[ggchappell]

That's an interesting observation.

The problem -- if it is one -- is certainly not limited to the Win 8 Start menu. There are plenty of interfaces where pressing a button, or some similar action, pops up a new full-screen or nearly full-screen UI element that looks & works differently from what was there before.

I wonder whether any research has been done on whether this makes any significant number of users forget what they were doing. If not, I think such research would be worthwhile.

[hoosieree]

MacOS does this, albeit less intrusively, with full screen apps. (Note that "full screen" means no window chrome, which is different from "maximized".)

Normal task switching is near instantaneous, but full screen apps add about 0.3 seconds of animation to their switch. It's enough to break my concentration, so I end up rarely using full screen even though I prefer it for most apps.