Rathores blog

Starting, switching and snapping apps

Navigating between applications running in two different user interfaces can be challenging, but it can also be entertaining—especially if you're using only a mouse to do it. Windows 8 gives you a whole host of ways to get from one place to another, depending on what input you use, but they mostly rely on three common interfaces: the Charms sidebar, the apps sidebar, and app "snapping" for a split-screen view of two apps. From a navigation standpoint, it's important to remember that Windows 8 treats Desktop like an "app" unto itself—which is both a blessing and a curse.
After you've launched an application, you can launch another by using the Start Charm to bounce back to the Start screen. To get back to the last app you were using from any app, you can do this:
 

Hover your mouse in the upper left-hand corner and click on the thumbnail of the other application when it appears.

With a touch device, you can switch back to the most recently used app by swiping your finger from the left edge of the screen toward the center; repeat the motion, and you can page back through all the active applications on your tablet or PC. You can do the same from the keyboard by pressing the Windows + Tab keys at the same time.
If you've got multiple applications running, you can navigate to a specific application by bringing up the application sidebar on the left side of the screen. With a mouse, hover over the left upper corner of the screen, and when the thumbnail of the last application viewed appears, bring the mouse pointer down the left side of the screen. You can do the same thing with touch by starting to pull in from the left edge and then, as the screen starts to appear, pushing it back to the left edge.
The app sidebar displays all the active Windows 8 applications, allowing you to switch to them or "snap" them to a side of the screen.

From the apps sidebar on the Start screen, you can also right-click on an app and get a pop-up menu to close it.
You can also use the application sidebar to "snap" one of the apps into split-screen with the active screen. You can do this by putting the mouse pointer over an app, and right-clicking on it to choose to "snap left" or "snap right." You can also click with the left mouse button and hold down, dragging the application from the bar and placing it on the left or right side of the active screen—or by doing the same with your finger on a touch device.

Once you've split the screen, you can change the relationship between the two screens by clicking and dragging on the black bar that separates them over the three dots in its center and moving the bar from left to right to change which app has more screen real estate. You can then get rid of a "snapped" view by dragging the split off to the edge of the screen until one app disappears.

You have options

The Start screen and all of the Windows 8 full-screen applications have other interface options aside from those found in the Charms. The options vary by app, but are generally the sorts of things you used to access by selecting a menu option; for instance, in Mail the options include commands to sync, move a message, mark a message as unread, and pin a mailbox to the Start screen. You can pull up a menu bar with various options from the bottom of the screen by:

• Right clicking with the mouse on the bottom of the screen
• With touch devices, swiping upward from the bottom of the screen with your finger
• Hitting the Windows + Z keys at the same time

In the Start screen, this brings up the option "All apps," which will display everything that can be launched from the Start screen. The options change based on what you've selected within the application.

Closing apps

When you're done with an application, you have a few options for how to shut it down. In addition to closing it from the app sidebar, you can close any full-screen application by:
Hovering the mouse over the top of the screen until a hand appears...

Clicking and dragging downward to make the app shrink to a smaller view...And dragging the app off the screen to the bottom, plunging it into the depths to its doom.

The same works with touch—touch at the top of the screen, drag downward, and watch the app disappear. You can also drag apps down and to the side to close them. Of course, you could always just hit Alt + F4 to kill the app from the keyboard, but where would the fun be in that?

Printing from "Metro" apps

Printing from Desktop works just as it always has. But printing from full-screen Metro apps is different; it's both easy and a bit non-intuitive.
Windows 8 does a good job of recognizing available printers automatically and loading their drivers (at least for many recent printers).
The printers show up in full-screen apps that can print through the Devices Charm; summon the Charms sidebar as outlined earlier, then select the Devices Charm.

 Then, click or tap on the printer you want to use.

 

A print preview will appear, and you can select your output options. Hit Print, and the document gets sent off to the queue.

