Microsoft.com New Design Preview(microsoft.com)
microsoft.com
Microsoft.com New Design Preview
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/preview/
130 comments
I decided to download Movie Maker so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a Downloads menu there. I clicked "All Windows Downloads". (The site is pretty fast, BTW). I selected "Windows 7", then scrolled down until I found Movie Maker. I clicked "Get it now" and it showed me the Movie Maker page. On that page I clicked Download Now, and it started downloading!
This is a reference to Bill Gates ranting about not being able to download Movie Maker easily. See here: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-an-...
What I never really understood about that is that nothing happened after that. No heads rolling, no massive rehash of the process, it just limped on being an utterly lame duck for another decade. Until they are finally bringing out something like a first class app store now.
Just shows the lack of direction the product was getting when you hear the totally different results that Steve Jobs got. Admittedly BG was no longer CEO then.
Just shows the lack of direction the product was getting when you hear the totally different results that Steve Jobs got. Admittedly BG was no longer CEO then.
Were you carrying out the "BillG test"? http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-an-...
Microsoft now has, IMO, the most interesting design language of any of the big tech players. I guess it remains to be seen if there will be any reward for them in the market for this but, as a developer, I find this a lot more appealing than anything Google or Apple are doing and C# kicks the shit out of Java or Obj-C.
I totally agree about the design language. I work on a Mac most of the day and love my iPhone, but damn does Metro look nice. And it's great seeing that come across with their other products as well.
I fell in love with Metro the minute I saw it. I bought a Lumia 800 on day one. I'm all for chromeless interfaces. But I'm starting to think I was mistaken.
1. They followed design principles too well. Strong constraints: check. Simplicity: check. But Metro is too constrained, too systematical. App designers are left with too few breathing space. Apps look all the same and feel too cold. I want my gradients back.
2. It doesn't look that good on big screens. For instance, launch screens of Windows 8 apps : it's too minimalistic to have big white icons on a flat monochrome background.
1. They followed design principles too well. Strong constraints: check. Simplicity: check. But Metro is too constrained, too systematical. App designers are left with too few breathing space. Apps look all the same and feel too cold. I want my gradients back.
2. It doesn't look that good on big screens. For instance, launch screens of Windows 8 apps : it's too minimalistic to have big white icons on a flat monochrome background.
I think the Design is good on first sight but doesn't carry over with time. It is the excitement in graphics but little in design philosophy. Compare to Android 4.0 and Apple.
I don't think that's a fair comparison though. Metro as a design language is very new. Compare iOS 5 with iOS 1. Or Android 4 with the pre-iPhone version. Or Mac OS X Lion with that pinstriped abomination that OS X used to be.
I think Metro has a lot of growing to do, but it seems like a language that could be very interesting down the road.
I think Metro has a lot of growing to do, but it seems like a language that could be very interesting down the road.
What do you mean by "design language"? A programming language, a programming language used for design (like HTML, CSS), a the style of language used in their websites (e.g. Lorem Ipsum), or something else?
From wikipedia: A design language or design vocabulary is an overarching scheme or style that guides the design of a complement of products.
In microsofts case it's the "metro" style, with lots of bright (almost cartoony) colors, big blocks filled with lots of light-weight, sans-serif fonts.
In microsofts case it's the "metro" style, with lots of bright (almost cartoony) colors, big blocks filled with lots of light-weight, sans-serif fonts.
He means Metro[1].
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language)
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language)
Tis a pity the Windows 8 desktop is not that clean.
Java runs everywhere. C# runs only on M$ plateforms…
I use Mono on a daily basis. It's a mature full featured cross platform .NET implementation.
It's not full featured. It's a pretty small subset. The most powerful things in the .Net platform are the big chunks of code which take on large business cases and make them go away.
For example the following either don't exist or are half-baked:
WCF (WsHttpBinding in particular), WWF (entirely which we use for WCF correlation), EF (not a biggy but would be nice), WPF (the best part of .Net), MEF (buggy and missing bits).
If I wanted cross platform, I'd go Java.
For example the following either don't exist or are half-baked:
WCF (WsHttpBinding in particular), WWF (entirely which we use for WCF correlation), EF (not a biggy but would be nice), WPF (the best part of .Net), MEF (buggy and missing bits).
