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WINDOWS 8: A NEW LOOK

1. Read the text and answer the following questions:

1) DoesWindows8look like previous Windows versions?2) What does Windows8 inherit from Swiss developers? 3) What are the design principles that make the use of Windows8 different? 4) How can the change of the Microsoft Design Language help users?

Windows 8 doesn't look like any Windows that came before it. At first glance, Windows 8 and its eye­catching Start page are a radi­cal departure from the Microsoft operating system interfaces that have remained largely unchanged since Windows 95. In this article, we'll introduce you to Windows 8's (sort of) new typography-and- tile-based UI (user interface), re­ferred to as the Microsoft Design Language, and investigate some of the firm's motivations for shaking things up in its latest release.

Windows 8 UI Heritage

Microsoft Design Language takes its emphasis on sans-serif typography from the International Typographic Style (also known as the Swiss Style), which is a series of design principles developed in Switzerland in the 1950s. Another major influence for Microsoft's UI design team is public transporta­tion signs, which accounts for its former name, Metro.

Design Principles

According to the Windows Team Blog, the Microsoft Design Language is based on a design philosophy that consists of sev­eral rules for how to implement UI design. When architecting the Windows Phone 7 interface, the team used what it refers to as "fierce reduction," which aims to eliminate any "frivolous" aspects of the UI, including visual ele­ments and features that the team deems unnecessary.

To give the Microsoft Design Language interface a more or­ganic feel, the team paid special attention to the screen transitions that occur when you navigate the menus, settings, applications, and Web. Another core tenet of the Mi­crosoft Design Language is the celebration of typography. Ac­cording to Microsoft, type is not only one of the most basic ways to transmit information; it can also be attractive and appealing. For example, while playing mu­sic, the Zune displays the artist, song, album, and duration as text that continuously scrolls on and off the screen, in large and small type, at varying thicknesses, dif­ferent angles, and different speeds over a backdrop of album art and images of the artist.

One of Microsoft Design Lan­guage's most distinguishing fea­tures is the severe lack of what designers call "chrome." In the context of user interfaces, chrome refers to the scroll bars, window frames, and buttons that form the basic structural elements of the user interface. For Microsoft's UI designers, chrome is a barrier be­tween the user and the data he or she is seeking.

Something else that is imme­diately apparent when you use Windows 8 is the essentially flat, two-dimensional nature of ev­ery UI element. In Windows 7, the title bars, window frames, and Taskbar are transparent, and the icons feature a glass-like sheen. Furthermore, open and pinned programs on the Taskbar are lit, as though they exist on an actual desktop, complete with a lamp shining its light on the top edges of each one. In the Micro­soft Design Language-based Win­dows 8, shadows, lighting, and reflections that surround icons have been eliminated. As a result, the UI feels very different (and in some ways, very plain) compared to the user interfaces in previ­ous versions of Windows, Apple's iOS, and Google's Android.

It's All About You

According to Microsoft, the Microsoft Design Language is not merely change for the sake of change. Rather, the new UI is all about helping people play games, look at photos, listen to music, learn, communicate, or work more quickly and more efficient­ly, regardless of whether they're novice users or power users.

Computer interfaces were origi­nally designed to look like a series of file folders and window panes on a virtual Desktop, which helped peo­ple visualize how the different UI elements were related and how they were used. Now that we've been us­ing computers for more than two de­cades, Microsoft argues, there's no need for the UI elements to mimic real-world objects. According to Mi­crosoft, we live in a digital world, so we should be celebrating that.

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