Microsoft renames Windows 8 UI to Modern UI

Microsoft has been floundering around with the upcoming Windows 8 and the name of its touch-centric UI. Just recently, Microsoft had renamed the UI from Metro to Windows 8 UI. Now, according to recently released documentation, Microsoft has renamed the UI again, this time to Modern UI.

In the documentation, the word Metro UI or Metro in the name has been replaced with Modern UI or Modern user interface. One example of such a change is “Windows 8 is Windows re-imagined. Join this session to learn about the new platform for building Modern UI-style applications. You’ll get a deeper understanding of the platform design tenets, the programming language choices, and integration points with the operating system and across Modern UI-style apps. We’ll also demo the Windows Store and the many different ways to monetize your application, including subscriptions, trial apps, advertisement, and in-app purchases.”

Microsoft also seem to have simply done a find-and-replace on the documentation to replace Metro with Modern UI. This doesn’t work very well and gives weird and confusing statements like , “Building a Windows 8 Modern user interface-style user interface”.

The Windows 8 UI, now renamed to Modern UI

Microsoft has claimed that ‘Metro’ was just a code name for the interface used by developers all along, and that generic use of the code by the public was never intended. However, as per a report by ZDNet, this switch has been made owing to a naming dispute with its European partner, Metro Group. The fact that Microsoft went with a name as boring as Modern UI supports the idea that it might have been caught off guard by the naming dispute.

In our opinion, Microsoft should simply have gone ahead and done something to retain the Metro moniker for its UI. The newest name, Modern UI, doesn’t sound as distinguishable as Metro UI did.

Formerly known as Metro, the Windows 8 user interface was specifically designed for use with mobile phones, tablets and touchscreens. The PC-port of the operating system will also have the UI, which would enable apps designed specifically for the UI to work across platforms.

If you have installed the Windows 8 Release Preview on your system, it’s quite possible that you, like some of us, might not like the tiled interface on their non-touch PCs and laptops. We have a short tutorial on how to get rid of the Windows 8 (Metro) UI. You will need Windows 8 Metro UI Switcher, a portable utility which can be downloaded from SuperUtils.com. Apart from this utility, a couple of manual tweaks are also explained in the tutorial.