But the windows are a real show of 8 metro performances. It is always the "start" button. In its place is an all-new Start screen, as the center hub of the overall experience. Your applications start to appear on the screen needle-like clean color blocks which can be clicked to launch programs or switch. Whether it's those ribbons or any other user interface elements that draw your attention away from the document you're writing. When a developer rises to Microsoft's challenge, an application can go beyond simplicity and look a bit like the metro. Serenity. You may start your word processor so that you can compose an angry letter to send to your cable company, but it will feel like you are slowly raking concentric patterns into the sand. This is brilliance: it is a rich amount of information placed in front of you, but it will absolutely not overwhelm you. Even if it fills up 27 desktop displays, it remains clear and easy to operate. It is a lovely concept. Even when you're not actively using your computer, it still provides useful, quick information about your world. I have been using the Developer Preview version of Windows 8 on a multi-touch tablet for several months now, and I've used the new Consumer Preview for less than a day. My overall opinion is so high, that I will say it here in the first paragraph: Microsoft has truly cracked a few phrases. With the Metro user interface, they have created a simple and beautiful design language associated with a wide range of devices and methods that people use computers in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Tiles are far more than just a launch button. It is a living object that the application can constantly update with information. The first thing you see in this mosaic is, when you turn on your computer, it gives you an overview of your entire world dashboard. This is a rich briefing. Here's the weather. There are photos of the hockey game your niece played in, where she sent receipts. This is the latest email in your inbox with the author and subject. Where is the menu bar? It does not appear until you request it (by gesturing from the top of the screen downward, or using a keyboard equivalent). This is a gentle zone, with carefully selected buttons, not a yardarm swaying with menus. The application interface in Metro is so free of white noise that when I launch a traditional window program and return to the world of menus and icons and overlapping windows, it cracks. I feel like I've changed channels and landed on a set of "Unworthy Practitioners." A psychologist who values OCD sits next to the engineers building the program. He is forcing them to face the fact that they have become so dense with applications filled with controls and buttons and other unnecessary user interfaces that they cannot even move through them with ease. Is there any way for these engineers to live like this? Do you know that just in the last two hours of such cleansing, we have discovered dried-up bodies trapped in seven Clippys stacked among menus and controls, slowly starving to death? Where are the controls that let me interact with the OS and other programs? They are waiting for your command, just beyond the right edge of the screen. If you want to jump back to the Start screen or select a different wireless connection, another gesture shows them in a vertical strip of charms. The traditional Windows 7-style interface still exists, and its familiar language of menus and overlapping windows seems almost completely unchanged. Rest assured, your regular programs continue to run just as well. If you install the Consumer Preview, you won't even need to reinstall any of your software or data. Click here to browse and grab a copy. Metro is all about reducing the screen to the minimum visual noise necessary to do what the user chooses to do at any given moment. No windows, no overlapping. When you launch a Metro-based word processor, the document takes up the entire screen. The screen is where you begin your first contact with Microsoft's new Metro user interface. The entire Windows 8 feature is based on the second type of Metro-based programs. Related theme articles: Children's behavior relates to snoring. Fans dream ways to perfectly popularize the most beloved Apple computers. If your customers can't find your website, they won't be able to buy from your side. Doctors charged with murdering patients after administering overdoses of three prescriptions. Children's behavior relates to snoring.