Paul Thurrott - Windows 8 Secrets

Figure 3-1:It’s not your father’s Windows.

In Windows 3.x, Program Manager was the shell. And in Windows 95, you could still run Program Manager as an application if you wanted to. So Microsoft making the new and old available simultaneously is not unprecedented.

Oddly enough, however, the familiar desktop and Explorer interfaces are still present in Windows 8, though in keeping with the “everything is new again” approach in this release, even Windows Explorer has been renamed, to File Explorer. This lets you switch back and forth between the new shell, along with its apps and experiences, and the old shell, with its own applications. You can even run both environments, Metro and the desktop, side by side in very limited ways, as you’ll see later in this chapter.

Regardless of which version of Windows you’re talking about, the shell is both the look and feel of this OS—the user interface or experience—and the part of Windows that controls how things look and work. It is responsible for the controls—buttons, windows, tabs, and so on—that make up the environment as well as their behaviors.

Replacing the Windows shell is a big step, and this fact alone should signal that Windows 8 is a major release of the operating system since, after all, the last time Microsoft swapped out the shell was in 1995. But we’re making the case that Windows 8 represents the biggest change to Windows in the history of the product line. And that’s because Microsoft is not only swapping out the shell, but it’s also swapping out the underpinnings of Windows, or the runtime engine, as well as the APIs that developers use to write Windows apps. And this is the first time in history that the company has ever done all of that in a single release.

The new runtime engine is called, logically enough, Windows Runtime, or WinRT. This engine provides the system’s platform for applications (or, in this case, “apps”), and it mostly replaces Win32, which was (and still is) the basis for desktop-based applications. (Under the hood, WinRT does access some Win32 functionality that’s still missing in WinRT.) Win32 debuted in Windows NT in 1993. (And even that was just a 32-bit conversion of the then-current Windows runtime, which was retroactively renamed to Win16.)

But you don’t need a history lesson to know that Windows 8 is different. It hits you right in the face the first time you use it, and as you can see in its new lock screen, the Start screen and its apps, and the pervasive Metro-style user experiences, there’s a lot that’s new here. And that’s what this chapter is all about.

When you boot the computer or wake it up from Sleep, you’ll be presented with the new lock screen, a full-screen Metro-style experience that is basically new to Windows 8 and visually sits on top of the sign-in screen where you select a user account and optionally provide a password.

As you can see in Figure 3-2, the lock screen looks and works much as it does on a smartphone OS like Windows Phone. It provides a nice photographic background image, the time and date, and a number of status notifications, most of which are icons.

Figure 3-2:The Windows 8 lock screen

Virtually every aspect of this lock screen can be customized, and it provides what Microsoft calls a “glance and go” interface where you can glance at the screen even when the system is locked—indicated by the presence of the lock screen—and see information that is useful, such as the date and time and your next upcoming appointment.

We describe customizing the lock screen in Chapter 5 Summary While Windows 8 provides most of the same customization and personalization functionality from previous Windows versions, it also includes new capabilities. These extend from the expected Metro-based enhancements to new desktop customization features and, perhaps most interestingly, some features that make the Metro and desktop environments work better together. Now that you understand the basics of using both of these environments, and how to meld them to your needs, it’s time to learn more about the Metro apps that make Windows 8 so special. .

To bypass the lock screen, tap any key (such as Enter), or click the mouse. Or, on a touch-based system, swipe up from the bottom of the screen as you do with Windows Phone. When you do, you’ll be presented with the sign-in screen similar to the one shown in Figure 3-3.

Figure 3-3:The Windows 8 sign-in screen

This screen will vary somewhat based on how many user accounts you’ve configured on the PC, but the first time you use Windows 8, you’ll just see the one account you configured during Setup.

To sign in to Windows, enter your password and tap Enter. If you’re using a touch-based system, you can do so using the on-screen keyboard, as shown in Figure 3-4.

You can also choose accessibility options from the Ease of Access button in the lower-left of the screen, or Sleep, Shut down, or Restart the PC using the button in the lower right of the screen. If you don’t do anything, the lock screen will reappear after a short period of time.

Figure 3-4:The on-screen keyboard

If you have not configured your user account with a password, and have only the one account configured on the PC, you will bypass the sign-in screen and proceed directly to the Start screen, as described in the next section. Don’t do this. We strongly recommend configuring all user accounts with passwords for what we assume are obvious security reasons.

You can lock the PC at any time by typing Winkey + L. Note that this keyboard shortcut will lock the screen without any confirmation request. It’s immediate.

In Windows 7 and previous Windows versions, applications were said to run “on” or “within” the Windows desktop since that is how they visually appeared, and because the desktop provided different user interfaces for managing and launching applications and performing other system-level tasks.

In Windows 8, these activities are performed from the new Start screen. As you can see in Figure 3-5, this screen is decidedly different from the old Windows desktop.

Figure 3-5:The Start screen

The Start screen is what’s called a Metro-style user experience. That is, it employs the techniques of a new “design language” at Microsoft that is guiding the look and feel of many of the software giant’s core platforms, including Windows, Windows Server, Windows Phone, Xbox, and Office. And while we don’t want to get too bogged down in designer talk, it’s worth noting a few general tenets of these interfaces, since they’re so pervasive in Windows 8.

• Typography and white space:Metro-based user experiences feature beautiful typography, often surrounded by lots of white space. This is a very different approach than with typical technology interfaces, which tend to overwhelm users with obscure rows or grids of icons, buttons, and other on-screen elements.