Adding users, changing settings

Along with Windows 8's split user interface personality, the operating system also has two places to make changes to the configuration of your Windows environment and to settings for your PC or tablet. One is the classic Control Panel, and the other is the "PC Settings" full-screen interface, accessible from the Settings Charm.
Select "Change PC Settings" from the Settings Charm to get most of the basic personalization and other user settings in Windows 8.

The PC Settings screen handles most of the settings average users will need to tweak or change, including adding new users to a device, adding or changing a Microsoft account for existing users, setting up file and media sharing, and personalizing parts of the Windows interface (except for the Desktop, which has to be configured within Desktop).
The PC Settings screen gives you access to user-specific personalization settings, as well as settings for wireless networks and devices.

To add a user from PC Settings, click the "Add a user" plus sign under "Other Users."

You can choose to create new users with their own Microsoft accounts—which will allow them to download or buy Windows 8 applications from the store and to access their own SkyDrive—or you can set them up as a local user only.
Local accounts can be designated as a child account and protected with Microsoft's Family Safety feature. The service will e-mail you reports on your child's online activity, block them from adult sites and prevent inappropriate downloads.

Once you've created additional users, to switch from one user login to another, go to the Start screen and either click or touch your user icon.
You can lock your screen or sign off here, or switch directly to another account while leaving the one you're in active.

Turning the machine off

Windows 7 and its predecessors used to get a lot of grief for putting the "shut down" and "sleep" commands under the "Start" button menu. Who clicks "start" to stop, right? In Windows 8, if you're trying to turn off the computer or put it into sleep mode without hitting the power button, the navigation path to system shutdown is not a whole lot more intuitive—but at least it isn't directly on the Start page.
To turn off your PC, open the Charms sidebar and click or tap the "Settings" Charm (yes, I suppose on and off are actually PC settings, so I won't argue the interface decision). Then, click or touch the "Power" icon.
 

Click on Power in the Setup menu to power down or restart your PC, or to put it into sleep mode.

Going straight to Desktop

Of course, if you do most of your Windows work in Desktop, the system can be configured to use the Start page and the Charms less. One way is to pin applications you frequently use to the Desktop task bar for easier launching. You can also rearrange and hide things in the Start menu to make it less full of shiny things and more like the Start menu of old.
Clicking down and dragging Start screen tiles allows you to rearrange them into something resembling the order you like. Right-clicking on any tile in the Start screen opens up a set of other options—you can "unpin" applications you don't want from the Start screen, pin them to the task bar in Desktop so they can be launched from there, turn off the "live" animated features of the Windows 8 built-in apps, or uninstall them entirely.
You can select an app from the Start window or its search results with a right-click, and select to pin it to the task bar from the option menu that is displayed. You can also uninstall applications from here, pin or unpin them from the main Start screen (depending on whether they're already there), and turn off the "live" features of app tiles like Bing News and Mail.

Once you have everything you want on the Desktop, you can skip right past the Start screen at login. All you need to do is use Control Panel's Task Scheduler:
From Desktop, open the Setup Charm and select Control Panel.

Use Control Panel's search window to find the "Schedule Tasks" administrative tool. Launch it.

Click on Task Scheduler Library in the left panel, then on "Create Basic Task" under "Actions" in the right-side panel.

Create a task, as shown. You can call it whatever you want; if you really hate the Start screen, you can call it something saltier than "StartInDesktop." Then hit the "next" button.

Select "When I log in" as the task trigger. Click next.

For your action, select "Start a program" and click next.

The program the task needs to run is "explorer.exe"—it should be in C:\Windows, but you can search for it with the "Browse" button. You can also generalize this task for any system by entering %systemroot%\explorer.exe here instead of the explicit path.

Click "Finish" and you're all set. Close Task Scheduler, go back to Start, and log out.

When you log back in, the Start screen will appear for a moment before the Desktop loads. You can still get back to the Start screen if you need to, but you can eliminate most of that need by restoring the Start Button to the Desktop.

