12:31 The app store

Tea in hand and after getting things running in a VM I’m taking a look at the app store and it’s pretty slick. Visually it’s quite appealing and I can imagine that the swipe gestures and panorama view will work well with a touch device. For us keyboard-and-mousers we’re left either with a barely-visible scroll-bar at the bottom of the screen or navigation by scroll wheel which I’m finding much nicer.

Apps are divided up into groups – the first thing you see are a few top-ranking items and links to their kin, then some highlights by category. Apps have a rating and price displayed, and reviews are accessible on their respective individual pages.

There’s also a little counter at the top-right showing how many updates are available for your already-installed apps. However, when you go into this all it does it tell you which apps have updates available and not anything about the nature of the update. While this is presumably to keep the user experience simpler and cleaner, I doubt it couldn’t be squeezed in somewhere. The counter is also displayed on the app tile when not in use.

Let’s try installing Physamajig for some light entertainment and to see what the process is like. First off we get the app’s details page – the app’s free, but it still shows ‘Buy’ and ‘Try’ buttons. I’ll assume that Buy is what I want. By doing so, I’m asked for my Microsoft account credentials – remember, app purchases/settings are associated with a Live account.

After that, the ‘updates’ counter turns into an ‘Installing Physamajig’ label and after a few seconds it’s all done. Painless! Interestingly I didn’t get prompted where I wanted the app to be saved on my local machine – this’ll become a problem over time if you’ve an SSD. Presumably there’s a setting somewhere around here for that…

Once installed the app appears on the Start tiles list for use – all very straightforward.

1:36pm Having a bash at installing VS2011 Developer Preview

VS2011 will be the Visual Studio release for creating apps that target Windows 8’s Metro UI. Hopping into the Desktop app then firing up IE10 I’ve downloaded and kicked-off an install of VS2011 Developer Preview in the hope that there’s sufficient supporting functionality in the Windows 8 CP to let it install. As it stands, VirtualBox is proving to be a massive pain in the behind again by just hanging periodically – even a reinstall with different VM settings didn’t take care of this the first time and it’s unclear where the issue resides.

While that’s happening a brief explore around the Desktop mode suggests that it’s essentially business as usual just with the key absence of a Start button and a My Computer icon on the desktop. Task Manager’s had a bit of visual work done to it and has slightly more detailed telemetry as a result. The processes list now groups processes by type by default, and both that and the App History tab highlight resource usage both numerically and by using colour to indicate relative peaks in usage between processes.

Dragging to dock a window to one side or other of the screen still works, and the desktop context menu still allows access to change screen resolution and settings (something that I couldn’t easily find a way of doing in the Metro UI). The notification area still exists, with the Action Centre flag still inexplicably set to always show by default even when there’s nothing to be acted upon. It’s clear that there’s work to be done in the desktop side of the app – for example, right-clicking the Taskbar still gives a settings dialog that talks about Aero Peek which at present no longer functions as holding the mouse at the bottom-right of the screen (where the ‘Show Desktop’ button notionally lives) brings up the Charms bar instead. Still, pinning items continues to work which may be sufficient in the absence of the Start button.

Come to think of it, the absence of a Start button and menu in the desktop mode (and styled in line with the desktop app) is actually quite an annoyance, as the Desktop and Metro environments neither look alike nor act alike but one’s forced to go from one to the other to start new programs. It’s especially jarring when starting the Windows Explorer ‘app’ from the Metro UI as it simply fires up the Desktop app and shows the Explorer window there.

Equally usability seems to have taken something of a step backwards if you’re not using a touch-enabled device with regards to very basic operations on the UI. For example, there’s no way I’ve found to close a Metro app from the app itself using only the mouse. Alt-F4 seems still to do the trick, and you’re tricked for a second into thinking that the running-apps slider accessible by hovering the mouse in the top-left corner and the moving down the edge of the screen might do it but it never shows the current app in that list.

Equally, the only way I’ve so far found to get back out into the Metro Start list is by hitting the Windows key on the keyboard – that’s fine once you know to do it, but in the CP at least there’s bugger all to suggest that’s the route back. Things that were once achievable using only one input method now seem to need both.

There’s also no clear indication of which apps are running at a given time – you can see what’s running in Metro by using the left-side hovery-move-slowly-down-the-screen tactic (presumably there’s a gesture shortcut for that as the region you’ve to touch is relatively tiny) but that won’t show you what’s running in the Desktop. To do that you have to go into the Desktop and look at the Taskbar as per usual, though again from the Desktop you can’t see the Metro apps that are running short of diving back out into Metro-mode.

The Start menu’s text search continues to work although it’s not clear that it will do so until you try – hitting the Windows key to get you to the Metro start menu and then just typing the name of an app continues to work which is good as it became a natural way to use the Start menu in Windows 7. Again though you’re faced with odd visual context switches if you’re in the Desktop app and want to launch a Desktop app, since you’re forced through the Metro UI for no good usability reason. You also lose all context of what you were doing when you started bringing the new app up because Metro takes over the whole screen.

I’m really trying to be open-minded about Metro as it’s the biggest UI design change MS has pushed on users since Windows 95. However, the story about how it interoperates with the Desktop just doesn’t feel right yet – I feel that I’m having to re-learn how to do things I already thought I knew how to do just for the sake of it, as so far Metro isn’t making it any quicker or easier to use my machine or access my applications.

Visual Studio’s still installing away in the background – clearly time for more tea.