Digital Home Thoughts: Peeking Into The Features Of Windows 8

"Rafael Rivera posted a number of screenshots on Monday that reveal Microsoft’s “Immersive” browser in Windows 8. Rivera speculates that the application is designed to run full screen only and that he is witnessing limitations trying to enable it on a pre-beta version of Windows 8. “One clue to the Immersive UI, however, exists in a new Immersive version of Internet Explorer, which looks and works much like Windows Phone’s IE Mobile, but uses the desktop IE 9 renderer,” writes Rivera."

With the release of Windows 8 slowly approaching, it looks as if the Microsoft PR engine is starting up and we're getting a better look at what Windows 8 will have to offer. The influence from the smartphone and tablet market is obvious; the most obvious is the Windows applicaiton store. Though I would argue that services like X-box live arcade, Steam and even going back in a more basic form, linux distro repositories are all ancestors of the what we now think of as an app store.

The quasi-unification of the user interface between smartphones, tablets and desktops is also interesting, but I worry that we might lose something in the translation. They are separate form factors, and what is most efficent for one is not for another. Must we have the same thing for everything? A supreme jack of all trades UI?