is windows 10 optimized for small 8" display tablets?

[al404]

I did use an 8" display tablet with windows 8.1 and i really had an hard time when i need to use desktop apps or desktop functions
I could even click the right spot

I would like to know if on windows 10 UI is optimized for small tablet, i saw some video and it seem it is but i can't really understand if I need to use standard desktop mode for some actions?

Is file explorer optimized for tablet view?

Thanks

 

[ygtgngr]

Most Win32 apps still aren't optimized for touch. Also File Explorer has scaling that enables bigger icons but still not the perfect way to manage your files on a tablet.but yes definitely a better experience than W8.1 in tablet mode IMO.

 

[paulsalter]

You really need to try it and decide if you like it

For me Windows 10 is designed for desktop use and tablet mode looks like an afterthought, a big downgrade from 8.1

 

[al404]

I'm thinking about selling my android 7" tablet to get a windows 8" display tablet
and i was wondering if without a pen i could handle tasks

 

[al404]

downgrade from windows 8? IMHO windows even in modern UI is too small for 8" display or less
i think Android and iOS have a much better UI

in video seems much better, but is difficult to see if things are the right size

 

[paulsalter]

If you think Android has a better UI than Windows on a tablet, it would be better to stay Android

You need to get a proper feel for Win 8.1 on the tablet, no good just looking at videos

Why do you think Modern apps are too small for an 8" tablet, I use Android and Windows (7" Android/8" Windows) and the size is fine on both of these, not much difference when in an app

 

[al404]

You need to get a proper feel for Win 8.1 on the tablet, no good just looking at videos

on win 8.1 modern apps has small fonts and could not find a way to enlarge them
small for 8" or lower, good on 9"/10"

but i'm comparing win 10 with android not 8.1
i see in videos that MS released word, excel for modern ui on win 10 and certain is an other great future
on android google now i think that is alf way good, you often need to chose by hand between different options

 

[swanlee]

No absolutely not

I have an 8 inch Acer W4 Win 8.1 tablet and I also have Win 10 on a gen 1 Surface pro and Win 10 is not going anywhere near my Acer.

Task bars, address bars, tab bars everywhere taking up screen space, missing swipe commands that made app flow much easier on a tablet, general ugliness of Start compared to Win 8.1 full screen start menu.

Win 10 is a complete disaster for tablets and practically unusable on Small 8 inch tablets.

FYI I've had my Acer 8 inch tablet over a year and win 8.1 works wonderfully on it at that screen size, in fact it is the most used PC I own and I pretty much would not live without it. I use it several hours everyday.

 

[al404]

i did not know was such a mess, system icon are to simple not sure if they are going to modify icons before release

i miss spell on previous post CORTANA is going to be a great plus

i have a Surface Pro 3 and like it, but i would like to have a smaller and less expensive tablet to take on vacation

 

[swanlee]

i did not know was such a mess, system icon are to simple not sure if they are going to modify icons before release

i miss spell on previous post CORTANA is going to be a great plus

i have a Surface Pro 3 and like it, but i would like to have a smaller and less expensive tablet to take on vacation

Yea people do not realize how useful and powerful the latest Bay trail based 8 inch Win 8.1 tablets are. My acer W4 is an amazing little PC, gets me 9 hrs battery, plays full 1080P video, had hdmi out or I can use miracast to get it on a bigger screen. and high res audio does pretty much anything I want. and win 8.1 functions great on it and the touch control is a smooth effortless experience.

Win 10 is such a clunky experience compared to this, For one the always on Taskbar is now forced in Win 10 tablet mode, you can no longer Autohide the taskbar in release 100131. That alone take up 15% of your screen space. The only thing the taskbar does is tell you what time it is, all the other functions of the always on taskbar were in charms in Win 8.1 whihc you could pull out when you wanted to and did not take up constant usable screen space.

Also web browsing, you know how in Win 8.1 you have this nice full screen IE web browser? Yea well in win 10 IE and Edge have no real full screen mode and all the Metro IE live tile bookmarks you might have had in win 8.1 are gone and no way to import them into Edge or IE.

So when your surfing the web 15% of screen space is taken up by an always on static taskbar and another %15 is taken up by the address bars, tab bars and other browser bars on Edge or IE.

