Hmmm… Not bad for about 3 hours work…

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So this is the start of my first ever Windows 8 Metro project, using the default project templates from Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate, populating all of its data live from Digg.

That was deceptively easy. Hmmm… I can easily see spending several weeks polishing it up (and I still have issues with a horizontally scrolling page instead of a vertical one; it goes against every UI instinct I have). But all in all… not bad at all :)

About the author

Simon Cooke is an occasional video game developer, ex-freelance journalist, screenwriter, film-maker, musician, and software engineer in Seattle, WA.

The views posted on this blog are his and his alone, and have no relation to anything he's working on, his employer, or anything else and are not an official statement of any kind by them (and barely even one by him most of the time).

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Joe Hettinger wrote on Tuesday, December 3, 2013:

Simon,

I have been following your articles off and on for a few years and have to admit that you come up with some interesting topics.

I thought I would point out that I cannot post to your Who is Simon page, so I am commenting here.

I posted a comment on Daily Techs forum back in July about Windows 8 and Office that maybe you might like and perhaps explore some of my ideas with your readers.

Here is what I posted:

OK MS, here is the solution to all your sales problems…. give us what we want and please the IT guys on the forums.

So how do you do this?

In the next major release have multiple modes that the user can switch from, this would be like the “Classic View” in Vista/Win7.

Here’s how I propose it works.

Give the user choices of:

XP Mode Windows 7 Mode Windows 8 Mode Windows 9 Mode (AKA the next iteration of where they decide to play hide and seek by moving everything around - again)

And let us switch between modes at will.

Why would this work? Because you have some of us who are forced to work with people set in their ways who do not like playing hide and seek with their applications/settings/day to day activities. Additionally, large corporations who are stuck on XP would experience easier transitions if they do have to retrain their staff on using a new OS. So they would be more motivated to switch.

Next revolutionary idea: Make Office modes, for example, allow users to select: 2000-2003 mode where the tool bar is nice and slim. 2007 mode where we can have a nice fat ribbon to use with our wide screen monitor to eat up vertical space. 2013 mode to allow your choice of menu bars and allow you to dock the menu bar on the side to allow for extra vertical space.

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