Windows 8 to Sport New Immersive GUI

New details about Microsoft’s next generation Windows client confirm an interesting strategy for the evolution of the platform’s graphical user interface, focused on packing multiple UIs into the operating system, some more immersive than others.

While the software giant has yet to offer any official details on Windows 8, it appears that one of the multiple UIs sported by the OS is dubbed Immersive.

Windows 8’s Immersive UI is designed to reflect the look and feel of the tiled Metro user interface in Windows Phone.

A sneak peek at the new Immersive GUI was provided by Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, after what it appears to be a little digging.

Just as it was the case with the pre-Beta Builds of Windows 7, Microsoft is locking down new features introduced in the early development milestones of Windows 8.

This means that even though the features are there, testers cannot access them through traditional methods.

Thankfully, due to some unlocking magic from Rivera I suspect, a glimpse of what was rumored to be the MoSH (Modern Shell) UI in Windows 8 is now available to the public.

The screenshots included with this article reveal the immersive Internet Explorer in Windows vNext.

This particular variant of the browser is nothing but a flavor of Internet Explorer 9 with a new user interface based on Metro. This is why the similarity with the Windows Phone 7 UI is uncanny.

The Immersive UI seems to be reserved for NUI capable form factors, including Tablet PCs / slates and smartphones. Obviously, Immersive will feature optimized natural user interface functionality, including multi-touch, gestures, etc.

The particular immersive IE in Windows 8 runs only at 640 x 480 and in full screen mode, and sports tabs mirroring those of IE Mobile, as well as similar colorization functionality.