Hasta La Gadget!

Today Facebook finally took the wraps off Home, a suite of apps and a home screen replacement for Android phones. It’s not just a new UI for launching apps however; it replaces the lockscreen with Cover Feed and prioritizes updates from people instead of apps. There is a standard paginated launcher, that is always just a swipe away. But the focus is on the full-screen images that are your new welcome screen. These are status updates from friends that you can easily flip through and double tap to like when someone posts something exciting. Plain text status updates are placed over a user’s cover photo, to keep the appearance consistent with photo-centric posts.

Notifications are presented as small cards, which Facebook applies an algorithm to, in order determine the updates that are most important to you. Just like with the standard Android UI you simply swipe notifications off screen to dismiss them. But, if you want to remove all of them in one shot, you long press a single notification and the rest will be drawn to it and you’ll be able to dismiss the entire stack.

Filed under: Software, Mobile, Facebook

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We’ve delved into just what we think of Windows Phone 8’s interface, but not what led Microsoft to the final layout. The company isn’t content to let us wonder — a pair of new company blog posts explain some (though not all) of what was involved in that birthing process. Ignore the marketing spin and you’ll learn that the wider, more densely packed home screen was chosen as much for balance as to stuff in more home tiles, and that it caused a momentary crisis for the app list as a result. The Redmond team goes on to justify choices behind the lock screen, such as why notifications are as customizable as they are, why the music controls fade and why there’s a failsafe for PIN attempts. Don’t expect to come out of the explanations suddenly craving a Lumia 920; just expect to make more sense of the OS inside.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft

Microsoft explains the origins of Windows Phone 8’s home and lock screens originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you were hoping that you could force Windows 8 to bypass the don’t-call-it-Metro homescreen and boot straight to the familiar desktop you’ve come to know and love, we’ve got bad news. Word on the street is, Microsoft has removed this ability from the latest builds of the OS — so you’re gonna have to stare at a pile of tiles when you boot up, whether you like it or not. According to Rafael Rivera, one of the authors of Windows 8 Secrets, there is a work around that involves creating a shortcut to the desktop and scheduling it to run at boot. But, it appears that even enterprise customers will be blocked from making the standard desktop the default environment. While Redmond is no doubt implementing such a policy to enforce consistency, it could prove to be a source of frustration for big businesses, which are notoriously resistant to change. We’ll just have to wait for the final release to find out for sure.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Tablet PCs, Software

Windows 8 may not let you boot to the desktop, demands you accept not-Metro originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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