Paul Thurrott - Windows 8 Secrets

• Touch:To display the Charms on a multi-touch screen, swipe in to the left from the right edge of the screen.

As you can see, there are five items, or “charms”, in the Charms bar. They are as follows:

Search:This charm provides easy access to the system-wide search functionality in Windows 8. It’s context-sensitive, so if you tap it from the Start screen or Windows desktop, it will trigger the new Start Search experience, which lets you find apps (and applications), settings, and files on your PC. But if you access this charm from within an app, you will instead search that app. For example, you can use this to search for e-mail from within the Mail app.

We discuss Search in the next section of this chapter.

• Share:Via this unique charm, you can share what’s on-screen with others using another Metro-style app. Like many of the other charms, including Search, this functionality is tied to a new, low-level capability in Windows 8 called contracts, in this case the Share contract. And any Metro-style app can implement this contract to send and/or receive share requests.

Share doesn’t work at all from the Start screen (or the desktop) since these interfaces have nothing to share. To use Share, you need to be using a Metro-style app first.

We discuss Share in more detail a bit later in the chapter.

• Start:This charm, which is color-coded to the accent color in the Metro theme you chose, simply emulates the Windows key or Windows key button. That is, it will navigate to the Start screen from any other Metro-based experience or the desktop. But if you’re already on the Start screen, you’ll return to the previous experience you were using.

• Devices:Like most charms, Devices is also context-sensitive, so what you see here will be determined by two things: which compatible devices are attached to (or included in) your PC or device and what you’re doing at the time. The Device charm is most often used to access a printer or, for those with two or more screens, to determine how the secondary screens are used.

We discuss the Devices charm, and Windows 8’s support for hardware peripherals, later in the chapter.

Keyboard users can more quickly open the Settings pane by tapping Winkey + I.

• Settings:Another context-sensitive charm, Settings provides an interesting array of features. At the top of the Settings pane that appears, shown in Figure 3-12, you’ll see links to settings that pertain to the current view, which could be the Start screen, a Metro-style app, or the desktop environment. But at the bottom, you will find links to settings that are always available, from any of those experiences.

Figure 3-12:Settings pane

From the Start screen, you’ll see a Tile settings link that provides a short list of settings for the Start screen. These include whether to show administrative tools on the Start screen and a button for clearing personal information from the tiles.

From within an app, you’ll see different settings depending on the app. For this reason, we examine app settings in the respective chapters throughout this book.

The grid of settings icons you see at the bottom of the Settings pane is perhaps the most interesting bit here.

The Network icon provides access to your PC’s networking connections, discussed in Chapter 13.

You can also change the volume using hardware keys, either on your device (volume buttons are common on modern tablets, for example) or via your keyboard, where some PC makers are reassigning function keys to control the volume.

The Volume icon provides a way to change the system volume using a slider that appears when the icon is clicked, as in Figure 3-13.

Figure 3-13:Adjusting the volume

The screen brightness icon similarly provides a way to control the brightness of the screen on compatible devices. (Generally, it will be available on portable machines but not on desktop computers.)

Notifications lets you determine whether notifications, described a bit later in the chapter, are globally on or disabled (“hidden”) for some period of time so you can get work completed without interruption.

Power toggles between the power states Sleep, Shutdown, and Restart, meaning that it’s a fairly important control (see Figure 3-14). You may recall that you would perform these operations in Windows 7 from the Start menu. But with the Start button and menu missing in Windows 8, Microsoft opted to put this functionality in a location that would be accessible from anywhere in the system, whether you were using the Start screen, a Metro-style app, or the desktop. So here it is.

Figure 3-14:Power options

The keyboard icon lets you switch between the different keyboard language layouts your PC or device supports. For most, this will be just one, such as US English, but Windows 8 is the first version of Microsoft’s flagship OS in which every single product edition—Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise, and Windows RT—supports switching languages on the fly using Language Packs. So now everyone can get their multilingual game on.

Finally, take note of the More PC Settings link at the bottom of the Settings pane. PC Settings is the Metro-style replacement for the Control Panel—though to be fair, you’ll still be accessing various control panels, too, as you’ll see throughout this book—and as such, it’s pretty darned important. We look at PC Settings in depth in Chapter 5.

Start Menu Search was one of the best features in Windows 7, and its successor, simply called Start Search, is even better in Windows 8, or at least it will be once you get used to the new full-screen interface. If you weren’t familiar with Start Menu Search, it worked like this: You would tap the Start button (or hit Winkey on your keyboard) and just start typing the name of the application, document, or control panel you needed to find. As you typed, the search results would appear, inline within the Start Menu. This can be seen in Figure 3-15.

Figure 3-15:Windows 7’s Start Menu Search

Of course, Windows 8 doesn’t have a Start menu. But it does still offer searching capabilities. And it works exactly the same way: From any Metro-style app or the Windows desktop, just tap Start (or Winkey) and start typing. If you’re already viewing the Start screen, it’s even easier: Just start typing.

When you do, the new full-screen Search experience appears as shown in Figure 3-16. And while it may look a bit balky at first, it’s actually really powerful: It can help you find new Metro-style apps, Windows desktop applications, various PC Settings or desktop-type control panels, and files. And as you’ll see, it can even search within (Metro-style) apps! It really puts Windows 7 Start Menu Search to shame.

Figure 3-16:Windows 8’s new Start Search

By default, Start Search will provide search results for Apps, which is really a combination of new, Metro-style apps and old-school, desktop-type applications. As you can see in Figure 3-17, telling the difference between the two is a bit subtle, but Metro-style apps typically have solid-colored, square, tile-like icons while older, desktop-type applications have the more familiar, old-school icons.