If I wanted cross platform, I'd go Java.
I do agree with you : mono is a subset of .NET,
Cross platform compatibility is not the main reason for using Mono. I really like the C# and the .NET ecosystem.
I use a native UI for each platform, but the core code is the same. I'm not a big fan of those generic UI toolkit ...
Agree on generic UI front!
Not true: http://www.mono-project.com
There's Mono + Qt bindings.
Really nice support of different browser sizes. Resize your browser from wide to really narrow to check it out.
I have to admit they did a smart job of figuring out what makes sense at each screen size (different layout and controls, etc.).
Now I want their web team to share knowledge with the Metro team. :)
Now I want their web team to share knowledge with the Metro team. :)
This was what I was going to point out. Great responsive design. Now if only their operating system was as sleek and as this ;)
Agreed! I noticed it plays very nicely with the window docking features in Windows 7. Beautifully done.
Except one thing that bugs me most on these "responsive" sites. The images are still loaded at their full resolution. Even when I reloaded after I resized the tab. Tried private tab to avoid cache - result still the same - 1600px wide image loaded.
It's working really nice and all but I think the point of responsive sites is to make them usable on small, mostly mobile, devices. And we still live in a age when the mobile bandwidth is something to worry about. I'd imagine the battery life would suffer a bit too.
It's working really nice and all but I think the point of responsive sites is to make them usable on small, mostly mobile, devices. And we still live in a age when the mobile bandwidth is something to worry about. I'd imagine the battery life would suffer a bit too.
In case you didn't know, this is a pressing concern for developers that do care about performance of responsive websites. Take a look at http://www.w3.org/community/respimg/
Scott Jehl of Filament Group just delivered a talk at An Event Apart on Responsible Responsive Design, and released Southstreet, a suite of tools designed to make responsive design more performant. Check it out at https://github.com/filamentgroup/Southstreet
Scott Jehl of Filament Group just delivered a talk at An Event Apart on Responsible Responsive Design, and released Southstreet, a suite of tools designed to make responsive design more performant. Check it out at https://github.com/filamentgroup/Southstreet
Any idea how that's working? I've never seen image resizing work that well!
Setting `img { max-width: 100%; }` by default and scale it to `150%` when viewport reach certain threshold (for mobile). For the former, it will beautifully scale to the containing div size, for the latter, you can set outer div to `overflow: hidden` and left/right side will be cut off giving the image a square-ish feel.
after scaling the max-width to 150%, they did a margin-left:-40% to center the image
That is an impressive adaptive site design update.
A couple of things I love about this is (1) the elegance of the menu toggle to top in the small (mobile-size) view and (2) the slideshow control appearance on small view and adaptation to breadcrumb implementation on large view. Quite elegant and appropriate for each environment.
Of course, it is sad that the experience is rarely consistent when you start digging deeper into the site.
A couple of things I love about this is (1) the elegance of the menu toggle to top in the small (mobile-size) view and (2) the slideshow control appearance on small view and adaptation to breadcrumb implementation on large view. Quite elegant and appropriate for each environment.
Of course, it is sad that the experience is rarely consistent when you start digging deeper into the site.
it is sad that the experience is rarely consistent...
It's a preview.
It's a preview.
We've all known it for a while, but this redesign (which I think is quite nice compared to Microsoft's previous efforts) throws their logo into stark relief. It looks outdated. It doesn't match.
I'm speculating that we'll see an across-the-board Microsoft rebrand within the next two years, including a new logo for the company. They've rebranded their core software offering, they're now changing directions on their hardware/software philosophy, and trying to gain some mindshare for their new aesthetic (and their new appreciation for aesthetics more generally) is going to be a core part of that movement.
Thoughts?
I'm speculating that we'll see an across-the-board Microsoft rebrand within the next two years, including a new logo for the company. They've rebranded their core software offering, they're now changing directions on their hardware/software philosophy, and trying to gain some mindshare for their new aesthetic (and their new appreciation for aesthetics more generally) is going to be a core part of that movement.
Thoughts?
I disagree, and I don't think they're going to change their logo. The Microsoft logo isn't particularly creative, but at least it's not Verizon ugly.
(Wanna know what is Verizon ugly? The new Windows logo.)
(Wanna know what is Verizon ugly? The new Windows logo.)
