If you’re familiar with Windows 8, you’re probably aware of its tiled user interface. Windows8Menu will bring you a near-perfect replication of some elements of that interface, namely the tiled lock screen and side menu to Windows 7.

Lock Screen

When launching this program, the first thing you’ll notice is the lock screen, with a smooth orange background a clock. There are also 3 buttons, although they don’t do anything at the moment. You can dismiss this screen by simply dragging it upwards:

Logging on is a easy as sliding up.

Web Browser

One of the things you’ll notice best away is the fact that this program is essentially an fancy web browser. The first thing you’ll see is a tile-based interface that lets you access popular sites and social networks. as of yet, there is no clear way to change which icons ought to show up on this page, but I wouldn’t be amazed if we saw a service for this in a future version. There’s also a search bar that launches Google searches.

Clicking anywhere will lead you to a full-screen browser based on Internet Explorer’s Trident engine. moving your cursor to the bottom of the screen displays a basic (non-editable) URL bar, as well as back and forward buttons:

The browser is still fairly stripped down at the moment: there’s no clear way to navigate away from a site without going back to the home page and, as we discussed above, there’s no site bookmarking available.

Multi-Tasking

Aside from a browser, this alternative shell also attempts to enhance multitasking. From anywhere on this interface, dragging your cursor to the left will display a small panel. Clicking on it will reveal your regular Windows desktop. Surprise!

Once you’re on your desktop, you can relocation your cursor to the left and literally drag windows out of it, like so:

In purchase to bring the tile interface back up, simply relocation your cursor to the best side of the screen and hit “Start”.

What’s Missing

Several features are still missing from this release, which according to the author himself, is an early alpha version. On the best panel, next to the “Start” button, there are “Share” and “Settings” features that are currently “Not Implemented”:

As discussed before, the browser feature is also severely underpowered at the moment. A bookmarking feature would be crucial, yet it’s missing.

Future versions will certainly address some of these problems. until then, however, this isn’t implied to replace the standard Windows interface best now.

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Download Win8Menu Here

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