Robbert Doelwijt likes Windows 8, but he thinks there could be some improvements to the user interface.
He writes:
A few days ago at Microsoft’s BUILD event, a developer preview of Windows 8 was released. I installed it as soon as I could, and played around with it. Their touch-first mentality was noticable at first glance. In the videos I saw on the web Windows 8 seemed to be a breeze to use on tablet-like devices, but Microsoft kept saying that it would still be usable with your mouse and keyboard setups. While you can use the operating system with your keyboard and mouse, to me the controls suck.
Windows 8 has a lot of potential, but some of the features just don’t work on desktops. I’ve made a video showcasing some of the improvements I would make to Windows 8, in order for it to work both on tablet-like devices and on desktops with a mouse and keyboard. Please check it out, and let me know what you think about Windows 8 and these improvements.
His ideas boil down the the mouse being allowed to emulate touch, saying “the cursor should be history”, that the new Start menu and Classic desktop should be merged, with a metro-style task-bar being available and that legacy apps should run in the Metro user interface rather than the classic desktop.
While the ideas are interesting, especially having special UI features for mouse and keyboard users, we know Steven Sinofsky has said Windows 8 is more or less finalized, and they will not be taking any input or feedback, meaning Robbert’s work is unfortunately more or less wasted.
What do our readers think of the ideas? Let us know below.
Thanks Randy for the tip.