I don't know, I just think you can take sparse so far it becomes soulless. Simple, clean design can still be emotive. This isn't. The stock art humans make this feel more like a Big Oil annual report. (And that Products menu is a little painful!) All that said, this is leaps and bounds beyond their current homepage.
Sorry I'm not understanding but really wanting to. What do you mean "more emotive"? What exactly could be done to this page to make it more "emotive"? What takes away from its "emotiveness"?
About the products page -- overall I think it looks pretty clean, but I mostly have a problem with the "More Products" category where they bunch together a big list of random products.
About the products page -- overall I think it looks pretty clean, but I mostly have a problem with the "More Products" category where they bunch together a big list of random products.
"What exactly could be done to this page to make it more "emotive"? "
Comic Sans seems to do the trick for many people.
Comic Sans seems to do the trick for many people.
You should use the feedback button on the right!
Oh man, I almost choked on my water. I've got some feedback: don't absolute position annoying and generic elements that distract me from your product(s).
.. that being said, it is pretty cute when it's shrunk down for mobile.
.. that being said, it is pretty cute when it's shrunk down for mobile.
Choking on water? That's a curiously strong reaction to a very common location for a feedback button!?
They obviously want some feedback on their new design. Where would you place it?
They obviously want some feedback on their new design. Where would you place it?
This isn't the website Microsoft uses to tell you about its products, it's a preview.
The only reason this site is visible is for that feedback button, which will be read and acted on before it turns in to Microsoft.com
The only reason this site is visible is for that feedback button, which will be read and acted on before it turns in to Microsoft.com
Shouldn't the menu be all capitalized?
Words in all caps are harder to read.
I think he he is being sarcastic, about the recent changes to VS 2012, having all-caps menus.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/06/05/a-de...
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/06/05/a-de...
Oh god, I thought that was an April Fools joke. Does Microsoft not hire design people? It looks horrific!
Given that the post is called "A DESIGN WITH ALL-CAPS" (yeah, the title is all-caps, funny thing), maybe, the real problem precisely that they are supporting their designers's view, over their user's feedback.
You know, trying to defend their "artistic integrity"...
What's really funny is that a whole bunch of people are responding in the comments with all caps :-)
It's a reference to the new VS menu design.
I really don't like the use of big photos like here, the new airbnb, and Bing. They are busy, space wasting and bandwidth hogs. And to my eyes they don't add anything.
They only waste space when you've got space to waste. I really like the way the layout changes as the screen size changes and the images become more cropped.
Yeah the responsive design is really well executed.
But seriously, I can literally only see the nav and four images when I load this page on my desktop. Shocking usability.
Every time I see a new MS offering I feel more and more that they are investing in good-looking design rather than usable design.
Very modern, very metro, beautiful design.
I like it.
I like it.
That's a totally odd font choice they are using. Check out the "d", the "b" and the "p" - looks horrible in Firefox 13! [1]
Oh, and it looks terrible in Internet Explorer 8, as the layout is completely out of whack. [2]
1. http://static.inky.ws/image/2290/image.jpg
2. http://static.inky.ws/image/2291/image.jpg
Oh, and it looks terrible in Internet Explorer 8, as the layout is completely out of whack. [2]
1. http://static.inky.ws/image/2290/image.jpg
2. http://static.inky.ws/image/2291/image.jpg
Wow, bizarre. It looks nothing like that in Chrome.
http://i.imgur.com/Ny3fo.png
http://i.imgur.com/Ny3fo.png
I've logged a bug with Mozilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=769573
looks fine here (linux/firefox)
http://i.imgur.com/zSSgQ.png
I am completely underwhelmed beyond the responsiveness, which is nice. Feels very yesterday. One click thru to products page, and it's more underwhelming. Shows lack of vision for the company. "Managing home and homework just got easier." Really? This is the best their designers and copywriters can show us?
Broken in IE8 on Vista SP1 (divs are placing one after the other horizontally instead of in their proper places).
Same here, I guess it shows what Microsoft think of IE8...
Beautiful and much better. A little cold and sterile from all the white space but it's a step in the right direction. They'll iron things out over time.
ONE thing. Where are the Previous & Next Arrows for the main slideshow?
ONE thing. Where are the Previous & Next Arrows for the main slideshow?
