Aero vs XrossMediaBar (XMB)
エアロ / クロスメディアバー
Aero comes from Microsoft UI and XrossMediaBar (XMB) from Platform Screen Languages. One is style and the other layout. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Aero
The translucent glass UI of Vista and 7: frosted window frames, live thumbnails and GPU-composited depth making 'through glass' the OS's standard vocabulary.
XrossMediaBar (XMB)
Sony's trademarked interface language for its consoles and televisions. As the official manual puts it, the horizontal row shows system features in categories and the vertical column shows the items available under each category, and the single point where the two cross lights up gold to say where you are. Everything else stays pale blue on a dark field.
| Aero | XrossMediaBar (XMB) | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2006–2012 | 2003–2013 |
| Family | Microsoft UI | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Layout |
| Cues | Frosted frames / Reflections and highlights / Live thumbnails / GPU-composited depth | A horizontal row and a vertical column cross slightly left of center, and only the item at that crossing glows gold / Text labels appear for the selected item alone; the rest of the rows are icons only / The ground is one near black navy and the icons are thin pale blue outlines rather than filled shapes / Left and right move through categories, up and down through items, but it is the rows that slide while the crossing stays put |
| Best used for | Work screens stacking many windows where the layer beneath must stay visible · Control panels for photo or video apps floated above the content itself | Building a television or set top interface that must be reachable end to end with a four way pad alone · Making a top level menu for a screen viewed from across a room, where the number of categories will keep growing |
| Type | Small light labels on the frame, dark enough to survive translucency | A light sans at a size readable from across a room; only the selected item carries a name, the rest stay as icons. |
| Composition | Glass only on the frame, content areas kept fully opaque | Fix the crossing point slightly left of center, run categories out horizontally and items vertically from it, and slide the rows under a stationary crossing rather than moving a highlight. |
| Material | Heavily blurred backdrop, a thin top highlight, a faint tint | Thin pale blue outline icons on a near black ground; emphasis comes only from lighting the one item at the crossing in gold, never from filling an area. |
| Caution | Spreading translucency and gloss across the whole screen makes legibility shift with whatever moves behind the text, and hides what is clickable. | Move a highlight instead of holding the crossing still and the viewer loses their place the moment a row grows long. |