“Back in March, we began work on a Metro-style enabled desktop browser, a version of Chrome that will run in both the Metro and desktop environments of Windows 8 on x86. (Chrome won’t run in WinRT, i.e. Windows 8 on ARM processors, as Microsoft is not allowing browsers other than Internet Explorer on the platform). If you’re running the Release Preview of Windows 8, you’ll be able to try Chrome in Metro mode in the next Chrome Dev channel release by setting it as your default browser.” Metro-Chrome is just plain Chrome running in Metro, without a proper Metro UI at this point. They’re working on that though, so this is really very early game. Good to know they’re on it, though – I love me some WebKit.
So metro!
Look at the UI chrome at the top. Not designed for Touch. Google has no concept about what Metro UI means.
Edited 2012-06-08 04:35 UTC
Look at the Metro mess. No simultaneous multi-tasking windows. Microsoft has no concept about what a proper UI means.
Gotta love trolls.
Both the osnews article and the blog post state this. But they also state that the Metro mode is a work in progress and that they know that the UI must be improved.
Why would they even release this until it’s ready? Pointless.
I’m guessing it’s called Chrome Dev channel, not a release, for a reason…
I am sure that Google has the know-how and will to fix this intoa more suitable form before it is released. This does however also illustrate exactly what would have happened if Microsoft had opened the win32 “hole” that browsers are allowed for everyone. We would end up with a bunch of legacy apps hastily recompiled, with little thought given to the needs of the new platform and interaction-mode. It is really significantly harder to make a sane touch app if you get to start out worth an already complete classic app and then just try to patch it. Microsoft themselves learned as much from the failed attempts at making XP/Vista/7 touch-enabled.
Hopefully that’s not the final UI.
I just learned form this post that Microsoft has is blocking any browser except IE to run on Windows RT? What gives? Is that even legal?
Yes, why not? At least they don’t do it in a direct way like apple does.
They have some restrictions on desktop, where they have monopoly, but on tablets they are free to do it.
Plus, MS does not prohibit it directly, they prohibit the use of some API that would make impossible for browsers to run JS at decent speed.
Sorry to be off topic but I’ve been wondering why?
Why would MS abandon Aqua and impose Metro, when it must be obvious by now that it’s not liked, and wont be adopted by business, reviews of it as a desktop UI are poor. OK some reviews of it as a touch screen interface are fair, but for years and possible always most users will not be using touch screen interfaces – I don’t wont one on my desktop, I don’t wont a permanently dirty screen, plus reaching the screen is more awkward than using a mouse.
So why? I think the answer is MS’s old and successful strategy of using one monopoly to support or create another, such as Windows and Office. MS has a near monopoly as a desktop OS it has a chance if it acts quickly of using this as leverage to become dominant in the mobile space. I’m sure the ideas is to impose Metro on users who have (or at least think they have) little choice of a desktop OS. The users will then become used to Metro and so when they move into the mobile space they buy a Windows device as they are already familiar with metro and do not need to become familiar with another system. This could be very effective with many groups of reluctant technology users and if Windows apps are ported across to the mobile space more advanced Windows users.
I suppose trying to stop other browsers using Windows 8 is something MS couldn’t resist, obviously loosing the IE monopoly still smarts.
With Windows 8 you’re going to have to use the start screen. There is no getting around it. Its there, no option to turn it off. Its the placeholder for all things Metro.
Microsoft is taking a big gamble with Metro, not because it feels like it, but because it has to.
The world is moving increasingly to handheld devices such as mobile phones, tablets for day to day tasks. Basic internet browsing or rather social media, and dirt cheap gaming on the go is quickly eating away at its market and they have nothing to show for it apart from a <1% market share Windows Phone and the xbox, who’s active subscribers only account for 30million world wide.
When you compaire that to Apple’s 315 million iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices running its iOS – with over 15million iPads sold in q4 last year alone – Microsoft has serious problems trying to grabble back some of the mobile/tablet market. Not only that, but Microsoft’s Windows isn’t even synonymous with using a computer anymore. People are quite happy to go online with android or an apple tablet now. Microsoft is rapidly losing its branding and the any reason why the average joe blogs needs to use it.
So here we are. Microsoft have took a long term look at things, are finally at the point where the xbox, mobile, and windows will be a (somewhat) seamless connection. They’ll all look and perform the same, and at the same time, they’ll drag the 500million desktop machines that are ready to upgrade to Metro. If they could do that, it’d bring them inline with what Apple has right now, and thats with their desktop machines alone. Add on that the experiance works across the XBOX and windows Phone, they could end up being on top again within a few years.
Thats where Metro comes in to play. Without it, Microsoft has no brand that sets itself apart and it has no way to lock its uses into the Microsoft ecosystem. A lot of people who are using Apple products continue to do so because they’ve got their apps for iOS. Many will have spent, by now, a considerable amount of money on apps and music etc.