Is this what we have to look forward to with Metro?
The design seems like a children's book combined with some ISP "landing page" from 1995. Everything is big and bold, yet the entire page is almost completely devoid of meaningful content. It's just a vast array of disorganised links, or more precisely, a whole bunch of vast arrays of disorganised links, with no sign of any rational information architecture or even basic scannability.
Sorry, but I just can't find anything nice to say about it. It has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever AFAICS.
The design seems like a children's book combined with some ISP "landing page" from 1995. Everything is big and bold, yet the entire page is almost completely devoid of meaningful content. It's just a vast array of disorganised links, or more precisely, a whole bunch of vast arrays of disorganised links, with no sign of any rational information architecture or even basic scannability.
Sorry, but I just can't find anything nice to say about it. It has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever AFAICS.
"It's just a vast array of disorganised links, or more precisely, a whole bunch of vast arrays of disorganised links, with no sign of any rational information architecture or even basic scannability."
What a ridiculous statement. Of course it's organised. Want to download something to extend a Microsoft product line? Click "Downloads" and choose the product line. Need Support? Click "Support". Want to buy a Microsoft product? Click "Store".
Which use cases exactly are you imagining are not supported by this "vast array of disorganised links"?
What a ridiculous statement. Of course it's organised. Want to download something to extend a Microsoft product line? Click "Downloads" and choose the product line. Need Support? Click "Support". Want to buy a Microsoft product? Click "Store".
Which use cases exactly are you imagining are not supported by this "vast array of disorganised links"?
Of course it's organised.
Really?
Go to the page. Open the first menu, "Products". They've grouped Windows stuff together and Office stuff together. On the next column, there is everything from Surface (which one?) to Hotmail. On the column after that, we have products like "Partner network" and "Microsoft in the enterprise". This column also has "Cloud services", but Azure is in the final column.
Let's try another menu, "Security". There are only four options on this menu. Let's assume I'm someone who doesn't know what every Microsoft brand means, but my friend told me I might have a virus on my Windows PC. Does that menu give me the slightest guidance about which option I need? The names are completely meaningless, unless you happen to know that Microsoft Security Essentials isn't actually a guide to the essentials of security, it's the product with anti-virus functionality.
Which use cases exactly are you imagining are not supported by this "vast array of disorganised links"?
I know what I want to do, but I don't know the name of the Microsoft product or service that will help me.
I know what I want to do, but I don't know whether Microsoft offer a product or service that can help me.
In fact, just about anything except "Tell me about Windows", "Tell me about Office", or "I already know exactly which product or service I want, by Microsoft Randomised Brand Name(TM), tell me about the thing I've already found".
There is no sense of priority. No sense of leading a visitor interested in a particular area through what Microsoft has to offer. It's just a catalogue, with a lot of spurious entries thrown in and no descriptions for anything. It is empty.
Really?
Go to the page. Open the first menu, "Products". They've grouped Windows stuff together and Office stuff together. On the next column, there is everything from Surface (which one?) to Hotmail. On the column after that, we have products like "Partner network" and "Microsoft in the enterprise". This column also has "Cloud services", but Azure is in the final column.
Let's try another menu, "Security". There are only four options on this menu. Let's assume I'm someone who doesn't know what every Microsoft brand means, but my friend told me I might have a virus on my Windows PC. Does that menu give me the slightest guidance about which option I need? The names are completely meaningless, unless you happen to know that Microsoft Security Essentials isn't actually a guide to the essentials of security, it's the product with anti-virus functionality.
Which use cases exactly are you imagining are not supported by this "vast array of disorganised links"?
I know what I want to do, but I don't know the name of the Microsoft product or service that will help me.
I know what I want to do, but I don't know whether Microsoft offer a product or service that can help me.
In fact, just about anything except "Tell me about Windows", "Tell me about Office", or "I already know exactly which product or service I want, by Microsoft Randomised Brand Name(TM), tell me about the thing I've already found".
There is no sense of priority. No sense of leading a visitor interested in a particular area through what Microsoft has to offer. It's just a catalogue, with a lot of spurious entries thrown in and no descriptions for anything. It is empty.
You seem to be blinded by some serious Microsoft hatred. "Microsoft Randomised Brand Name(TM)"? "Office" is "random"? I suppose you think "Apple" or "Linux" or "Ubuntu" or "Sun" or whatever it is you are a fan of is less random? Another ridiculous statement.
