Windows 8’s new UI: A return to Flatland

Buried in an 11,000-word tome on the Building Windows 8 blog, user experience honcho Jensen Harris explains that the legacy desktop in Windows 8 will ship with white — yes, solid white — window borders, square window edges, buttons that don’t glow, no shadows, no transparency (except, apparently, on the taskbar), 2D ribbon icons flat as pancakes, no reflections, and no gradients. Welcome back to Flatland!

At least, those are the defaults. There’s no indication whether you’ll be able to bring back some color. There’s no mention of other Aero features, including Aero Snap, that debuted in Windows Vista and was Microsoft’s attempt at the time to introduce a cool, whizzy UI to rival that in Mac OS X. But it’s clear that the accoutrements of Aero Glass — rounded corners, glowing icons, window border transparency, and gradients on buttons — won’t see the light of day in any version of Windows 8. Ignore the fact that this same Microsoft blog has been showing us screenshots of Windows 8 with Aero Glass as recently as two weeks ago.

What we will see is unclear. As the blog explains, “While a few of these visual changes are hinted at in the upcoming release preview, most of them will not yet be publicly available. You’ll see them all in the final release of Windows 8.” We don’t know what’s coming, and we won’t know what options we’ll have until the final version hits.

People tend to forget that Microsoft touted Aero Glass as a major productivity enhancer for Vista, a “premium visual experience.” Just four years ago, Microsoft was sued for putting “Vista Capable” stickers on PCs that couldn’t run Aero: Buyers didn’t like what they perceived as a bait and switch involving one of Vista’s highly touted new features, Aero.

Why does Aero Glass have to go? Harris says it’s a question of design and aesthetics: “We decided to bring the desktop closer to the Metro aesthetic [taken from Windows Phone 7 and that serves as the initial interface in Windows 8], while preserving the compatibility afforded by not changing the size of window chrome, controls, or system UI. We have moved beyond Aero Glass — flattening surfaces, removing reflections, and scaling back distracting gradients.” Almost all of his blog leads to the conclusion that Aero must die for the sake of the greater good. Cough cough.

You’d have to go back to Windows 3.1 to see a desktop as flat as the new one described for Windows 8. At least we won’t see icons on the Win8 legacy desktop replaced with Metro-style garish, boring, monochrome tiles and white text, set on a static, information-free dark backdrop. It could be worse.

But the big mystery is why now? There’s been no hint since Windows 8’s September debut that the Windows 7 interface in the desktop mode in which most Windows operations take place would change in Windows 8. If anything, it appeared that the continuation of that familiar interface was meant to serve as a refuge for all those users familiar with the Aero interface as they learned the very different Metro interface that Windows 8 starts into.

UI design elements come and go, but I can’t ever recall seeing this kind of sweeping change between the release candidate and final version in any major product. I don’t buy the “Metro aesthetic” argument. I believe Harris hit the nail on the head earlier in his discourse, at about the 4,000- and 6,500-word marks, where he lists seven goals for the Windows 8 user experience, including “Long battery life” and “Make your PC work like a device, not a computer.” Both goals would argue against the “dated and cheesy” Aero — those are his words, not mine — and in favor of a boxy retro Metro interface.

After all, Aero Glass has long been derided for excessive battery drain, though the exact amount of battery drain seems to vary depending on who’s doing the testing. Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer reported five years ago that Microsoft acknowledged the battery-draining propensities of the Aero Glass interface, quoting Vista program manager Nick White as saying, “The Aero theme drives the GPU [graphics processing unit] harder and therefore uses more power, but in the big picture, it’s really not that much more … in our testing we’ve seen that turning on Aero consumes only about 1 to 4 percent more of battery life. … In terms of making your battery last longer, turning off Aero will not go very far.” There was a lot of finger-pointing at the time and, best I can tell, no definitive resolution to the question.

But it makes me wonder if Microsoft tested Aero with Windows RT, the ARM devices’ version of Windows 8’s Metro portion, realized that the battery drain was too great, then decided to get rid of Aero Glass on Windows 8 itself. That way, Windows RT customers wouldn’t feel that they’d been cheated out of an important feature — you know, like those “Vista Capable” customers who sued.

Nothing else makes sense. Both Vista and Windows 7 laptops shipped with power schemes that shifted from Aero Glass to a basic theme when the machine was unplugged. (The primary Vista and Windows 7 basic theme is remarkably similar to this new, unnamed retro Metro scheme.) Not all laptop manufacturers caught on to the trick, but the big ones set the power schemes correctly. The Aerofoil app performs the same function for both Vista and Windows 7. Why couldn’t Microsoft just make power switching part of the “Designed for Windows 8” spec or buy Aerofoil? That way, desktop users could keep Aero, laptop users could have it when they’re plugged in, and tablet/Windows RT customers would never know the difference.

During last quarter’s Apple earnings call, CEO Tim Cook cracked wise, “You can converge a toaster and a fridge, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.” I’m reminded of Chevy Chase’s pitch, “New Shimmer is a floor wax and a dessert topping!”

We’re down to the wire, and it’s time for Microsoft to make up its mind: Are we looking at a floor wax or a dessert topping?

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