One of the biggest design changes in Windows 8: The Metro UI theme is a full-screen UI. No taskbars, scrollbars whatsoever – the sole focus is on the app. A “Chrome-free” theme as Sinofsky jokingly underlined.

Tip: If you like the clean Windows 8 Metro Sidebar, give this awesome Windows 8 theme a try: Windows 8 Metro Sidebar Theme

This Metro UI theme shifts the focus on the apps. You can now get a lot of things done within the Windows 8 apps without opening other applications. All the Windows 8 apps are connected with each other, allowing you for example to share pictures with friends or upload files to the cloud.

Windows 8 Login Screen

Let’s take a look at the new login screen.. As you can see the sidebar allows you to lock the computer, access the user profile to set new photos as your profile picture in Windows 8:

Windows 8 User Tiles

The Metro app has a very clean start screen where you have dynamic tiles that you can move and customize as you want. This starter theme is very clean and elegant. A nice solution for mobile devices. On the picture below you can the XBOX Live app tile and for some random games like Copper, Wordhunt, PaintPlay:

The Onscreen Keyboard

Speaking of mobile devices, you can use the onscreen-keyboard to search for files, no need to attach a keyboard.

New Windows 8 Apps

One of the new social Windows 8 apps is called socialite. You can share photos with friends, read your news feeds, manage your online profiles:

Accessing The Metro Sidebar

The Metro theme is clean, but you can quickly access features like “Search”, “Share”, “Settings”, “Devices” from the sidebar. Oh yea and the fancy Metro clock. If you want that fancy Metro clock for your Windows 7 desktop, you can download the Windows 8 clock theme 

You can change settings within the Metro apps using the Metro sidebar. Here they are accessing the video settings. On the bottom of the sidebar, you can access Windows 8 shortcuts to the Network, Power, Notifications, Language, Sound and more.

I hope you enjoyed this quick introduction to the Windows 8 Metro theme. We will keep you posted on that, there is a lot to discover and explore. Good stuff!

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