Lost Windows feature: The Horizon

Raymond

During the early explorations for what became the Windows 8 user interface, one of the major questions was what system affordances, if any, would remain on the screen when an app was running. And one of the leading candidates was a concept that was known as the horizon.

The horizon was a small band of information at the bottom of the screen. It would have the current time and date, battery charge, network connectivity, that sort of thing. It provided quick-glance access to the information you wanted regardless of what programs were running.

I assume that it was called the horizon because it was a horizontal line that stretched across the entire view, the same way the earth’s horizon off in the distance spans your view from left to right. The Windows 8 horizon is at the bottom of your field of view, just like the earth’s horizon (assuming you’re looking at the sky). The difference, though, is that the earth’s horizon is far away, but the Windows 8 horizon was close by.

Furthermore, you could grab the horizon and drag it upward, and connected to it was the Start screen.

The horizon was eventually abandoned, but the time, date, battery, and network indicators set up their own spinoff band, known as TDBN.