Your friend told you you have a virus? Well if you know that means "Security" click on there, and, logically being unfamiliar with the 4 choices you pick the first one, "Security Home". Bang, right there in front of you:
That's the only specific use case you mentioned and I had zero problems finding the correct solution. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Microsoft (the 3 hours I wasted yesterday trying to get ASP.NET MVC 4 working is one of them). But you didn't list one valid criticism with a specific use case. The rest of your post is a vague rant.
Your friend told you you have a virus? Well if you know that means "Security" click on there, and, logically being unfamiliar with the 4 choices you pick the first one, "Security Home". Bang, right there in front of you:
"Download Microsoft Security Essentials for free. Help shield your computer from viruses, spyware, and other malware."
"What is a Computer Virus | What Do Computer Viruses Do. Have you ever wondered what is a computer virus or what do computer viruses do? Learn how are computer viruses spread and how to prevent them."
That's the only specific use case you mentioned and I had zero problems finding the correct solution. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Microsoft (the 3 hours I wasted yesterday trying to get ASP.NET MVC 4 working is one of them). But you didn't list one valid criticism with a specific use case. The rest of your post is a vague rant.
I don't hate Microsoft. I am simply observing that their new design and information architecture are very poor in this specific case.
If you really can't understand that many of Microsoft's brand names are not literal/descriptive or why this creates a usability problem if much of the material on their home page is just links to such names without any explanation or context, there is little more I can say here.
However, straw man arguments about brand names in general or advice that boils down to "Just Google it" because the page doesn't contain any useful information don't exactly help your case.
If you really can't understand that many of Microsoft's brand names are not literal/descriptive or why this creates a usability problem if much of the material on their home page is just links to such names without any explanation or context, there is little more I can say here.
However, straw man arguments about brand names in general or advice that boils down to "Just Google it" because the page doesn't contain any useful information don't exactly help your case.
You're going to hate the future of all microsoft platforms then. Xbox, windows, and windows phone all share this design language.
I know.
It is bad enough that we're so obsessed with web apps today that some people actually consider tools like HTML, CSS and JavaScript to be good for application development. But if native applications are going to look even worse...
Fortunately, they won't, because real people still have real work to do, and user interfaces that look like (and have similar power to) a five year old's toys are going to suck for that. Microsoft will want everyone to move over to Metro, just as they wanted everyone to use their new shiny technology last year and the year before that, but they'll still support the stuff that people write real applications with, for the same reason that you can still write native apps in C++ instead of using .Net and C# for everything.
In fact, most of Microsoft's own big money spinners don't tend to use their shiny development technologies, and they never have. Like the incompetence of politicians, this is one of those universal constants that brings hope even when everyone is saying really stupid things. :-)
It is bad enough that we're so obsessed with web apps today that some people actually consider tools like HTML, CSS and JavaScript to be good for application development. But if native applications are going to look even worse...
Fortunately, they won't, because real people still have real work to do, and user interfaces that look like (and have similar power to) a five year old's toys are going to suck for that. Microsoft will want everyone to move over to Metro, just as they wanted everyone to use their new shiny technology last year and the year before that, but they'll still support the stuff that people write real applications with, for the same reason that you can still write native apps in C++ instead of using .Net and C# for everything.
In fact, most of Microsoft's own big money spinners don't tend to use their shiny development technologies, and they never have. Like the incompetence of politicians, this is one of those universal constants that brings hope even when everyone is saying really stupid things. :-)
Looks like they're matching one of their main web properties' UI with their new OS IU.
In some ways that makes sense, they're going all out or bust, in other ways I'm not sure that searching thru Technet articles will be best experienced via this new UI --granted their previous IF to Technet was horrible.
Something else is that previously they had no uniform design. different teams had different designs for their domains. Once you entered a search term, all bets were off on what the page you got to would look like.
In some ways that makes sense, they're going all out or bust, in other ways I'm not sure that searching thru Technet articles will be best experienced via this new UI --granted their previous IF to Technet was horrible.
Something else is that previously they had no uniform design. different teams had different designs for their domains. Once you entered a search term, all bets were off on what the page you got to would look like.
