Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 7.8 announced

Posted on June 21, 2012 by ericnel

Hot on the heals of the June 18th announcement of the Microsoft Surface tablets for Windows 8, yesterday we got to hear all about our plans for Windows Phone 8… and Windows Phone 7.8.

If you have a Windows Phone 7.5 device today, then you have a great update to look forward to in Windows Phone 7.8.

However, the real star was the upcoming Windows Phone 8 which will take advantage of new hardware and a change in the underlying OS to deliver a awesome next generation phone experience… which includes the ability to deliver top notch C/C++ applications to take advantage of multi-core and higher resolution screens. Simple superb!

Watch the 2 hour keynote for the full announcement:

and read all the details over on the Windows Phone blog.

Surface from Microsoft – a new family of pcs for Windows 8

Posted on June 19, 2012 by ericnel

June 18th – when everything changed :-)

Yesterday we showed off two beautiful Windows tablets from Microsoft (read the announcement)

I am excited… very excited :-)

For more information about Surface, visit http://www.surface.com.

Related Links:

Develop Metro Style Apps for Windows 8
if you’re in the UK and want to get a Windows 8 app in the Store check out what you need to do

Great (none Windows 8 Metro) example of “content before chrome”and “swipe with mouse”

Posted on June 14, 2012 by ericnel

One of the principles of Metro design style is "content before chrome". This is the idea that less is more and that only the most relevant elements should be on screen. In practice this means a lot of navigation/commands are not present until needed. On a tablet a swipe of the finger temporarily overlays the chrome onto the content. For example:

This week I was searching for a digital tv app to use on my Windows 8 laptop and came across http://www.progdvb.com/. I’ve been using it happily on and off in this default mode:

Chrome is winning:

Note there is plenty of chrome yet all I want to do 99% of the time is watch the tv stream and the navigation and play controls are simply “noise”.

Then yesterday I realised there was a TV Window mode which I was far happier with.

Content is winning:

But just now I realised the developers of progdvb have really done themselves proud. Long before Metro came up with swiping to reveal chrome, they did it with the mouse. If you “swipe the mouse” (a term i just made up!) across an edge, then the relevant chrome appears. Very, very nice.

From the right: