» A wild Start screen Personalization applet has appeared Within Windows

Jan 2012

29 Comments

A wild Start screen Personalization applet has appeared

New personalization applet in Windows 8

Windows 8 Build 8175 – Start screen Personalization applet (© The Verge)

Back in September, I dissected the new Start UI in Windows 8 and wrote that readers should expect a new personalization UI. Well, it’s official! The Verge, today, uploaded some photos of a newer Windows 8 build running at CES, with a shot of the new Personalize applet amongst them. As suspected, Microsoft is offering users the option of customizing the background color and image, with limited options. Before you balk at the idea of only having 9 colors and 8 parallax background images to choose from, think about usability.

Good color Bad color

I’m not a UI designer or usability guru but you don’t need to be one to picture the hell that would ensue if a user set their background color to a bright orange. (If you can’t, I provided an example above.) The tile, as you can see, immediately loses its depth (due to the background image being impossible to see) and becomes difficult to retrieve information from.

Good background image Bad background image

Limitations have been imposed on the background image as well, for similar reasons. While my example isn’t great, you can kinda picture the problem. The left image has a square-based motif that slowly pans left or right, depending on swipe direction. This creates the illusion of depth. The image on the right, however, uses a custom horizontal gradient that creates infinitely reaching bars. As the user swipes left or right, the bars would remain unchanged in appearance. The effect would be lost.

While the customization community would lead you to believe they know what they’re doing and prefer unfettered customization access, the reality is Microsoft knows what’s better for all of us. If you insist on having that access, however, I’m sure desktop customization king Stardock will have something to play with soon enough.

http://twitter.com/piaqt piaqt

Microsoft knows what’s better for Microsoft. And sometimes, not even that.

http://mattg.co.cc Matt Gajownik

Point: Tweet Choir. -.-

http://davepermen.net davepermen

On WP7, we have similar restrictions. One could override them with some tools. The result, indeed, was totally unreadable interfaces in seconds.

There will be hacks to allow modifications of any kind. It’s good that they’re not available by default, but only for those who really want to mess around and risking things like “black on black”.
Kazi

Customization is interesting for 10 minutes for me, after that it is boring.

Anonymous

interesting. for me, the default UI is interesting for about 10 minutes, and then it gets boring.

I’m so tired of staring at those blue tiles on my Windows Phone Start screen (I don’t like any of the other tile colors)

I want the option to have grey tiles, or a white background with black tiles or *gasp* to choose any image as a background (the way you can with the Pictures Hub)

Anonymous

Stop staring at your phone, live life.

http://twitter.com/ilcredo ____

So i will be forced to use Windows Blinds just to put a picture as the background? What is wrong with you people?

http://davepermen.net davepermen

what’s wrong is, the wrong picture can make the whole ui unusable => prevention of that is important.

and no, you’re not forced to use windows blinds. there’ll sure be other options (oems will have the ability to add own images i guess, and so will we. just not straight from this menu)

http://twitter.com/ilcredo ____

Well, it may sound strange, but is each one’s personal business to choose how he wants his personal machine to look. The wallpapers were a long time a standard feature so for me it seems like a step back.
http://davepermen.net davepermen

well, so in short, you have not read nor understood anything i’ve said.

wallpaper is still there (on the desktop, and works exactly the same)

but by default, the background of the startmenu has to be a very specific type of design and color to make it easy to distinguish the tiles, be readable and all. that’s why BY DEFAULT they restrict it to some simple options.

you can still mess around with the system like you ALWAYS could in windows, and do what ever you want with it. most likely, it just uses pictures from a specific folder, and you can add your own pics there, or similar. or a simple editor tool will pop up 1-2 days after win8 is out.

so it’s no deal at all. it’s just a little savety feature for the 99% of people who never mess around with ANY settings but want simple customization and personalisation.

but, why do i repeat myself? you still won’t “get” my point.
Steve-o

Punch him in the jeans!
http://twitter.com/ilcredo ____

OK :). We’ll see, if it will be so simple as just to write in a folder, then it’s all good. Thanks for wasting your time explaining all this to me.
http://davepermen.net davepermen

no time wasted. well, can’t wait for the beta in the next weeks to explore how they handled it.
Mmmm

Less people with crazy UI-debilitating customizations = more PCs with standardized settings = less technical support nightmares for tech supp staff

And if the user does want to do crazy stuff, I’m sure Stardock wouldn’t mind making some money. :)

http://gowindowsgo.com Sam Sabri

I applaud Microsoft for taking this approach. In my opinion they’ve found common ground for giving users control while maintaining order to the UI/UX.
Anonymous

The final solution should feature the largest amount of user personalization options while maintaining usability. The current options (which I’ll hope are still undevelopped) are much too restrictive.

Case in point, the Pictures Hub on WP7, or the backgrounds available on the new Xbox Dashboard. The Hub uses a photograph with a slight black filter as the background, providing visual cues of parallax when swiping. The same could be applied here, without sacrificing usability.

Is parallax really needed? Case in point, the homescreen of WP7 (or the many third party apps that work just fine) which has a plain background.

The fact that you have a post defending MS’s position indicates to me that this personalization of the background is something users expect. In that regard, every effort should be made to find a solution that meets those expectations as much as possible.

Mmmm

A colored Start screen background reduces the need for tile designs that are consistent with the theme color. For example, in WP7, for the Start screen to look consistent and tidy, you need a certain amount of theme colored tiles to balance it. However, most app developers aren’t that responsible to give users a tile that obeys theme color.

In Windows 8, the background color of Start screen takes over as the overbearing theme color of the whole screen, thus reduces the dependence on consistent tile designs.

I like WP7′s approach better in an ideal world where devs actually make transparent PNGs for app tile icons, but in the real world the Windows 8 approach will probably result in a more pleasing color arrangement.

Simon Paul

Well said.

For the first time, Microsoft is showing true understanding of where they do need to control things to maintain an effective UI. However, there user base is used to the traditional open concept Microsoft has held, so of course people are going to complain. Eventually they’ll get over it.

Anonymous

But why take out Aero customization of window border sizes, fonts, colors, caption buttons that was present in Windows 7?

sevenacids

It simply doesn’t make sense to offer Aero-specific customization options within the Metro shell in which, for example, no such thing as window borders exist. Control Panel will still be there to personalize the legacy Desktop environment.

Asdf

Why are you falling into the trap of calling Win32 legacy? Metro is a locked down toy environment!
sevenacids

I’m not falling into any trap. You have to read carefully – I never said that Win32 was legacy. I just used the term “legacy” to refer to the traditional Desktop environment, which maybe was a mistake. I guess I picked that up from some other article where they referred to the Desktop as “legacy environment”.

Well, speaking about legacy: compared to some aspects of the new Windows Runtime, Win32 surely is. Simply because of it’s design and that it has become old (doesn’t mean obsolete).

Be careful not to fall into another trap: WinRT != Metro != Start screen.
WndSks

The lines between WinRT and Metro are a little blurry, the fact that it should now be called Microsoft Tiles and not Windows is part of the Metro mindset, while restricting LoadLibrary is a WinRT lockdown issue. Personally, I will boycott it and stick to programming WinAPI apps (Clearly they could have made it possible for Win32 to take part in the share charm etc), once MS makes that too hard I’ll have to move to *nix… (Granted, in Win9 you might be able to create freeform WinRT apps but I expect the pointless limitations are going to be too many for me to ignore)
Anonymous

The Control Panel to customize legacy desktop (advanced appearance settings) is missing in Windows 8 Developer Preview. Have you even looked there before commenting?

sevenacids

People who complain about the restrictions to personalize the Start screen should consider the possibilities to customize the Start menu of prior Windows versions. You’ll find that this one is quite restricted as well. The colorization in Windows Vista and Windows 7, for example, is bound to the window color (if Aero is enabled). Otherwise, especially on Windows XP, it’s theme-based. And the meanwhile obsolete “classic Start menu” of Windows 2000 and before was even just a system menu that you couldn’t really personalize at all, at least not with build-in tools. Did you ever imagine to define a custom picture as the backdrop for the Start menu? How messy could that possibly look? The personalization possibilities that Microsoft offers enable a clean, consistent UI. What’s wrong with that? After all, the Start screen is just a place for search, launching apps, and keeping track of information provided by Live Tiles. Most of the time you’ll spend using your apps or being in the Desktop environment – for which you still can define your own background image. Or do you keep your Start menu open all the time as well…?

I don’t understand the fuss about it.
Anonymous

“the reality is Microsoft knows what’s better for all of us”.

Well, I used to agree with this. But the failure of many of Windows Live software and services shows that this is no longer true. The best example is the now-gone Windows Live Spaces which was truly ugly. Windows Live services like Hotmail and SkyDrive also come with skins that give a new meaning to the word “ugly”. I often envy Gmail users.

Of course, I did hate (well, no,… abhorred) customizing some aspects of Windows that people did. Nothing freaked me out more than see a Windows startup screen that showed “The Blue Nerd is starting” instead of “Windows is starting”. (Don’t make me mention some 18+ examples. Eeek!)

Microsoft develops great Enterprise products, but when comes to consumers, it is a total failure.

http://www.withinwindows.com Rafael R.

I must agree, Windows Live is one of the groups at Microsoft that I feel need some serious help. (But hey, Windows Live Photo Gallery is pretty frickin’ awesome.)

Anonymous

Er… actually… let’s just say Windows Live Photo Gallery v1.0 and I decided that we are not exactly made for one another and must part ways.

The problem is that I had it index our family archive. Back then it was 32 GB and was stored on a separate partition. Five users used the computer. Windows Live Gallery generated a total of 40 GB of thumbnail cache in the system volume (C:Documents and Settings). My hard disk partitioning was not optimized for this incident and …

http://twitter.com/BasKoene Bas Koene

Quick! Weaken it and throw a Pokéball!