Paul Thurrott - Windows 8 Secrets

Figure 5-5:Choosing apps that can run in the background while your PC is locked and provide you with very simple status updates

Generally speaking, it makes sense to configure icons for apps like Mail, which will show you how many new e-mail messages you’ve received, and Messaging, which will likewise show you how many instant messages you’ve missed.

We typically choose Calendar for this purpose, as it will provide information about the next scheduled event right on the lock screen. But other apps can be useful this way, too, like Weather.

• Lock screen app with detailed status updates:While the seven notification icons noted previously are somewhat useful, Windows 8 also provides for a single app to provide you with more detailed status updates.

Of course, you may not be a fan of the lock screen, and this will be especially true of the many, many people using Windows 8 on a traditional desktop PC. If this is the case, you can simply disable the lock screen.

To disable the lock screen, you’ll need to run the Local Group Policy Editor, an old-school management interface that’s been in Windows for years but hidden so that normal users don’t stumble across it by mistake. To find the Local Group Policy Editor, use Start Search, and search for gpedit.msc ; it will pop up in the Apps list and resemble Figure 5-6 when running.

In the leftmost pane of this console, navigate to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Control Panel, and then Personalization. When you do, the application will resemble Figure 5-7.

Double-click the entry titled “Do not display the lock screen” and then select Enabled in the window that appears. Click OK to close that window, and then close the Local Group Policy Editor. The change will take effect immediately.

Figure 5-6:Local Group Policy Editor

Figure 5-7:There it is: a way to disable the lock screen.

Now, when you restart the PC, you’ll bypass the lock screen entirely and be presented with the sign-in screen instead. Likewise, when you lock the PC (Winkey + L), you’ll go immediately to the sign-in screen, not the lock screen.

The Start screen is unique for many reasons. As the new default user interface for Windows 8 and the place by which you will launch and, via their live tile updates, monitor your running apps, it’s the central dashboard that many users will face, literally, each day. Not surprisingly, it offers a number of useful customizations. Oddly, however, these customizations can occur through two interfaces. That is, some of the customizations occur through PC Settings, as with other Metro features. But some occur directly from within the Start screen itself.

If you navigate to PC Settings, Personalize, Start screen, you’ll see the interface shown in Figure 5-8. From here, you can choose the theme that is applied to the Start screen, a combination of background pattern, accent color, and background color.

If you’re not a fan of the background patterns, you can thankfully choose no pattern, which is the final square in the grid of pattern squares. What you can’t do is choose an arbitrary combination of accent and background colors. Instead, Microsoft has chosen combinations that it thinks work well together. For example, if you like a dark purple background color, your only accent color options are two shades of light purple. You’ll find that the gray backgrounds tend to have the most accent color choices for whatever reason.

Figure 5-8:Start screen theme selection

Windows 8 ships with a default selection of live tiles, and of course PC makers can add their own. And as you install Metro-style apps and traditional Windows applications, more tiles will be added to the Start screen so that, over time, it becomes a mess of useful and non-useful tiles alike. Fortunately, you can configure which tiles appear on the Start screen.

• Remove a tile:To remove a tile, you must first select it. This is most easily done with a mouse, where a simple right-click is all that’s required. But it can be done via touch, of course, and far less easily via the keyboard, too. With touch, you must perform a short downward swipe on the tile to select it. With the keyboard, use the arrow keys to navigate to the tile in question—you’ll see a selection rectangle as you go—and then press the spacebar on the appropriate tile.

However you do it, when you select a tile on the Start screen, you will see that an app bar like the one in Figure 5-9 appears. This bar includes an Unpin from Start button: Just select that option to remove the tile.

Figure 5-9:Selecting a tile on the Start screen

You can also select multiple tiles at once. To do so, simply select one tile and then perform the same selection action—based on whichever input type you prefer—on other tiles in sequence. You can arbitrarily select as many tiles as you’d like and then unpin them all at once.

• Add a tile:You can also add a tile to the Start screen. There are two methods for doing so.

Various items can be pinned to the Start screen, such as Metro-style apps; Windows desktop applications; File Explorer and various Explorer-based locations, including folders, libraries, and the like; and websites.

From the Start screen, you can search for the item you wish to pin. To do so, just start typing and Start Search will appear. For example, if you wish to pin WordPad to the Start screen, type wordpad in Start Search. Then, as shown in Figure 5-10, right-click (or otherwise select) WordPad in the search results and choose Pin to Start.

Figure 5-10:Pinning a new application or app to the Start screen

You can also pin some items from the Windows desktop environment. Some desktop icons—like Recycle Bin, Computer, Network, and similar—can be pinned: Just right-click one on the desktop and choose Pin to Start. You can do the same for libraries, the homegroup, and various folders from within File Explorer as well. For example, in Figure 5-11, you can see that Pin to Start is an option when you right-click any location in the Explorer navigation bar.

Figure 5-11:Pinning from the desktop

Adding and removing tiles is nice, but of course most people will also want to arrange tiles on the Start screen so that they appear in the order they prefer. This is obviously possible, as is the ability to group icons into visually segregated groups.