Introducing the Modern UI

To start to understand the differences between the two Windows 8 UI personalities and the change in design approach from Windows 7 to Windows 8, one needs look no further than the Windows 8 start screen (see Figure 23.1). As you can see, this looks nothing like the Windows of old. It has more in common, in fact, with the tile-based UI introduced on the Windows Phone platform. (See Chapter 24, “Creating Windows Phone Applications,” for our coverage of Windows Phone development.) We see that applications are now represented as tiles. The tiles themselves are not simple, static icons; they are alive and animated, providing up-to-date information surfaced from the prospective application. Thus, at a glance, we have information about our email, our calendar, the weather, current sports scores, and anything else we care to pin to our start screen.

FIGURE 23.1 The Windows 8 start screen.

The work surface can be panned, scrolled, and flicked using touch interactions. In fact, everything on the start screen works without the need for a keyboard or mouse if you have a touch-enabled screen/device.

System-level and application-level settings are controlled via charms. Charms show to the right side of the screen as a sort of toolbar that slides into view when the mouse or touch input is directed to the top-right corner of the screen (see Figure 23.2).

FIGURE 23.2 The Windows 8 charms bar.

Within each application, commands may also be accessed via a bottom app bar that appears on right-click or via the swipe-up gesture on the screen. Figure 23.3 shows the app bar for the Windows 8 Messaging application. Note the Status and Invite command buttons.

FIGURE 23.3 An app bar at the bottom of the Messaging app.

You can likely infer many of the design characteristics of Windows Store applications by looking at these figures. But let’s examine in some detail the principles to which every Windows Store application is expected to adhere.