The new Metro interface for Windows 8 is one of the most significant – and riskiest – decisions in Microsoft’s history. The familiar desktop that has been the cornerstone of the operating system since Windows 95 has been elbowed out of the way in favour of a touch interface. On this there is no compromise: even if you intend to run Windows 8 on a desktop PC with a conventional monitor, the Metro interface remains the default, with the traditional Windows Desktop relegated to mere “app” status.

So how does this new interface work?

The Lock screen

The first screen Windows 8 users will encounter is the Lock Screen. This comprises nothing more than a customisable photo, the time and date and, optionally, notifications from one key app: your next calendar, appointment, for example.

An upwards swish of the finger unlocks the screen, where you’ll either be prompted for a traditional password or asked to enter a “picture password”. This new security feature allows you to pick a photo of your choice, and then create a password based on gestures. You might, say, choose a picture of your kids, and then create a gesture by which you move from the youngest child to the eldest in the photo. Alternatively, you might choose a group of friends and tap on them in alphabetical order. It’s a quirky alternative to entering a text password, which is of course more cumbersome with an onscreen keyboard.

The Start Screen

Once you’ve unlocked the PC, you’re thrown straight into the new Start Screen that Microsoft first unveiled earlier this year. Its Metro interface will be instantly recognisable to anyone with a Windows Phone 7 handset. Instead of a traditional desktop with Start button, taskbar and icons, the Start Screen now comprises a series of interactive tiles.

These tiles don’t only display the name of the app: they display snippets of data from those applications. Your Twitter app, for example, will scroll through the latest tweets from your friends; the Weather app displays the forecast for your current location; Email shows how many unread messages are waiting in your inbox. “The idea is you’re always up to date with what’s going on,” said Jensen Harris, Microsoft’s director of program management. “The app is expressing itself on the Start Screen.”

To scroll through the apps, you simply flick your finger from left to right – or use the scroll wheel on the mouse or the cursor keys if you haven’t got a touchscreen. Even on the early preview build, this feels incredibly slick: there’s no slowdown or waiting for app icons to redraw as you swish from one end of the Start Screen to the other.

Tiles can be resized by clicking on them and dragging down, where you’re presented with the option to make them bigger (rectangular) or smaller (square). Only the larger, rectangular tiles are capable of displaying data. It’s also possible to drag and drop app tiles into a new position by shoving them to the top of the screen with one hand, scrolling the Start screen to the desired position with the other, and then dropping the tile into the desired place. It’s certainly less cumbersome than shifting apps to a new home in either iOS or Android.

Windows 8 in depth:
Find out about the new interface, apps and the store, performance and Windows 8 on ARM

Tiles can also be grouped together – the Windows 8 alternative to folders. All your games can be clustered together, for example, or all of your productivity apps. Zoom right out on the Start Screen using a pinch-to-zoom motion, and you can re-order these Groups however you wish.

Finally, on the far right-hand side of the Start Screen, you can drag out a selection of five buttons which Microsoft rather sickeningly dubs Charms. There are five Charm buttons: Search (which allows you to search for files, apps or even data contained within apps), Share (which allows you to share photos via a social networking app, for example, or send a link to an email contact), Devices (for connecting to printers, digital cameras etc), Settings (to change screen brightness, volume, wireless networks and other controls) and the Start button (which simply throws you back to the Start Screen). The Charms are also available within apps.

Full-screen Metro apps

Windows now has two different types of app. There’s the new Metro Style apps, which are designed primarily for touch, and the old-style desktop apps.

All of the Metro Style apps are run full screen. There’s no Taskbar along the bottom, no minimise or close buttons along the top. The whole of the screen is handed over to the app. To flick from one full-screen app to the next, you flick your finger from the left-hand side of the screen.

In Internet Explorer 10, for example, all you see when you first open the app is the webpage. Only when you flick upwards from the bottom of the screen are you presented with the more familiar page furniture, such as the address bar, browser tabs and the back button.

Unlike other tablet OSes, Windows 8 offers true app multitasking. This means there’s the option to run apps side-by-side. You can, for example, snap your Twitter app open in a narrow strip on the left-hand side of the screen, with a browser window open on the right. You can even have a video playing in the smaller left-hand panel, while you continue to browse on the right – although such demanding multitasking will doubtless wreak havoc with your battery life.

However, these windows aren’t resizable in the traditional Windows fashion. There are only four fixed window configurations: full-screen landscape, split-screen landscape (with the thinner app window on either the left- or right-hand side of the screen) or full-screen portrait. Metro App developers are being encouraged to redesign their apps for each of these configurations. (See more on Apps and the new App Store here).

