start is now Windows Metro style UI (User Interface)

One of the design goals for Windows 8 is that all of the new experiences being created for Windows are designed to be “Touch First”. You will see this theme throughout the new features introduced with this version of Windows. Being “Touch First” means that the first and best method of interacting with these new interfaces in Windows is using touch-based gestures on a multi-touch display. Using the mouse and keyboard will still work in the majority of scenarios, but in most cases these inputs are considered to be secondary.

It is with this concept of “Touch First” in mind that Microsoft created the new Windows Metro style UI for Windows 8. The Metro style UI represents the largest change to the interface of Windows since Windows 3.11 and affects the majority of the Windows user experience. New Windows Metro versions of many of the apps and features in Windows have been introduced, including the Start screen, Control Panel, and Internet Explorer just to name a few.

Start screen

The first thing that you will see after logging into a Windows 8 PC is the Start screen.

The Start screen completely replaces the Start menu that existed in previous versions of Windows. Almost all of the functionality from the old Start menu has been replaced and moved to the new Start screen. Instead of each app being exposed to the user as an individual icon, those apps will be represented as tiles instead.

Tiles

Tiles are better than icons for a couple of reasons. They provide more space to display information about the app or from the app. For example, a tile for a weather app would be able to display the current weather in your area, or a 5 day forecast, all on the tile without having to open the app. You can even have multiple tiles for a single app, such as when you want the weather from more than one city shown on your Start screen, or if you want to show more than one feed from your RSS reader on the Start screen.

This ability to display additional information in a tile on the Start screen is only available to Windows Metro style apps, which is the new type of app introduced with Windows 8. The other type of apps that are supported in Windows 8 are desktop apps, which are basically every Windows apps that existed before Windows 8 including things like Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Outlook 2010. Desktop apps can still have tiles on the Start screen, but they will be static, and consist of only the app’s icon and title. The four tiles for the Office apps in the screenshot below are examples of desktop app tiles.

When a new Windows Metro style or desktop app is installed, it will get its own tile on the Start screen. These tiles can be unpinned however, and unpinning the tile does not uninstall the app. Similar to the older Start menu, the tile represent shortcuts to the app, and removing the shortcut does not remove the app. If a user does wish to unpin a tile from the Start screen, they can do so by doing one of the following actions, depending on their input type.

Touch

o Place one finger on the tile and slide it down about half an inch (or one centimeter), and then raise your finger. The result is a nudge gesture.

• Mouse and Keyboard
• Right-click on the tile.
• Both of the above actions cause a pane to appear at the bottom of the screen with actions that can be performed against the tile. This pane is referred to as the App bar.
• To simply remove the tile, select the Unpin option.

At this point, the tile is removed from the Start screen, but is still installed.

The App bar is a pane that appears at the bottom of a specific app or Start to provide additional options that you can perform related to that specific view. The concept is similar to the context menu that you see when you right click in a desktop app. As you may have noticed, there were additional options available from the App bar on Start. These options in the App bar on Start will differ depending on the app, and the type of app.