A common complaint about apps written for the Windows Runtime, also known as Metro by those outside Microsoft, is that they tend to show only a small amount of data per screen. The most information-dense Metro app I have found is a game, Wordament, which shows a fair amount of data in its results screen.
The word lists scroll, and so does the list of players. Which proves that you can create an information-dense screen in a Metro app; though it is all custom-drawn.
Thanks for the comment on Wordament. I wanted to make one quick comment on your last sentence “though it is all custom-drawn.”
Wordament on Windows 8 is an HTML / JavaScript app. The UI is just HTML, some of which comes from our service, and some of which is created locally. It’s true that we don’t use many of the built-in Windows controls. We are a game and didn’t see the need. HTML is extremely powerful.
Windows apps can be anything you can imagine. At their simplest, they can be anything you could do with a web page. 🙂
Thanks for playing our game!
Jason / Black Snapper
Studio Lead, You vs. the Internet
Microsoft Studios
Thanks for the clarification. I could see you were not using the standard XAML controls but did not realise it was HTML.