Old-style desktop apps

So what of the desktop apps that we run today? These can still be used on the old-school Windows Desktop which now – somewhat confusingly – has been demoted to an “app”. When you click on the Windows Desktop tile, you’re thrown back into the familiar Windows 7 desktop, with the Taskbar running along the bottom and the not-so-touch-friendly desktop icons of old.

This is where Microsoft wants you to run applications such as Office and Photoshop: apps that were designed for mouse and keyboard, not touch. Applications can still be pinned to the Taskbar, but infuriatingly the Windows Desktop Start button just throws you back to the touchscreen Start Menu. The Start Menu of old has completely disappeared. This makes it nigh-on impossible to quickly launch an application that isn’t already pinned to your Taskbar, let alone launch items such as the Control Panel.

Needless to say, the Windows 7 Desktop is also a hostile environment for tablet users. No matter what Microsoft claims, the Ribbon interface isn’t geared towards touch. We suspect pure tablet users will largely restrict themselves to the new Metro Style applications, while only those using an additional keyboard, mouse or stylus will brave going back into the old Windows desktop.

Initial verdict

For tablet users, the new Metro interface is superb: we’d go as far as to say it’s the best tablet interface we’ve seen yet. It’s slick, it’s customisable and it contains far more information than the home screen of an iPad or an Android tablet.

For desktop PC or laptop users, however, we’re struggling to see the appeal. The entire interface is so geared towards touch, that using a mouse or cursor keys to navigate around the Start screen just feels awkward. We suspect Windows 7 will remain the operating system of choice for conventional PC users.

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As you will have noticed if you’ve read our review of Ubuntu 11.04, the Linux distro has a dramatic new look. And despite bearing the name “Unity”, Ubuntu 11.04’s default user interface appears to have divided Ubuntu fans.

Even some of the most die-hard Ubuntu advocates amongst the PC Pro readership have expressed their disgust at the interface, which was first introduced in the now defunct Netbook Edition last year.

So what’s sparking the revolt?

The moving Launcher

Unity dumps the traditional taskbar at the foot of the screen for a new icon-based Launcher that’s locked to the left-hand side of the screen by default.

As we state in our review:

“It’s a controversial change, but we reckon it’s an improvement. The Launcher at the side of the screen is far more inviting than Gnome’s niggly menus, and it makes better use of a widescreen display. The way the icons work – click to launch, right-click for options – will come naturally to anyone familiar with Windows 7 or OS X.”

Not everyone agrees, however. When I canvassed views on why people disliked Unity on Twitter, the splendidly named @explodingwalrus said “Unity only really makes sense on tiny tablet or netbook screens, it just doesn’t work on a large dual-head setup.”

However, the chief complaint on the various Ubuntu forums appears to be the way the Launcher disappears, until you fling your cursor over to the left-hand side of the screen. That half-second or so that it takes for the Launcher to reappear can be a real frustration when you want to quickly shift between open applications. (Although, as with Windows, you can use the Alt + Tab keyboard shortcut to flick between apps).

There is a way to stop that launcher from moving, using the Compizconfig settings manager (thanks to @blaserUK for the tip-off). You can install this either by searching for the app in the Ubuntu One Software Centre (which failed to install for me) or by typing the following command into the terminal:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Moving icons

A minor issue for people used to shuffling their taskbar icons into their preferred position in Windows 7 is the seeming inability to drag Launcher icons into a new position. If you click on the Home Folder at the top, for example, and attempt to drag down, the whole chain of icons move.

This is because the Unity Launcher behaves in a slightly different fashion to Windows 7. To move an icon to a new position in Unity, you have to drag the icon to the right and then slot it into your new preferred position.

Invisible scrollbars

The change generating the most anger is the new scrollbars. Instead of having a pervasive scrollbar on the right-hand edge of application windows, they now only appear when you move the cursor to the right-hand side – mirroring the default behaviour of the Launcher.

It’s fair to say this hasn’t met with universal approval.

“Moving from cautious optimism back to fear and loathing with the latest Ubuntu Unity. What the hell is up with the scrollbar?” tweeted the clearly irritable @squeekyhoho.

“Ubuntu is doing a great job throwing away years of UI experience. Unity is awful, and these new overlay scrollbars are impossible,” agreed @outzider.

I too find the hiding scrollbars irritating, largely because it makes the more difficult to click on, needlessly wasting more of my time. It’s also applied erratically – in some apps the scrollbar is hidden, in others it remains in place. Worse still, I can’t find any option to make the scrollbars stay put – even Compizconfig doesn’t seem to come to the rescue on this occasion. If you find a way, let me know on comments below.

