Paul Thurrott - Windows 8 Secrets

• Start Search:From the Start screen, open the app search experience. This can be done by swiping in from the right edge of the screen and choosing Search from the Charms bar. (Alternatively, press Winkey + Q, or activate the Charms bar and choose Search with the mouse.) From this interface, type the name of the app you wish to uninstall until it becomes obvious in the filtered app list.

Whichever method you’re using—the Start screen, All Apps, or Start Search—to uninstall an app you must select it first. This is done on a touch interface by tapping and holding and then dragging down until a selection border appears (Start screen tile) or the app tile is color-selected (All Apps, Start Search), and the app bar appears. With a mouse, simply right-click the tile. Keyboard selection is a bit trickier and less common, but you can use the arrows keys to highlight the correct tile or app, and then press Ctrl + Space to select it.

Figure 6-30 shows what a selected Start screen tile looks like.

Figure 6-30:A selected tile on the Start screen

Wherever you make this selection—from the Start screen, All apps view, or from Search, you will see an Uninstall choice in the app bar. To uninstall the app, simply select this button. As you can see in Figure 6-31, you will be prompted with a pop-up window and informed that Metro-style app uninstall is a complete wipe: not just the app but its data is removed from the PC.

Figure 6-31:Are you sure you want to uninstall that app?

To do this, move the mouse cursor to the upper- or lower-right corner of the screen and then move the cursor along the right edge of the screen toward the center. It’s a bit more natural to perform than it is to describe.

Like other Metro-style apps, Windows Store provides a simple Settings interface, and it is through this interface that you can access your account settings and other store-related preferences. Likewise, accessing this interface occurs as it does in other Metro experiences, through the Settings pane. You can access this pane from within Windows Store by typing Winkey + I, by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, or by using the mouse to enable the Charms bar and then choosing Settings.

The Windows Store settings pane is shown in Figure 6-32.

Figure 6-32:Windows Store settings

Click App updates to manually check for app updates.

While the Preferences option may seem to be the most relevant, it leads to a screen with only two configurable choices—Make it easier to find apps in my preferred languages (which is enabled by default) and Make it easier to find apps that include accessibility features (which is not). Instead, click Your account. When you do, you’ll see a full-screen interface like that in Figure 6-33.

Figure 6-33:Your account

From here, you can configure some useful settings related to Windows Store. These include the following:

• Your store account:You can sign out of your current account and use a different account for store activities.

• Payment and billing information:Windows Store uses the credit card information that is registered with your Microsoft account for purchases by default, so this option is generally set to No. However, if you’d prefer to manually sign in to your Microsoft account every time a purchase is made for security reasons, you can make that change here.

• Your registered PCs (and devices):When you install any app (paid, free, trial) on a PC or device, it is added to the list of 5 PCs/devices to which you can install apps. These apps, of course, and the 5 PCs/devices list, are tied to your Microsoft account. Via this interface, you can remove a PC/device from the list of your registered PCs and devices, as shown in Figure 6-34. Doing so will prevent those apps from running on the deselected PC/device going forward.

Figure 6-34:Removing a PC from your list of registered PCs and devices

With Windows Store, you can feel secure that Microsoft’s curated app store will provide you with the best possible experience, one that bridges the gap between the insecure Wild West of Google’s Android platform and the overly controlling and nonintegrated Apple App Store. This best-of-both-worlds experience draws on the lessons Microsoft learned from Windows Phone Marketplace, as well.

Using the store is a breeze, thanks to its intuitive, Metro-style UI, logical category-based organization, and a plethora of app discovery and feedback tools. You can use Windows Store to find, download, try, and buy Metro-style apps, and then update them with new features as needed. Only app uninstall occurs outside the store, and that’s a simple process that won’t litter your PC with leftover files and registry entries.

With this experience under your belt, you can begin further exploring Windows 8’s rich app landscape. And in the remainder of this section of the book, you’ll do just that, as you examine Internet Explorer 10 and the various productivity and entertainment apps that make this OS the best Windows yet.

• Understanding the relationship between the two versions of Internet Explorer that ship with Windows 8

• Using the Metro-style version of Internet Explorer

• Configuring IE 10 Metro

• Using the Desktop version of Internet Explorer

• Configuring IE 10 desktop

• Knowing when to use which browser

• Understanding the weird interaction between IE 10 desktop, IE 10 Metro, and third-party browsers

In keeping with the dual user experience nature of Windows 8 itself, Microsoft has reimagined Internet Explorer—and, really, web browsing in general as well—in this new operating system, creating a fascinating, dual-mode version of the most-frequently used Windows application. Internet Explorer 10 is, in many ways, the poster child for this Windows 8-based vision of the future, offering both a Metro-style user experience and a more traditional, desktop-based web browser version as well.

It’s a model that other web browser makers, and perhaps other application makers, will emulate in their own solutions. But because web browsers play such a special role in Windows, having both Metro-style and traditional browsers available comes with some unique new constraints as well. So this chapter explores these changes, as well as the new features of both versions of Internet Explorer 10.

How you view Internet Explorer 10 will depend greatly on how you view Windows 8 and its two separate user experiences. That’s because, like Windows 8 itself, Internet Explorer 10 offers two faces to the world: a full-screen, Metro-style version of the browser and a more traditional, desktop-based version.