Tutorial on Using Windows 8Finding things and doing things from
the new Windows 8 interface.By Rand Morimoto (original blog post
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/tutorial-using-windows-8#disqus_thread)
The first time I sat in front of the Windows 8 interface, I have to
admit I was not thrilled; no Start button, I couldnt find the
control panel, things just werent what I was used to. That was over
two years ago in the early adopter program for Windows 8, and now
when I use Windows XP or Windows 7, I find it very inefficient to
"have to click through so many menus" to find and do basic stuff.
The focus of this article is to share with you not simply how to
make Windows 8 work like Windows XP/Windows 7 "the old way" (which
I will go through and give you tips on how to find stuff and
configure stuff to work the old way), but instead to really focus
on how to do things better and more easily, effectively helping you
shortcut the learning process that makes Windows 8 actually
extremely easy and efficient to use. First of all, some basic
terminology and "old way" of finding things so that I can take you
through Windows 8 in a way you have learned how to use Windows. As
Im sure you are aware, Windows 8 no longer has the "Start Button"
at the bottom left of the screen. Instead, Microsoft has the
"Windows 8 Style Menu" (that they formally called the Metro style
menu, until Microsoft was informed Metro Style was copyrighted, so
theyre just calling it the Windows 8 Style menu). This is the menu
that Windows comes up with.
If you are in the middle of an application (browser, Word, or
any other app) and you want to get back to the menu, on a tablet,
you press the "Home" button (usually a physical button on the
bottom middle of the tablet device) or from a keyboard system, you
press the "Windows-key."
The "start button" for the most part (the thing that gives you
access to the Control Panel, shutdown/restart, etc) is called the
"Charm" and it pops up on a touchscreen tablet when you swipe your
thumb from right to left on the right side of the screen (basically
swiping the charm menu out from the right edge and into your screen
of view). On a keyboard system, the charm menu pops up when you
move the move cursor all the way to the right bottom of the
screen.
From the charm menu, you can click on the top most icon
("search") and it shows you all of your applications installed
(this would be similar to doing a Start/All Programs in Windows 7).
Youll see the search bar (circled in red) and on the left you can
scroll through all of your apps.
When you search/find the app you want or simply just scroll
through the apps off this Charm/Search view, you can right-click
the application, and at the bottom of the screen you are given
options to Pin to Start, which adds the app to your Windows 8 Style
Menu (THIS is a good idea as it puts a shortcut on your main menu
screen so that every time you press the Home button or press the
Windows-key, your apps show up on the main menu). You can also Pin
to Start things like Control Panel, Command Prompt, Run, etc. I
usually Pin everything I
usually use/access to the Start which makes it easy for me to
just go back to the main Windows 8 style menu to launch my
apps!
Note: Youll also see when you right click an app, you can also
Pin to Taskbar (this pins to the old Windows 7 style taskbar at the
bottom of the "Desktop" screen). I used to Pin stuff to the
Taskbar, but now that more and more apps are coming out with
Windows 8 menu icons (like Office 2013, SkyDrive, Box.net, Real
Player, etc), I no longer find myself working from the older Win7
"taskbar." This is one of those crutches you can continue to use,
or just move into the 21st Century and start using the native
Windows 8 menu.
Note: Youll also see when you right click an app, at the bottom
of the screen you can choose to run the app as an Administrator,
uninstall the app, find the file/application location. These are
helpful "things" we used occasionally in Win7 in the past that you
now have shortcuts to run. Another option off the Charm Menu (when
you move your mouse cursor to the bottom right, or swipe your thumb
right to left off the right edge of a tablet) is the Settings
options (the bottom-most option on the charm)
when you click on Settings
this is where a LOT of common things are found, such as Control
Panel
Power (where you choose to shutdown/restart the
computer/device), Network (where you select the WiFi connection you
want to connect to), Change PC Settings (where you can change other
things that are not in the Control Panel like desktop background,
the photo you associate to your logon
add printers, etc).
Basically click on this Settings place and youll get to a lot of
things you may normally access for configuration. Okay, so with the
basics under your belt, heres where you learn to be a Windows 8
person and not a WinXP/Win7 person trying to run Windows 8. Instead
of moving your cursor to pop up the charm to then click on Search
to then find your application, or instead of moving your cursor to
pop up the charm to then click Settings to then go to the Control
Panelyou would do one of two things. If you are on a Tablet (or a
keyboard-based Win8 device), ADD all of your apps, control panel,
etc. to your Windows 8 style menu. Itll take you a couple minutes
to right click and "Pin to Start" all of your apps and utilities,
but once they are pinned, you will almost never have to go fiddle
with the charm thing. Youll just press the Home button (on a
tablet) or press the Windows key (on a keyboard-based system) and
from the menu, click/tap the app and you run the app. To "switch"
to another app, press the Home button or press the Windows key and
click/tap the other app you want to run. All apps stay in memory;
you just "toggle" between apps by simply pressing the Home button
or pressing the Windows key to get to your apps. Note: On a
keyboard system, you can still Alt-Tab between apps, so toggling
between apps is really easy. No more Start/Programs to get to
applications. No need to Charm/Settings/Control Panel to get to the
Control Panel if you simply pinned the Control Panel onto your
Windows 8 style main menu!