I think one thing conspicuously lacking here (besides rounded borders and gradiented buttons, both of which aren't part of Metro style) is icons. Nowadays most sites use icons to add visual interest to plain text. Microsoft's old designs didn't, and I think they suffered for the lack of them. The new design is refreshing and clean but would still benefit from having some similarly clean and functional graphical elements, i.e. icons.
(Crossposting to their feedback.)
(Crossposting to their feedback.)
Personally I hate when icons replace text.
The simplicity of the metro design style is a great direction. It's in a way a forced simplicity which can minimize the UI clutter we have come to know from Microsoft. But reducing elements means that the few that you have should be as refined as possible, and proportion, scale and white space become more important. I think this site would look 10 times better and balanced with better sizing and spacing of everything.
I don't see anything special about this new design. It's sparser than before, but I don't see anything "too Metro" about it. Just 3-4 images and text links. Is that supposed to mean it's Metro? Because there are a lot of similar sites like that on the web. Would Craiglist with bigger fonts, more space between links and 3 big images at the top become "Metro"?
So why didn't their Surface launch site look like that?? And will they be fixing search (other than including Google GSE which would be a vast improvement).
Edited to add: the answer to my last question is 'no': http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/search#q=surface
Edited to add: the answer to my last question is 'no': http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/search#q=surface
Good to see that the use the "menu with down-arrows" correctly, that is "on click", rather than flickery on hover.
This is one of the first things I noticed.
The problem is not just that it is flickery, it's actually often unusable.
There are so many sites that use on-hover to trigger a menu (often with sub-menus), so that if you misplace your pointer even slightly, the top-level menu option you selected disappears.
I've lost count of the number of times I have to play the game of selecting from the top level menu, back down to the item I actually want.
The problem is not just that it is flickery, it's actually often unusable.
There are so many sites that use on-hover to trigger a menu (often with sub-menus), so that if you misplace your pointer even slightly, the top-level menu option you selected disappears.
I've lost count of the number of times I have to play the game of selecting from the top level menu, back down to the item I actually want.
Here's one angle..MS has 2 large very different customer sets, the enterprise and the consumer and in the past it seemed that a lot of the UI was some sort of a compromise targeted to both.
The consumer tech group is definitely getting stronger at design .. and the enterprise tech arm can rely on its salesforce
The consumer tech group is definitely getting stronger at design .. and the enterprise tech arm can rely on its salesforce
I'm not particularly anti-Microsoft, but I absolutely hate this design. The text is so huge I find it painful to read, most of the page is taken up by a slideshow of what seem to be generic stock images, and I have to scroll before I can find anything useful.
It's like a beautiful store front.
Click on almost any link and the beautiful geometric layout is replaced with something different and far less pleasant.
This would have made so much more impact on me if the theme had been deployed more consistently and thoroughly across more pages.
Click on almost any link and the beautiful geometric layout is replaced with something different and far less pleasant.
This would have made so much more impact on me if the theme had been deployed more consistently and thoroughly across more pages.
That's the squarest site ever! I take it IE still doesn't support rounded corners?
I don't think that's it. That's what the UI on Windows Phone and Surface looks like, so I'm guessing it's intentional.
Personally, I am fucking sick of rounded corners, so seeing the right angles here really made me happy. I'm guessing their designers felt the same way.
Personally, I am fucking sick of rounded corners, so seeing the right angles here really made me happy. I'm guessing their designers felt the same way.
What is the advantage of rounded corners?
Rounded corners are known to draw attention inward while angular edges "point" outward, which could make rounded corners a better choice for content containers from the usability perspective. An interesting discussion on the topic here: http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/11150/how-do-rounded-c...
OTOH, I love the feel of Metro and wouldn't change to rounded corners for the world.
OTOH, I love the feel of Metro and wouldn't change to rounded corners for the world.
It's pretty nice, works well across desktop to mobile (the slide-down menus are a bit slow on mobile). My only issue is that I don't particularly care for the Sans-serif font on the section headers. It just doesn't look "right" to me.
Looks neat, uncluttered and peppy! But what about the favicon? That is so 1990!
Especially when an awesome fav seems easy for those guys. I guess they probably don't want to use the Windows one because it's only one of their products.
