Windows 8: Touch friendly Metro UI settings demo [video]

By Tom Warren, on 27th Apr 11 9:34 am with 19 Comments

Microsoft appears to be building a far more friendly touch based UI inside Windows 8.

A number of leaked videos have surfaced recently after a pre-milestone 3 build of Windows 8 leaked earlier this week. The latest video, shown below, demonstrates Microsoft’s touch based user interface. The interface appears to be part of the company’s Immersive user experience that will run on ARM based Windows tablets. The demo shows off the ability to control settings from the interface and appears to use Microsoft’s Metro user interface for large and touch friendly controls.

Various parts of Microsoft’s immersive tablet experience have started emerging recently. Microsoft’s new Windows 8 Metro style “Webcam Capture Application” has been demonstrated on video. The new webcam app features large finger friendly controls and Microsoft’s famous Metro UI. Immersive browser Tablet tile UI screenshots have also emerged recently.

Microsoft’s Immersive UI will be driven by Microsoft’s Metro based design language. Microsoft will include a new application model codenamed “Jupiter” that will allow developers to create Silverlight based applications, deployed as AppX packages (.appx). The packages will be part of a new Windows application store, pre-installed with Windows 8. WinRumors understands the company will be looking to provide an easy way for existing Windows Phone developers to scale their applications for use with Jupiter.

Microsoft is currently working on various Windows 8 features and is expected to deliver an early copy to developers at its Windows Developer Conference (WDC) in September. Here’s a round-up of the latest Windows 8 news:

Thanks to @robyroby27 for the video

  • Anonymous

    Seems like a strange UI to me, have to touch and play with it to really give it a score ;)

  • http://unhub.com/eingoluq Eingoluq

    Ooo. thats just terrible. I’m beginning to feel that they are not implementing Metro right. Its a good thing that all we have seen so far are from early builds.

    • GP007

      Which is why it doesn’t match up right, it’s in it’s basic unpolished form so they can get the underpinnings coded so that when you actually click/press on something you get the right resault. After that’s all done and working they can polish the UI itself.

  • http://twitter.com/#!/timrfox Tim

    I love it.. but it won’t replace Aero Wind for me

  • Kobler23

    just hope that when the os is about to be finalized metro will look and feel more like it does on the zune software….

  • http://twitter.com/kenobeano Keno Butler

    hmm

  • http://twitter.com/kenobeano Keno Butler

    just hope that when the os is about to be finalized metro will look and feel more like it does on the zune software….

  • Rebbe

    I think the resolution on the screen is too small so you cant see all the panels at the same time… without scrollbars.. Thats why it looks so messy… Love the METRO style!!!

  • Snurtle

    It’s obviously very early days, and I wonder whether the window size is deliberately small to show scrolling – surely they wouldn’t require all that for a full-on mouse display?

  • http://adamhaider.com Adam Haider

    I would prefer the layout to be vertical instead, so the options are above and the controls are below giving the user more space to swipe and scroll. Currently it looks too squashed together.

  • scrolless

    If you look at 0:22 the settings say the theme has high contrast set to On.

  • Grs_dev

    It is not meant to replace a desktop experience. The touch/gesture shell is intended for hand held devices such as tablets, surfaces, and kiosks…

  • http://www.facebook.com/GriffinCoulter Griffin Coulter

    everyone needs to chill. if you notice the resolution is very low, so i’m assuming when the final vrsion comes out you won’t need to even use the scroll bars. they probably put them in just to test them, or put them in to make use of the low resolution. in the end, this will be very “zune-esc”

  • IAmTheNinja

    Anyone got another link to that? It’s been reported :S

  • Samuel Jackson

    The video is gone and I never saw it :(

  • Skh

    The video is still available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaprLJf0lJ0

  • Syrious1

    what’s with the scrolling? get a bigger monitor.

  • Dragoon

    Video pwned by Microsoft – yet you have another one here: http://vimeo.com/22913298
    By the way, I hope Microsoft won’t look only at touchscreen users and change this interface sooner or later…

  • http://twitter.com/TechDudeGeorge George S

    I love it, but I find it so annoying that everyone says it’s horrible as it’s so small. It’s a very early test version, it’s buggy.