This has to be one of my favorite features of Windows 8 – semantic zoom.  During the Build conference that Microsoft held in September, Samsung tablets were distributed to all the attendees.  To help navigate the event content, Microsoft built a an application for the conference that allows you to watch videos of the presentations, view the agenda and calendar, and also link to the social networking information, photos and bios of all the attendees.  This app is a perfect way to see Windows 8 Semantic zoom in action. Zooming in and out is no longer about reducing and increasing the detail of an image, but actually reordering and rethinking the data that is displayed on the screen.

Developers and designers, when you create applications based on the new Metro experience, be sure to consider both offline and online notifications. If you are app is running in the background, you may want to provide more details notifications, toasts and updates. If your application is not running, perhaps a different summary view may be presented. Live Tiles should contain data that is short and relevant. Or you may opt for a fully visual representation, as the Tile Puzzle application demonstrates in this short clip.   How would you build your next Metro application?

Also, even with this constant updating and visualization, Windows 8 actually consumes less CPU and battery resources than Windows 7!

Visit Slalom.com for more information on generating valuable user experiences.

Use the free web app gallery to build an ecommerce site in a matter of minutes and deploy online, using nopCommerce and Web Matix. You really don’t have to be an experienced programmer to build a really polished site – in fact there is no programming at all! It’s super easy – just go to the Web App Galleryand choose the eCommerce category. I used nopCommerce as my framework of choice, but there are many other fantastic templates to choose from.

Watch the presentation: How to build an ecommerce site in 13 minutes