Quote:
Originally Posted by Malkuth
That is the objective of every operating systems; to provide an abstraction layer for the hardware for programmers to build applications... OK, with the popularization of computers adds a GUI for simple tasks... nonetheless the prevalence of MS-Windows, probably misleads a lot of users, so we have to rely to higher level and cross-OS abstraction these days like web-apps, java, OpenGL, etc 
In a perfect world, that would be clear, and easy to do, but marketing (not necessarily profit) takes precedence over the service advertised. |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vexx
why *can't* a user who, say, already has several apps open and wants to see them while launching an app - can't?
|
The Start screen is not there just to launch apps. It is also a place for showing live tiles and search results for apps, settings, and files. Finally, it is designed to also work with touch. To be able to do all of that, it needs to be bigger than the Start menu.
Now, why is it always full screen, even on large displays?
My guess would be because the Start screen, like all Windows Store apps, is built on top of WinRT, which currently lacks certain things, like windowing capabilities.
This is either something that will change as WinRT matures or something that won't if a windowing capability simply does not fit the design philosophy they are going for with WinRT.
Quote:
|
This is a "feature" that makes perfect sense on a 2"x2" screen or even a small tablet. On a wide-screen monitor, not so much. Microsoft just figures the small screen environment is where the money is - I guess.
|
They probably figure that the displeasure that comes from people who want to see their running apps in the few seconds it takes them to launch another app won't be as great as the displeasure that would come from people who interact with the Start screen on a tablet if it did not provide a touch-first experience.