[deleted]
Not a very efficient solution to the "Google is getting too much attention" problem. I have to respect the people who did it, even if I don't the manager who decided to show it before it's ready.
Wondering if Blitz Agency designed this, they're known for doing design/web work for Microsoft.
http://www.blitzagency.com/
http://www.blitzagency.com/
Nice look, but, slow as hell to load. 15 seconds before anything appeared. Maybe because I'm in Australia. (my net connection is around 5mbit so its not that).
Really cool responsive design, works and resizes smoothly both on FF and Chrome, while I've seen some similar implementations being very slow on Chrome.
Wonder if they're planning to make ALL their web content responsive. A lot of work for their web devs!
God, finally a MS website that I can actually determine something about what the company does from.
Is it just me or does the guy in the last slide look like hes using a photoshopped macbook air/pro?
I think that's a Samsung laptop -- mine has that same sorta brushed metal look.
I don't see why they would do that, it would be beyond stupid.
I grabbed the image and tossed it into Paint.NET; there does appear to be some artifact in the center of the laptop lid that could possibly (to my unskilled eye) be (mis)interpreted as the leaf on the top of the Apple logo. However, I don't know enough about this stuff to say anything more than that someone should take a look.
It's unlikely Microsoft themselves even created the site, it was most likely contracted out to a design firm.
I like it but something about it (well, the entire metro design) feels... off. This is the sort of style I really enjoy so I maybe it might just be the feeling that's too forward for a company like Microsoft, but something about it that I can't put my finger on makes me second guess how much I like it.
There is no auto-complete in the search box. Should this not be expected?
Congrats to the MS web team. Great job. Makes me want a job there. :)
Uses jQuery and Modernizr libraries. Nice work Microsoft.
What is bi:index used for?
is there anybody who really likes these slide shows on the home page?
[deleted]
It looks great actually! What kills ,e about Microsoft though is that, especially recently, they've done a great job in making their sites, OS, and software quite pretty but they still after all this time have absolutely horrendous font rendering in Windows which kills every design they come out with. I'm a developer who uses a Mac as my primary machine, Linux as a secondary machine and in the past month has been forced to use Windows at my new job. I wasn't happy about it but it turns out I've gotten just about as productive with it as any other platform. But the problem is that now, 4 weeks in, I get terrible eye strain and the whole system looks ugly because fonts are jagged except at really large sizes. It's ironic that this new site looks awesome on my iPad and Mac but not so much on their own OS, Windows. Why can't they fix that already?
This is intentional. Windows uses font hinting which attempts to align the anti-aliased font to whole pixels vertically and sub-pixels horizontally. This is done to maintain readability at small sizes. Apple doesn't use this type of font hinting and applies sub-pixel anti-aliasing proportionately.
See this comparison of the two methods in detail: http://damieng.com/blog/2007/06/13/font-rendering-philosophi...
See this comparison of the two methods in detail: http://damieng.com/blog/2007/06/13/font-rendering-philosophi...
Microsoft font rendering is different, not worse.
If you want to make it more like OSX, there's a tuning app here:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartypeinfo.mspx
If you want to make it more like OSX, there's a tuning app here:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartypeinfo.mspx
AFAIK there is no way in Windows to control hinting, which in my opinion is the thing that makes Windows' font-rendering unbearable, especially on displays with a high PPI count.
There's hacks out there, but they're exactly that: hacks. And they don't always work that well.
There's hacks out there, but they're exactly that: hacks. And they don't always work that well.
Blinded by the white. Inconsistency of design between child sites.
HTML5
Weird, I can't see anything if Adblock is on. Make sure yours is whitelisting microsoft.com (at least temporarily).
I see everything fine here.
Using Linux with:
* Chrome 21.0.1180.4 dev with AdBlock
* Firefox 13.0.1 with AdBlock Plus and NoScript with all scripts blocked
Using Linux with:
* Chrome 21.0.1180.4 dev with AdBlock
* Firefox 13.0.1 with AdBlock Plus and NoScript with all scripts blocked
with AD BLOCK PLUS beta! i see evrything fine, Same versions as above!
It's taken a long while, but Michaelsoft are finally getting their shit together. Well Done!
Sorry, Michaelsoft? Was that an intentional inside joke?
I just find this really funny, and refer to MS as such: http://brog.engrish.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/michaelso...