So what happens if you want to access an app that you did not
pin to your menu? On a keyboard-based system, at the Windows 8
Menu, just start typing a few letters of the app or function you
want to do, and the "search" starts working immediately. For
example, at the Windows 8 menu, if I start typing the letters
n-o-t-e-p, the search bar will appear in the upper right and itll
zero in on the Notepad application on the left. Assuming the app is
highlighted on the left, just press the Enter key any time and
it'll launch that app, no key clicking, nothing extra. If it pops
up several apps with n-o-t-e-p, then either keep typing to zero in
on "the app" you want and press Enter to launch, or you can arrow
around/tap-touch/click on the app name on the left side to select
"the app" you want. Fiddle with this, but effectively this is a
very quick way to launch apps that may not be on your Windows 8
menu (yet).
If I start typing w-o-r-d, if I have Microsoft Word on the
system, itll show me Word, or e-x-c-e-l will give me the option of
launching Excel. Or even things like p-r-i-n-t-e-r will pop up
under Settings the option for me to "Add a Printer," or n-e-t under
search settings will show me options like "Connect to a
Network."
Between Pinning things to Start and simply typing a few letters
of something, I can launch apps, run utils, add printers, and do
things on a Win8 system FASTER than what I thought was super
efficient in WinXP or Win7. This was the trick to making Windows 8
easy to use. Now that you have the navigation thing figured out, go
to the Windows Store and download "apps" for your most common
things you do, so things like there are Box.com apps, Acrobat
reader apps, Picture viewers, Real Media Player app, etc. Note:
When you are in the store looking for apps, as much as you can
scroll through the "Popular" apps or "Top free" apps it shows you
on screen, if you wanted to "search" for an app to download, it's
not intuitive how to search for an app. The way to search for an
app is when you are in the Store, pull up the "charm" thing (move
mouse to the bottom right, or on a tablet, swipe your right thumb
right to left to have the "charm" menu on the right side pop out
and then use the "search" function in the charm). So just as you
"searched" your apps earlier in this blog to find stuff on your
local computer, when you are in the Store app and do a search,
it'll now search for apps in the Store (ie: searching for Acrobat,
or Box, or Alarm Clock, or USA Today or the like).
When you install the app, it shows up on your Windows 8 Style
menu. Simply clicking the app launches the application. However,
from your Windows 8 Style menu, you might want to move your most
commonly used apps to the left side of your menu so they are
visible to you more frequently when you pop up the Windows 8 menu.
To move the app with a mouse/keyboard, just click and hold down the
mouse button down and drag" the app to the left. On a touch tablet,
you touch the app with your finger and then slide the app "down"
and then to the left. This took me a while to figure out as I
logically tried to push the app with my finger and immediately drag
to the left which would tend to just launch the app. The trick is
to touch the app with your finger, drag down a bit, then to the
left to move it around! Move any non-commonly used apps from the
left side over to the right side so they are out of your way. Many
times apps take up two spaces on the menu. I hate that. Id rather
have all of my apps as the small 1square wide icon. All you do is
right-click the app icon and at the bottom itll show you larger" or
"smaller" to make the icon a different size. Some have this option
to make small icons larger. Oddly, you cannot tag multiple icons
and make them all "Smaller" at the same time, you have to right
click and "make smaller" one by one. It
takes a few seconds to do, but buys you back more real estate on
your Windows 8 menu to get more apps 1 click away to run. (Note: if
you have a touch tablet, some of these first time configurations
are BEST off doing with a mouse. I would usually plug a USB mouse
into my tablet and run through some of these basic right-click
configuration things, or drag/drop icon things as it is a LOT
faster with a mouse. Everything "can" be done with your finger on a
touch screen; it's just not as efficient if you have a lot to
configure/setup). When you are in a Windows 8 app, you likely find
there are no application configuration options, settings, things
you can do with the app that you have in Windows XP or Windows 7
apps might have found as Tools/Options, or Options/Settings. With
Windows 8, apps typically DO have configuration settings, you just
have to know how to find them. Here's the trick, app settings are
in the Charm/Settings on Windows 8. Launch and sit in the Windows 8
application, and then with a touch tablet, swipe your right thumb
from right to left off the left edge of the tablet screen, and
press Settings; with a keyboard system, move your mouse cursor to
the bottom right to pull up the Charm menu, then click Settings.
With the Charm/Settings exposed, you'll see configuration settings
for that app!
