Paul Thurrott - Windows 8 Secrets

To perform a right-click with a touch-based screen, tap the item and drag down a bit.

You can perform a variety of actions on the icons in the search results. For example, to launch the application or app, simply click or tap it. But you can perform many more actions if you right-click one of the items in the search results list: When you do, a new app bar will appear providing the additional options, as in Figure 3-18.

What you see here will vary according to the type of item you select. But some of the more common options include the following:

• Pin/Unpin from Start:This option lets you pin a tile for the application or app to the Start screen. If it’s already pinned, you can unpin it.

Figure 3-17:Applications and Metro-style apps mixed in the search results

• Pin/Unpin from taskbar:This option lets you pin a desktop-type application to the taskbar on the desktop (or reverse that effect for an item that is already pinned there).

• Open new window:This option is applicable to Windows Explorer and it lets you open a new Explorer window. (The same as typing Winkey + E.)

• Open file location:This option is available only to desktop-type applications and it opens a new Explorer window in the location in which the application can be found.

Why is this called “Run as administrator” when most Windows 8 users will most certainly be using an administrator account anyway? It’s just an unfortunate artifact from the past. What it really means is, “Run under an elevated security context.”

• Run as administrator:This option, which is also only available to desktop-type applications, lets you run the application within an elevated security context. (You’ll be prompted with a User Account Control dialog to authenticate or confirm this option.)

• Uninstall:This option lets you uninstall the app. Note that it works only for Metro-style apps; you uninstall classic Windows desktop applications as you did before (using the Programs and Features control panel).

Figure 3-18:The Search results app bar provides more options.

Of course, Start Search isn’t just for applications. You can also filter the view for settings (a combination of PC Settings and control panels), files, and individual apps.

To filter the search results for settings, type your search and then tap the Settings item in the search pane on the right. As you can see in Figure 3-19, the search results will filter to show only the relevant PC Settings and control panels.

Figure 3-19:Search results showing settings

This interface is a bit different from the search results list for apps: The PC Settings choices appear first and are segregated from the control panels. And there are no right-click options to be had. You can only tap the item you wish to access. PC Settings items will launch the appropriate screen in Windows 8’s new PC Settings interface (which is described in a moment), while control panels will open in a window over the Windows desktop as in previous Windows versions.

To filter the search results for files, type your search and then tap the Files item in the search pane. As Figure 3-20 shows, this reveals yet another take on the search results view, where the files on your PC that match the search term can be further filtered by documents, pictures, music, videos, or others.

Figure 3-20:Search results showing files

You can also redirect this search type across your homegroup, meaning that the files on other PCs on your home network will be included in the search results, too. To do so, tap the Files header and select Homegroup from the short menu that appears.

As with settings search results, there are no additional (right-click) options for files search results.

The ability to search within Metro-style apps is of course app-specific, and thus something we’ll discuss as appropriate throughout this book. But it’s worth noting that this feature is a key advantage of the new underlying software platform in Windows 8: As with many other key Metro features, apps can utilize this useful capability fairly easy and thus extend the way that Windows 8 works.

Windows 8 supports a new low-level feature called Contracts that works much like Copy and Paste does in that the applications (or, in this case, apps) on either end of the sequence—those that are participating in the contract—don’t need to know anything about the other. That is, they only need to support the appropriate contract. One of the most common is the Share contract, which lets one app share information with another.

A contract, of course, is a two-way street, with one app initiating the operation, or “sending” the share request, and the other completing the operation by “accepting” it. So while you are able to share information between many Metro-style apps using the Share contract, most will only support one end of the contract. That is, they will send, or they will receive.

The canonical example of such a transaction is the web: You’re browsing around your favorite website one morning and come across an article that you simply must share with someone else. In the days before Windows 8 and Metro, this kind of sharing would have occurred in two fairly limited ways. Either the browser would have been specifically designed (or “hard-coded”) to facilitate the sharing of web pages (perhaps via e-mail or a social networking service like Facebook) or a third-party developer would have written a browser add-on, or extension, to add that capability to the browser.

Either would work. But both solutions are specific to that one browser. If you decide to use a different web browser, you’re out of luck. And if you want to share via a service or other mechanism that’s not supported by the browser you use—perhaps one that’s not been invented yet—you’re equally out of luck.

In Windows 8, Metro-style apps simply need to support the Share charm. They can support initiating a share action, and they can separately (or only) support receiving a share action. The Metro-style version of Internet Explorer 10, Microsoft’s web browser, supports initiating a share action, so you can share web pages with others. But it doesn’t need to know which app you’re using to share that page. And that’s because any number of apps support receiving the share. One that’s included in Windows 8 is the Mail app: You can use this app to share a page from IE 10 via e-mail, as shown in Figure 3-21. But as time goes on, many other apps will appear that will let you share web pages via other means, such as with different social networks.

This capability means that Windows 8 will get better over time without Microsoft needing to update the OS itself. Third-party developers will extend the system’s abilities by implementing the Share contract, and by doing so will make Windows 8, and many other apps that run within it, better than they were before.

Figure 3-21:Sharing a web page from Internet Explorer, with Mail.