Windows 8 Modern Apps Bring New Design Goals

Windows 8 emphasizes a new touch-centric Modern user interface (UI), formerly called Metro. Applications built for this UI are called Modern or Windows Store applications. The desktop mode of Windows 8 offers the legacy Windows UI that has evolved while maintaining most user input and control metaphors over the past two decades, but the Modern Start screen and UI is the view nearly all users will see upon starting Windows 8. Developers, IT staff, and users should become familiarized with Modern concepts and elements to build, maintain, and use applications that work in the new environment.

Biggest UI Change in Decades

The Windows 8 Modern UI is the most dramatic change to the way users interact with the OS since Windows first became popular in the early 1990s. Further, the Modern environment is not an optional UI that users can easily turn off, and it is the same for all devices running Windows 8, including desktop PCs, notebooks, and tablet devices, so all users of Windows 8 need to work with the new UI at least part of the time.