Also, when you are in a Windows 8 application, there are
frequently more options when you "swipe down" from the top of the
tablet, or "swipe up" from the bottom of the tablet screen (or on a
keyboard-based system, you position your mouse cursor at the top of
the screen where a bar appears, or you move the mouse cursor at the
top of the screen and right-click). As an example, when I'm in the
Internet Explorer in Windows 8 and want to have the Address Bar
appear, or I want to switch between IE "tabs", things like the
below pop up and give you additional application options...
For applications on your Windows 8 menu, theres also this thing
called "Live Tile," in which the icon changes screens, like the way
the CNN news live tile shows you the latest news and flips through
things, or the Photos "Live Tile" flips through your pictures. You
can turn Live Tile off (again, right click the icon, choose to turn
Live Tile on/off). I find it annoying to have the thing flip
through stuff when I dont remember what icon is what, but it's
really your call.
To flip through running apps, you can Alt-Tab from a
keyboard-based system, or from either a mouse or touch tablet, move
the cursor to the upper left hand corner and little tiles of the
running apps show in the left margin of the screen. You can
right-click and "close" any of those running apps. I used to close
apps all the time as Im old school and after running an app and
dont need it anymore, I close it. But after a while, I just leave
the apps running. They dont take up processing power and with 4-8GB
of RAM in my systems these days I have plenty of memory. Every now
and then I reboot my device/tablet/system but on occasion, and I
will run my finger to the upper left and choose apps to close.
And a hidden thing in the bottom left corner of the screen is a
"start"-type button thing that when right clicked will show you a
list of common tasks like Event Viewer, Disk Management, Command
Prompt, Task Manager, Control Panel, Windows Explorer, Run, etc.
It's sometimes helpful to use that, although these days with most
stuff on my Windows 8 Menu or I just type a few letters, I dont
bother with these various other menu things, but just FYI
Logging Out of a system is done by click on your name from the
Windows 8 Style menu as shown in the Figure here:
To shutdown or restart the computer, you can navigate the menus
(like Charm, Settings, Shutdown), or what I did was create a
Windows 8 style menu "app" that I simply click thatll shut down my
computer. You effectively create a "shortcut" on the "desktop" and
then you "Pin to Start." Thatll add the shortcut to your Windows 8
menu. Heres what it looks like: 1) From the Windows 8 menu, click
Desktop to switch to the old Windows 7 style desktop 2) Right click
on the desktop and choose New | Shortcut 3) When prompted for the
Location of the item, enter in c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe /p
as shown below, then click Next
4) For the name of the Shortcut, type in something like
Shutdown, then click Finish 5) Right click on the shortcut that is
on your desktop and choose Pin to Start
You now have an icon on your Windows 8 menu that allows you to
shutdown your system with a single click. You can change the
command syntax in #3 above to restart the computer by making that
c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe /r or /h at the end (instead of
/r) will hibernate a system. Oh, and one more thing - so once I
tricked out my Windows 8 menu with all of the icons I wanted, how
do I transfer my icons, menu items, etc. to other systems?
Microsoft came out with this thing called the User Experience
Virtualization (UE-V) that is the new generation of "roaming
profiles." However, unlike roaming profiles of the past where
EVERYTHING was moved from system to system whether you wanted it or
not (ie: registry settings, apps, icons, junk on your desktop,
etc), with UE-V profiles, you can specifically just note to "roam"
your Windows 8 menu. Microsoft did a case study on my organizations
experience with UE-V [link download]. More information on UE-V is
available on the Microsoft site. UE-V isnt free; its part of what
Microsoft calls its Desktop Optmization Pack (MDOP) that includes a
bunch of other tools like RemoteApp, App-V (application
virtualization), VDI, etc. Any case, you might find your
organization owns MDOP as part of the Software Assurance for
Windows client licensing, and if so, explore UE-V where you can
roam your Win8 menu from your desktop, to your laptop, to your
tablet, to your VDI guest session, to your Remote Desktop (terminal
server) guest session, etc. Hopefully, this is a place to start. I
REALLY fought the whole Windows 8 menu thing for a long time, even
filed several "bug reports" during the early adopter program noting
that the whole Windows 8 menu was a major "bug," although with a
bunch of these tips and tricks Ive noted in this article, I think
youll find this whole Windows 8 menu thing to actually be a LOT
easier to use and definitely faster than having to fiddle through a
bunch of menus. Several other postings Ive done on Windows Server
2012, Exchange 2013, Intune, System Center, etc. Just click the
Next Article or Previous Article buttons on this blog post to get
to other articles Ive covered, or click here to see a listing of
all of the various blog posts Ive done over the years. Hopefully
this information is helpful!
Rand Morimoto is the President of Convergent Computing, an early
adopter partner of Microsoft that put Windows Server 2012 in
production environments over 18 months before the product release.
Rand is also the author of the book "Windows Server 2012
Unleashed," over 1565-pages of tips, tricks, best practices, and
lessons learned on Windows 2012; "Exchange Server 2013 Unleashed,"
"System Center 2012 Unleashed," etc., all by Sams Publishing.