Did Metro UX Elements Come From a 2009 Demo? 68
First time accepted submitter oso2k writes "In 2009, as reported by gizmag, Robert Clayton Miller proposed a UI that borrowed from familiar iPhone gestures and translated them to a multi-tasking data-input rich desktop UI. It would seem, however, Microsoft was paying attention. Elements in Miller's design seem to have been lifted for Metro UI, such as dynamic sized widgets (tiles in Metro UI) on the home screen, swipes alternate between open, fullscreened apps, left tap for the app context menu, right tap for the system context menu. And in Miller's video at [5:41], it would seem Microsoft used the same or nearly the same font [4:30]." It's interesting to spot resemblances here, but how many UI ideas don't have more than one inventor?
Zune circa 2006 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Zune circa 2006 (Score:5, Informative)
I mean, it's pretty easy to tell "first time accepted submitter oso2k" (by the way oso2k, what exactly are we supposed to infer at 4:30 in Microsoft's video, which is a black screen with a copyright notice? Great job doing your job Slashdot editors) doesn't have much experience with Windows 8, as the similarities he or she draws between the two GUIs are tenuous at best. The whole point of this "con10uum" interface is a 1D window manager which arranges open windows in a line. You essentially pan back and forth in this window list and you can resize and reorder windows using multi touch gestures. This is nothing like Windows 8, which essentially allows you to only swipe through windows in order and place at most two side by side.
The only real similarity between the two GUIs is the existence of a global menu (not novel) an application specific menu (not novel) and a gesture to activate them (not novel). 10/GUI suggest this gesture is tapping on a specialized region separate from the touch screen, while Windows 8 uses a swipe in gesture from the edge of a touch screen. These are very different operations and require specialized algorithms and technology for each case (gesture recognition, edge to edge touch detection etc).
Zune was around in 2006 (Score:2, Informative)
Zune was around in 2006, and Metro is obviously just an evolution of the ideas in Zune. So no, Microsoft didn't steal anything from a 2009 video, and Slashdot editors are idiots for posting this without even doing the most cursory examination of the claim.