Platform Convergence

[The Lard]

So we're to believe that Threshold will finally deliver a build of Windows that is common to all ARM devices - both Windows Phones and WinRT tablets/hybrids.

Question is, in that case, what will it look like? Windows phone's start screen has plain backgrounds with tiles either a single theme colour or transparent with your choice of image behind. WinRT however has multi-coloured tiles with a choice of backgrounds. Will the front ends be kept distinct just superficially between phones and tablets, but both exist on the same build of the OS? Perhaps with only the appropriate one enabled on any one device? We've already seen in Win 8 you can quite easily have two entirely different UI's on top of a single operating system. Seems a bit of an odd strategy though. Why maintain two different styles for touch devices on a platform that's supposed to be becoming 'One Windows'?

So perhaps we'll see the Phone 8 design language carry over to tablets? I'd say it's aesthetics have been better received than Win8/RT's start screen has, and we've already heard that changes are being made to that for Threshold. Also transparent tiles has only just been implemented on WP and people seem to love it. Doing away with it now would surely be an unpopular decision.

And if MS are really going for a consistent experience across the board, at least in terms of styling, perhaps that means we'll even see it on x86 machines. I mean surely you want your UI to look the same on both ARM and x86 tablets, no? I could imagine transparent live tiles looking pretty sweet on a 30" monitor with the right background image (though I'd never see them as I still live perpetually in the desktop).

Be very interesting to see how it pans out.

 

[mparker]

Question is, in that case, what will it look like? Windows phone's start screen has plain backgrounds with tiles either a single theme colour or transparent with your choice of image behind. WinRT however has multi-coloured tiles with a choice of backgrounds. Will the front ends be kept distinct just superficially been phones and tablets, but both exist on the same build of the OS? Perhaps with only the appropriate one enabled on any one device? We've already seen in Win 8 you can quite easily have two entirely different UI's on top of a single operating system. Seems a bit of an odd strategy though. Why maintain two different styles for touch devices on a platform that's supposed to be becoming 'One Windows'?

Visually, there's not as much difference as you might think. Both have multi-colored tiles, both have backgrounds. RT start screen scrolls sideways, WP scrolls vertically. This is simply an orientation flag on the layout control. RT has the app list below, WP has the app list to the right. My suspicion is that you'll see the RT start screen become a vertical scroller. I haven't seen the new start menu in action, but it wouldn't surprise me if the metro half of that wasn't a vertical scroller as well. The horizontal scrolling in Win8/WinRT was always confusing if you tried to scroll the start screen using the mouse wheel.

And if MS are really going for a consistent experience across the board, at least in terms of styling, perhaps that means we'll even see it on x86 machines. I mean surely you want your UI to look the same on both ARM and x86 tablets, no? I could imagine transparent live tiles looking pretty sweet on a 30" monitor with the right background image (though I'd never see them as I still live perpetually in the desktop).

Microsoft looks to be moving away from the start screen for x86 machines, though possibly their surface pro line will still use it if the keyboard is detached. But the metro apps themselves will run just fine on x86, supposedly they'll even run in a normal (or normal-ish) window on the desktop. Which should have been the case from day 1 (and on Win7/Vista as well).