So when I say Metro is being pushed, it really is. Metro is coming, and you’ll be using it on Windows 8. Its setup by default for use with IE10. Not many apps right now in the Windows Store, but when it starts pumping them out (100,000 in Windows Phone now) fewer people will be even using the desktop. Why go search on google or bing for software, download the exe, or zip file, install it get tool bars, find out its wrong version, needs updating, etc and then have it mess up all your settings when you can just click on the Store icon, find a program and buy it. Locked good and proper into the Microsoft Windows ecosystem.
It gets worse. The tablet experiance for Windows 8 is quite nice, Metro as a whole on the Windows Phone is an amazing experiance and the xbox is great too, but for the users who go from a tablet/windows phone to a desktop… the experiance there is very very much lacking. It has to be enforced, it has to be the same across the platforms. Its why we’re forced to use the start screen. Its Microsoft’s way of achering us to Metro and the Windows echosystem.
-copypasta
Edited 2012-06-08 09:55 UTC
I don’t see how you can reach this conclusion based on anything you said. I don’t see how anyone can reach this conclusion at all.
Apple is the one making the most from mobile devices and they don’t enforce a single interface. Google is making pennies from Android and yet Microsoft is going to risk losing billions from enterprise just so they can have a single interface? Does anyone actually think they can make up those losses?
This is as dumb as an idea as waffle house sticking thai food in its waffles just because it is popular. You’re not going to get an increase in sales from all the people who eat thai food, you’re going to lose a massive amount of sales from people who buy your waffles.
This plan will fail and people will keep buying iPads.
Sounds not too far, in concept, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currywurst …which is awesome!
Thank you for that idea, I will try it.
(and MS might be trying with Metro something I suspect in the three posts at the bottom of http://www.osnews.com/comments/26042 )
Have you actually used an Xbox since they went Metro? The UI works horribly. I think the only people it’s even tolerable for are the people with Kinect, and that’s mostly because of the voice commands.
With the Metro UI, most actions take 5+ button presses, with many over a dozen. Finding a game in your collection is brutally slow. You get a list that displays about half a dozen games at a time, with a slow scroll between screens. The images are dynamically loaded as you go, with each taking several seconds to appear.
The UI is also a horrible waste of screen space. Picture your screen divided into 9 portions, like a Tic-Tac-Toe board. It’s basically only using the center square, with the rest going to waste. What is there is a mess of randomly sized & arranged boxes, typically giving you about 5 choices per screen, requiring a very deeply nested menu structure.
I don’t disagree with you, other than I don’t think the desktop or large laptop is going away people will have this and a mobile device.
The point I was making is that Metro is needed on the Desktop to facilitate MS in the mobile space – this you seem to agree with. I’m going a little further and saying metro is being pushed onto desktop users even though it seems that it will not be ideal in order to give MS leverage in the mobile space, i.e MS is using its dominance as a desktop OS to promote its mobile products.
I’m sure this is true.
I think you mean “Aero” rather than “Aqua” (“Aqua” is the UI of OSX 10.0 (I don’t know if Apple still uses the term “Aqua” today)).
As for “business” won’t adopt Metro thing, so what? Business will be in Windows 7 for years to come anyway. And Windows 8 has the desktop environment too. As well as command line UI.
[q]I think you mean “Aero” rather than “Aqua” (“Aqua” is the UI of OSX 10.0 (I don’t know if Apple still uses the term “Aqua” today)).
Sorry my mistake
* Yes, just like it was obvious about the desktop GUI 2+ decades ago, to all those people using text user interfaces…
(and my the three posts at the bottom of http://www.osnews.com/comments/26042 )
When Windows picked up steam, with 3.x, there was really no alternative – Macs were too limited and expensive, RISC OS machines similar, Amigas even more limited & from a stumbling company & their “productive” side never really managed to capture people’s attention, Atari TOS, GEOS, or GEM even more so & with hardy any 3rd party software support, OS/2 too demanding on hardware and with the underlying goal of returning to IBM the control over PC market (duh, of course numerous clone makers didn’t go for it), NeXT self-exiled into the “premium” market & not yet ported to PCs, as BeOS will do half a decade later (way too late), Linux in its cradle and overall DEs for X not viable for general consumption (some might argue they aren’t quite there yet)
Windows was simply by far the most sensible choice.
Oh, and Office? Yes, that relative newcomer which took over when established players (Wordperfect for example) completely dismissed and ignored the GUI (the * at the start)
BTW, that IE monopoly was also a result of it being the better browser, during the wars of late 90s. Later on, it just had the unfortunate “luck” of living too long…
Edited 2012-06-15 14:42 UTC
you’ll be able to try Chrome in Metro mode in the next Chrome Dev channel release by setting it as your default browser.
Thanks Windows 8/Metro! (thanks Google as well for jumping on the opportunity!)