Tag Archives: Split View

Metro Split View

Posted by Fred on

The Split View functionality in Metro is one of the features I like.

Much has been made of the Metro UI and the fact that all Metro apps run full screen. I have even read one insightful post whose prime example of why this is wrong is that Notepad would look silly that way. Yes, Notepad, directly ported to Metro, with no thought to user experience, would look silly. If an app is going to be usable as a Metro app, it needs to be designed as a Metro app. Otherwise, leave it on the desktop – that is why the desktop is still there!

I don’t know about you, but I run most of my apps maximized anyway. If I am working on a Word document, I generally have Word maximized. Excel – same thing. Development? I definitely have my dev tool maximized.

The exception to this is when I want to be able to see other content while I am working on, say, a blog post. Then I will generally have two apps visible, one docked left, one docked right.

This is pretty much what Metro Split View gives you. One app is docked left, and one app is docked right. You will note from the picture below that I am writing this post using Metro Split View.

I have been using Split View quite a bit when I am using Metro apps. The main limitation right now is that most of the apps I use for my work (Office, Visual Studio, etc.) are not Metro apps. That said, one of the panes of the split view can be the desktop, so you can have a Metro app on one side, and all of your desktop apps on the other side, as shown below:

All is not quite perfect, however. I have so far run into two annoying things in Split View:

  1. It does not work on my “legacy” tablet (which is only 2 years old!) – someone at Microsoft decided that Split View would be disabled is your horizontal resolution is below some arbitrary number (1366px, I think). Really? 1280 is no close enough to make it usable? Maybe give me an option to override this decision? I understand they are trying to enforce a certain UX here, but please, don’t make decisions for me that lock me out.
  2. Split View only allows one split ratio (as shown above). The separator can be moved from left to right, changing which app has the main focus, but the rations stay the same. It would be very useful if there were a third option, that being a 50-50 split. There are times (like what I am writing in one pane, and researching in the other) that an even split would be more appropriate, especially on an external monitor.