In What Microsoft Could Learn from the Google Play Update, I revived an old complaint of mine, which is that the Windows Store user interface in Windows 8/RT doesn’t scale at all and is essentially worthless. A reader noted that the store does have a semantic zoom feature that somewhat helps navigation. Fair enough. But here’s how it should look.
If you’re not familiar, Windows Store does support a Windows 8/RT feature called semantic zoom. Here’s how this view looks in Windows Store today
When this view is enabled, the store UI still extends way off to the right, causing a lot of scrolling. (And that’s assuming you can even find semantic zoom, which is another story.) Why is it so hard for Microsoft to create a UI that blends Metro ideals with actual usability? For example, it could look like this, with everything on a single screen:
Too logical? Too useful?
I’m not saying this is perfect. But it’s definitely “better.”