Bringing back the Start Button

Microsoft gutted the Start button from the final release of Windows 8 (though in the consumer preview, it was possible to resurrect it with a registry change). There are several software utilities available, however, that can provide a fully functional substitute. One of them is ClassicShell, a free utility on SourceForge. ClassicShell is freeware (though not open source) and is free to redistribute.
ClassicShell allows you to choose from your favorite Start button skin: Windows "Classic" (circa Windows 2000), Windows XP, or Windows 7.

ClassicShell's configuration also allows you to skip right past the Metro Start screen. You can configure hot-key and mouseclick combinations to get back to it if you really need to. You can even set the functionality of the Windows key to be context-sensitive, bringing up the classic Start menu in Desktop and the Start screen from full-screen Metro applications.
Once you've configured it the way you want, you can drag your favorite programs into the main menu and go back to using Windows 8 like the Start screen never happened.

Turning off the Metro "hot corners"

Another step you can take to make Windows 8 more like the old Windows you loved (or tolerated) is turning off the Charms and app-switching menus activated when you, as Windows' installation tutorial suggests, "move the mouse to any corner." This feature can be somewhat annoying when you're working with an application in full-screen—even when you're running a Metro application.
Shutting down the hot corners requires a minor change to Windows 8's registry to shut down Windows 8's "edge interface." First, launch the Registry Editor. To do this, you can go to the Start screen and type "Run," then select it, or right-click in the bottom left-hand of the Desktop screen and select "Run" from the pop-up menu. If you've installed ClassicShell, you can find Run where it belongs, in the Start menu.
Type "regedit" into the Run box, and click "OK."

When Registry Editor opens, expand out the registry tree under HKEY_CURRENT_USER by clicking on the arrow next to it. Do the same on "Software," then "Microsoft," "Windows," "CurrentVersion, "and finally "ImmersiveShell." Right-click on ImmersiveShell, and from the pop up menu select "New," and then "Key."
Change the name of the Key that appears under ImmersiveShell ("New Key #1") to EdgeUI. Then right-click on EdgeUI and choose from the pop-up menus "New" and then "DWORD (32-bit) Value." Name the new value that appears in the right pane of Registry Editor "DisableCharmsHint," as shown below, then right-click it and choose "Modify" from the pop up menu.
Change the "value data" for the new DWORD to 1. Click OK, then exit from Registry Editor.

Restart, and the hot corners that activate the Charms and app-switching sidebars should now be deactivated.

Pushing users to get touchy

Of course, Microsoft would rather that you embrace the Start screen and Charms bar, so you can become properly trained for Windows' touch future. It's not an accident that mouse users are second-class citizens in Windows 8.
I walked a few average users through Windows 8—both on a mouse-driven PC and on a Samsung Slate tablet. The results were unanimous: users who cursed and struggled with the mouse-based gestures were a whole lot happier with the touch interface. My wife, whose frustration with the Windows 8 interface I have already documented, dove right into things with the touchscreen interface; as an iPad user, she was almost immediately comfortable with Windows 8 on the tablet (though she found all the "bright shiny things" on the Start screen to be distracting).
Most early users of Windows 8 won't have the luxury of a touchscreen on their PC of choice—and will likely live in Desktop by choice. Hopefully, the modifications above will help those who want to take advantage of some of the internal improvements in Windows 8 without having to change their whole Windows lifestyle. A whole cottage industry of utilities is bound to arise to help users make Windows 8 look even more like Windows 7 without forcing them to troll through RegEdit settings at their own risk.
It almost makes you wonder why Microsoft didn't offer a Control Panel switch to allow users (or administrators) an easy way to switch user interfaces on and off during the breaking-in period for the Metro interface. Perhaps they felt that would only prolong the pain. Given that half the world seems to still be using Windows XP, prolonging the pain seems to be something many Windows users are well-accustomed to.

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