So you have about 30% of your screen taken up by all these stupid static desktop GUI elements that you should be able to swipe away and pull up only when you need them like charms were.

It boggles my mind MS went down this path instead of giving us some options in Tablet mode to make it a more Win 8.1 experience.

 

[Motor_Mouth]

.but yes definitely a better experience than W8.1 in tablet mode IMO.

I completely disagree. The tablet experience on Windows 10 is as bad as it is with Windows 7 and much, much worse than Windows 8. For a start, the Taskbar is there all the time so you have to be really careful how you hold your tablet so as not to accidentally open or close something. And all the touch targets in Windows 10 are smaller than in Windows 8 so everything, not just the desktop, is harder to click on.

Visually, the whole interface is a lot more cluttered and use of screen space is extremely poor. Every window opens full screen, even those little dialog windows you get for things like Sound or Network Settings, but they still draw the same tiny UI you get in every other version of Windows which leaves 90% of the screen blank.

I came here today for the specific purpose of finding out how to go about getting Windows 8 back on my tablet because Windows 10 is so bad that it has made my brand new tablet unusable. I've tried to live with it for a few weeks but I just can't get anything done with it. Even leaving feedback about all the problems I am having is too much work. Between Bluetooth drivers that keep flaking out and a feedback app that freezes up regularly, it takes me 15 minutes to do what I used to be able to do in 5. If I can't find a way of restoring it from the recovery partition, then I will pay $100 for a new Windows DVD. Yes, Windows 10 is so bad I am willing, happy even, to pay $100 to be rid of it.

 

[Motor_Mouth]

... all the Metro IE live tile bookmarks you might have had in win 8.1 are gone and no way to import them into Edge or IE.

Edge imported all of my "favourites" from IE 11 without me having to tell it to. I don't like it at all, especially as a replacement for the Metro IE 11, but it at least got that bit right.

It boggles my mind MS went down this path instead of giving us some options in Tablet mode to make it a more Win 8.1 experience.

Agree 10,000%. Win8 really nails the tablet experience, W10 takes it back to how it was trying to use Win7 with a touchscreen.

 

[Spectrum90]

Windows 10 is a big improvement for tablets. Windows 8 was a disaster.

 

[paulsalter]

Windows 10 is a big improvement for tablets. Windows 8 was a disaster.

in what way?
can you give some examples of why 10 is better?

 

[H Seldon]

Windows 10 is a big improvement for tablets. Windows 8 was a disaster.

Windows 8 was a disaster on desktop. Definitely not tablet. How is Windows 10 better on tablet?

 

[luniboy26]

Don't think it'd really be that great on a 8" tablet, I find that at that size you're really only using it for media consumption and with the way Windows 10 is looking it's definitely catered towards desktop users

 

[Spectrum90]

Re: is windows 10 optimized for small 8" display tablets?

in what way?
can you give some examples of why 10 is better?

So many things, It has been discussed many times. For example, It's great that they removed the Charms Bar and App Bar. Commands like Share and Search should be in the app surface whenever it make sense. App's commands shouldn't be effectively hidden and only accessible through gestures. Commands that are frequently used should be positioned close at hand, those that aren't frequently used are nicely organized in the hamburger menu in Windows 10.
Horizontal scrolling was a really bad idea. Tablets are used most of the time in portrait orientation. Pivots or vertical scrolling are better for that usage.
Windows 8 apps don't use the space efficiently, there is too much white space. Windows 10 apps have more information density which is important for smaller tablets.

Windows 8 is bad in all the form factors. In hybrid devices It's even worse because the desktop and modern environments are like water and oil. Continuum solves that.

 

[paulsalter]

Re: is windows 10 optimized for small 8" display tablets?

So many things, It has been discussed many times. For example, It's great that they removed the Charms Bar and App Bar. Commands like Share and Search should be in the app surface whenever it make sense. App's commands shouldn't be effectively hidden and only accessible through gestures. Commands that are frequently used should be positioned close at hand, those that aren't frequently used are nicely organized in the hamburger menu in Windows 10.
Horizontal scrolling was a really bad idea. Tablets are used most of the time in portrait orientation. Pivots or vertical scrolling are better for that usage.
Windows 8 apps don't use the space efficiently, there is too much white space. Windows 10 apps have more information density which is important for smaller tablets.