Graphical glitches

The strictures of Ubuntu’s six-month release schedule certainly appear to have harmed Ubuntu 11.04. When we met with Ubuntu shortly before the release date, the company’s PR chief admitted that the developers were still firefighting bugs in Unity. Judging by the comments flying about on forums and Twitter, they didn’t manage to quash them all.

Every time I resume a Ubuntu 11.04 from standby on my laptop, the launcher is replaced with a texture similar to the on-screen fuzz you used to get in the days when they switched the television off overnight. It disappears when I first mouse-over the launcher, but it’s irritating.

There are more serious glitches:

“Graphics performance is shocking as well. Had to switch to Ubuntu Classic desktop without effects,” wrote @larryni.

“Can’t say I’m happy with #Ubuntu upgrade on my desktop. Reboot got stuck due to Unity graphics (fixed by turning it off), mic won’t work…” added @reuvenim.

None of us in the office have noticed any graphical performance issues, per se, although the Nvidia drivers now refuse to remember my native resolution, and I’m having real difficulties getting my dual-screen set-up to run properly. Hopefully a graphics driver update is on its way.

Verdict

Despite the issues I and others have witnessed, I’d stick by the verdict we arrived at in our original review. Unity is a big change – and that will always upset some members of a loyal userbase – but features such as the new-look Launcher, the instant search menu and the option to snap windows to the sides of the screen all make Ubuntu a much more usable operating system. And for all of the comments quoted above, there are as many – if not more – people expressing their delight at the new Ubuntu.

Let’s just hope Ubuntu can fix the glitches, and isn’t too stubborn to give users the option to tweak settings such as the sliding launcher and the invisible scrollbars in future releases.

Right click on an application’s icon – or swipe a finger upwards from it if you’re using the new touchscreen controls – and a “jumplist” opens. The jumplist provides a list of recent documents accessed in Word, for example, or recent sites visited in Internet Explorer, allowing you to open them with a single click. The jumplists can also be populated with commands, such as selecting a playlist from Windows Media Player. Microsoft has published a new API that will allow software makers to tailor the jumplists to their applications, and this has the potential to become a great timesaver.

The new Taskbar also comes into play when you plug a digital camera, MP3 player, or other peripheral into the PC. Instead of the old Autoplay prompt, a digital camera icon will show in the Taskbar. From here you can select options to import photos into editing software, for example, or kickstart a slideshow of your pictures.

As well as the thumbnail previews of tabs that were first introduced in Windows Vista, the new Taskbar provides full-screen previews when you hover over the thumbnail preview with the mouse. This feature could be pretty handy for a quick glance at an email, whilst you enter data into a web form for example, although it doesn’t really save much time compared to simply switching Windows if you’re proficient with keyboard shortcuts. More useful is the option to simply drag programs from the Start menu straight on to the Taskbar.

One clever new option is the ability to drag a window to the side of another open window, triggering them to automatically snap into place side-by-side with one another. This comes into its own when trying to compare two documents, taking full advantage of the horizontal space offered on widescreen displays.

Windows 7 includes other gesture-like controls. Drag a window to the top of the screen and it automatically blows the window into full-screen mode – a shortcut that we suspect will take a little getting used to. Hover the mouse to the far-right of the new Taskbar, meanwhile, and all of your windows become transparent, providing a clean view of the desktop.

Control freaks, meanwhile, will be delighted that Taskbar items can now be juggled into whichever order you wish, allowing you to always keep your email in the far-left tab, for example, even if it was opened after another application.

Gadgets and glass

The gadgets introduced in Windows Vista are retained in Windows 7, but they are no longer imprisoned on the far right of the screen, and can be dragged and dropped anywhere you fancy on the desktop. “We see the market moving heavily to laptops – that’s a lot of screen real estate to lose,” said Linda Averett, group program manager for core user experience of Windows, explaining the decision to let gadgets roam free.

Microsoft has also made the look and feel of the desktop much more customisable. Averett claimed that 30% of Windows Vista users went as far as changing the colour of the Aero glass, and so the company has decided to give interior designers their head, by allowing them to save different colour schemes for different seasons, for example. PC manufacturers will also be able to toy with the glass, so expect cobalt blue windows from Dell and shiny black edges from Sony in the future.

System Tray

“We have received volumes of feedback on the System Tray,” Averett claimed, and none of it good, we suspect. Consequently, Microsoft has decided to minimise the number of times the System Tray screams for attention with annoying pop-ups and flashing icons.

When an application adds itself to the System Tray, it automatically goes into a new overflow area, allowing you to decide if you want it to display permanently or not. There’s also a new Action Center that queues up all those infuriating Windows Update and other maintenance messages, meaning you’re not interrupted every two minutes with another meaningless reminder, and can review them in your own time.

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