Metro is Microsoft's name for the new interface that greets you when you first boot Windows 8, a re-imagining of the Windows UI for desktops and all consumer computing devices.
According to Microsoft, more than two-thirds of PCs today are mobile devices: laptops, notebooks, tablets and slates. Most have wireless, multi-core processors are the norm, and memory and storage is plentiful. And, of course, our digital lives are increasingly tied to the internet through web and cloud services. Along with touch-based devices like tablets and phones that we can take with us on the go, Microsoft believes the landscape today is more about apps than the operating system.
It's a philosophy you can see throughout Metro. The short summary of what it looks like would be – and the irony is not lost – that it's a Windows interface... without windows. If you've seen Windows Phone 7, it'll look familiar, because it shares the same design principles: that the UI should be clean, clear and touch-friendly.
In Metro, programs are represented by 'tiles' that not only launch programs – which are all designed to run full-screen – but are 'live' in the sense that they can also communicate information: such as the Weather app displaying the current temperature on the tile itself. Any tile that can support information this way takes advantage of it, such as news feeds, social networking and even progress in games.
Tiles can be sized to be single or double-width and grouped into 'hubs', or collections of tiles, and this is about as complex as the interface gets. Collectively, this view is known as the Start screen. On a tablet or touch-enabled desktop, all the usual touch-gestures you'd expect allow you to scroll, zoom, drag and launch tiles.
Swiping from the right on a touchscreen or hovering the mouse at the lower left reveals what Microsoft is calling Charms – cross application toolbars that appear within apps and on the Start screen, allowing you to toggle features for an app as well as access global tools like Search, Devices and Settings. It can get a little confusing, as some apps overlap with 'desktop' counterparts – for example there are now two Control Panels (both titled as such): one for Metro and the original Windows one, with some settings duplicated and some unique to each. The Metro one also links to the traditional one, but not the other way around.
Similarly, selecting some options or features in Metro will switch you to desktop mode, which can be jarring – if you launch Task Manager from Metro to end a program, for example, Metro disappears and you're suddenly at the Windows 8 desktop. Then you have to switch back to Metro after doing your business. It's unfortunately a bit inconsistent and convoluted.
The new Search is integral to Metro, allowing you to find programs, Control Panel settings or files with matches showing up as you type. Importantly, it's the only way to find and run any programs that don't show up as tiles. In fact this leads to one of the most significant changes in Windows 8: after all these years, the iconic Start menu is no more.
If you click on the Desktop tile you'll be greeted by the familiar Windows 7 looking desktop, but lacking a Start menu, the Windows icon takes you back to the Metro Start screen instead. When it comes to launching programs from the desktop mode, well... we're still working that one out.
There's no Alt-F2 Run dialog and the Windows key takes you back to the Start Screen too. A little bit of digging has turned up a registry key to re-enable the Start menu but, if you are to use Windows 8 as-is, Metro is your only option to launch programs. Hopefully Metro will be optional for the 'desktop' release of Windows 8, but considering this would knock out the upcoming Windows Store and the revenue it would bring, this isn't likely to be the case.
It's worth noting Metro apps themselves are quite distinct from Windows apps. While Windows 8 is backward compatible with current Windows programs, Metro apps are at source web-apps – for Metro itself is powered by Internet Explorer 10. Apps can be programmed with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and Microsoft is proud to point out that it's fully HTML5 capable. The other overriding difference is that Metro apps will only be available from Microsoft's Windows Store.
Microsoft hasn't included the Windows Store in the preview release, but did demo it at the Build conference. The demo focused on what developers can do to prepare apps for the store, rather than the business side of using the store and pricing models, beyond confirming that apps would require approval a la Apple's App Store. Our enquiries for further detail were met with tight lips, and certainly no word on what Microsoft's cut would be.
And if you don't like Metro, that's tough. Microsoft is extending Metro to all its products – not just the Windows Phone and Windows 8, but soon as the new dashboard for the Xbox 360 as well. It's not just about unification of design, it also ties in to Microsoft's goal of providing a uniform experience for personal settings and data.