Windows 8 is bad in all the form factors. In hybrid devices It's even worse because the desktop and modern environments are like water and oil. Continuum solves that.

have you ever used a tablet?

hitting a little button is not easier than using a gesture
perhaps you need to tell google/apple that they got it wrong also because horizontal scrolling works much better, vertical is fine on a phone, but horrible experience on a tablet, its not a natural way to interact
don't know what you mean about white space, is this optimized for tablet use unlike 10 which is optimized for mouse

as for continnum, that's the biggest joke I have ever seen, you now have to keep toggling this on/off to get the best experience that 8 just did automatically

 

[Motor_Mouth]

Windows 8 was a disaster on desktop. Definitely not tablet. How is Windows 10 better on tablet?

how is W8 a "disaster on desktop"? From where I'm sitting, in front of my Windows 8 laptop, it has a better desktop experience than Windows 7 ever did.

 

[Motor_Mouth]

Re: is windows 10 optimized for small 8" display tablets?

So many things, It has been discussed many times. For example, It's great that they removed the Charms Bar and App Bar.

Why is that great for tablet users? Is it somehow easier to wade through endless menus, clicking and searching, than it was to swipe in from the right of the screen and have the things you wanted right there under your finger?

Commands like Share and Search should be in the app surface whenever it make sense.

And they are in every app where it makes sense. e.g. Store, music, contacts (people),etc., etc., etc.

App's commands shouldn't be effectively hidden and only accessible through gestures.

And nothing is. Not. One. Thing. OTOH, I can think of several desktop things I do every day that are only accessible via hotkeys. e.g. ALT+TAB.

Commands that are frequently used should be positioned close at hand, those that aren't frequently used are nicely organized in the hamburger menu in Windows 10.

Fine in theory but that's simply not how it is being done in W10. e.g. Try and change the font or colours in the Kindle app and tell me how long it takes you. I agree that putting app settings into the Charms bar was a stupid idea but no-one was ever forced to do it. e.g. Have a look at the VLC app, its settings are accessed from a downward arrow button in the top-right corner. Even so, whatever they have done in W10 hasn't fixed it. In fact, if anything it has made it even worse. (See my Kindle example.)

Horizontal scrolling was a really bad idea. Tablets are used most of the time in portrait orientation.

So what you are saying is that horizontal scrolling is a bad choice for portrait oriented screens? If that's true, and I agree completely, then it stands to reason that horizontal scrolling is a good choice for landscape oriented screens, like those on every laptop and desktop computer in the universe. So why would you think horizontal scrolling was a tablet feature? I always figured it was designed very much to make best use of space on desktop monitors. That said, I doubt I use my tablet in portrait mode for even 10% of the time I spend using it, so maybe that was designed to make things better for everyone. Never mind, it's gone now and we can all spend the rest of our days looking at vast empty areas of nothing on either side of every web page.

Windows 8 apps don't use the space efficiently, there is too much white space.

How does Windows 10 fix this? From what I've seen, new UWP apps are very similar. In any event, these are simply choices made by developers, not restrictions placed upon them by W8.

Windows 10 apps have more information density which is important for smaller tablets.

Apart from being completely wrong (see above), this simply makes no sense. What sort of ***** would want to see more information on an 8" screen than on a 27" screen? Why do you think the mobile version of every website on the internet is far less info-dense than the normal version?

Windows 8 is bad in all the form factors. In hybrid devices It's even worse because the desktop and modern environments are like water and oil. Continuum solves that.

I must now assume you have never so much as tried Windows 8 in a shop because every word of each of those sentences is completely wrong. I spend 6 or more hours every day in front of Windows 8 and what I really like about it is just how seamless and consistent the experience is. In fact, if anything, I wish the desktop was much more like the Modern UI but instead it is almost exactly the same as W7. And let's not forget that Continuum doesn't even exist yet, it is a feature that no-one has seen, it has not been in any build and will not be included in the initial release of Windows 10. It is the very definition of vapourware at this point in time. OTOH, al the things they are promising it will do are things Windows 8 already does. It is just a marketing term for a collection of features everyone takes for granted in W8.

So if that's all you have, then my advice is to give it up. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about and, therefore, nothing of value to contribute here.