completely intuitive. Android was about 75% intuitive for me, having never used a touch screen phone before, I got most of it within seconds, but there was definitely some confusion about what would happen when I touched certain icons if I didn't get what they represented. Windows 8 has been about 25% intuitive, and it feels incredibly frustrating to have to resort to the keyboard to switch apps or get back to the start menu, or just see the time. For completeness, the iPad was about 25% intuitive as well. I had to ask our Apple person for correct gestures, but after that they make sense, though I forget some of them occaisonally, but that is because I use Android daily, not iDevices.

That's a reasonable position to have. It's definitely different. Sorry I mistook you for being more extreme than you meant to be, and I'm sorry if I came off more extreme than I mean to be. I just get tired of people saying that Windows 8 is bad for not having features it definitely has or not giving any reasons at all other than it being different.

Microsoft definitely has some polishing to do, and definitely has a significant hurdle in training new users. I have to believe they're on top of this though, because these problems are just so obvious and significant that they have to be dealt with. For the most part though, I still think the interface is a step forward for the average consumer without making too many sacrifices for the outliers.[/quote]

I'm usually a bit of a Microsoft fanboi. I love C# and it's all I want to program in, though I'm not shy to criticize a flaw (like alerts or new apps popping up over the current window you happen to be typing a password into, my god, plzfixnow kthxbye!)

I can see this being really great on a tablet device and I will be grabbing one as soon as it comes out, but at present, I can't see myself replacing Windows 7 on my desktop PC with this unless they come out with some other fantastic feature that I must have, because, I don't believe killing off overlapping windows is a good idea at all. I know they will still be there, but they are trying to get me to like metro, and without that I just can't like it (on a PC).