Microsoft’s Windows chief, Steven Sinofsky, revealed on Thursday that the company has received a variety of feedback on its early Windows 8 disclosures.

Sinofsky and the Windows team have been detailing a variety of new Windows 8 features over the past few weeks (see links below) and revealed that they have received over 3,000 English language comments from around 1,700 readers. Microsoft’s building Windows 8 Twitter account has also amassed 15,000 followers. “I’ve personally received about 300 email messages,” said Sinofsky in a blog post on Thursday. “We’re talking about a product used by a billion people. No matter how you slice it, that is going to create a very, very large number of perspectives and customers to serve.”

Sinofsky revealed that he has received a number of emails encouraging him to ignore “trolls and fanboys” that have commented on Microsoft’s series of blog posts. “Those are nice to read in the face of an equal number of messages telling me how poor a job we’re doing,” he said. “We also receive a great many very specific questions and suggestions.” Microsoft revealed its ribbon Windows Explorer interface earlier this week which has generated a large amount of feedback for the company. A number of Mac focused blogs have mocked the company for its use of the ribbon interface across Windows. Opinion is certainly divided on the ribbon and Microsoft recognizes this.

“Having an opinion on user interface is not difficult,” says Sinofsky. “My inbox is filled with mock-ups and proposals of dialog boxes and toolbars.” Sinofsky explains that the Windows team mock up a number of scenarios when they evaluate designs. Clearly these designs have created some interesting feedback for the company in the past days and Sinofsky admits that the company is learning how to approach sharing further details. “There’s always learning for us in how we approach this, as the combination of the environment and work we’re doing is unique at each juncture,” explains Sinofsky. “In that sense, we learned one very valuable lesson early on, which is that discussing user interface is something a lot of people want to do, but doing so through static images very quickly misses the point.”

Sinofsky promises that in future posts he will talk about the Ribbon, Metro and Media Center. “I hope to add a bit of additional “focus, light, and magnification” without distorting the bigger picture here. Based on the comments and the dialogue, I do feel that each of these deserves some further discussion,” said Sinofsky. Despite the feedback, Sinofsky is not planning to talk about the programming model for Windows 8 in a blog post, insisting that the company will reveal more details at BUILD. “Early on it was clear this is the sort of topic that will take more than a blog post because we have so much to say and to demonstrate.”

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