Paul Thurrott - Windows 8 Secrets

You can access the Frequent list, as the list of frequently accessed sites is called, and your pinned sites—but not your Favorites—simply by selecting the address bar. This navigation list display is shown in Figure 7-11.

Figure 7-11:Frequent and Pinned sites are available when you just select the address bar.

Tabs provide a convenient way to access multiple websites from the same browser window. And IE Metro, as a modern mobile web browser, offers decent tab functionality. As noted earlier, you can access the new tab switcher by using the top or bottom edge UI (or the Winkey + Z shortcut) and manage tabs from there. But your old tab skills work as well. You can use Ctrl + T to open a new tab, for example, and Ctrl + W to close one.

Internet Explorer Metro also provides access to InPrivate tabs, special tabs whose browser history will not be recorded as you go, providing a sense of privacy. InPrivate Browsing is available via a button in the tab switcher, but you can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + P. However you choose to engage this feature, you’ll see a display similar to that in Figure 7-12, indicating that InPrivate Browsing is on and you’re safe.

Figure 7-12:InPrivate Browsing keeps your browsing history private.

You can switch between open tabs most easily with the keyboard: The Ctrl + Tab keyboard shortcut from desktop IE works identically in IE Metro.

If you’ve ever used a mobile browser before, you know that most support a cool, touch-based system in which you pinch the screen or double-tap the screen to zoom in to and out of specific areas of a web page. Not surprisingly, IE Metro supports these gestures too. And they make a big difference in the way you’ll read many web pages.

Consider a typically busy website like the one shown in Figure 7-13. While it is possible to read such a site on larger screens, the text is small and hard to read with smaller displays like those on a slate-based device.

Figure 7-13:Modern websites are often difficult to read on portable devices like those running Windows 8.

Internet Explorer 10 for Metro offers two ways to cut through the clutter. First, you can double-tap the screen to zoom in to the area you tapped, such as a column of text. This will resemble the screen shown in Figure 7-14.

To reverse the effect, just double-tap the screen again.

Surprisingly, these features are touch-only. There’s no way to pinch or double-tap zoom with the keyboard or mouse.

The second and arguably even more fun effect involves pinching the screen to zoom arbitrarily. Simply pinch the screen with two fingers to zoom out, and then “reverse the pinch” to zoom back in.

Actually, there’s a third way. If you’d prefer to change the screen zoom permanently, you can configure IE Metro to do so. Please refer to the section “Configuring IE 10 Metro,” later in this chapter, for details.

While IE Metro utilizes the same Download folder as the desktop version, the download experience is, naturally, a bit different. This browser utilizes a pane just above the navigation bar, asking whether you’d like to Run, Save, or Cancel the downloadable file. This is shown in Figure 7-15

Figure 7-14:You can zoom in to a text column or other on-screen area by double-tapping it.

Figure 7-15:The file download experience

You may be familiar with this process on the desktop version of IE, which offers advanced save options—Save and run, and Save as—in addition to the choices offered in IE Metro. But as it turns out, the Save option in IE Metro is identical to Save and run on desktop IE. That is, IE Metro will prompt you to run a downloaded file—assuming it passed the SmartScreen security screening—as shown in Figure 7-16.

All files downloaded through the Metro environment are automatically scanned before you’re allowed to open them.

Figure 7-16:You’re prompted to run files downloaded from IE Metro.

Searching the web from a web browser has evolved over the years, with desktop versions of Internet Explorer first offering a dedicated search box and then integrating search directly into the address bar. In the Metro-style version of Internet Explorer, this capability has been refined yet again: This browser uses the integrated Search contract capabilities of Windows 8 to provide Internet search capabilities.

So you perform a search just as you do in any other Metro-style app: Open the search pane from the Charms bar and start typing.

Here’s how:

• Touch:Swipe in from the right side of the screen to open the Charms bar and then tap Search.

• Mouse:Move the mouse cursor into the top right or bottom right of the screen and then move the cursor along the right edge of the screen; then, click Search.

• Keyboard:Press Winkey + Q to open the search pane.

However you do it, the search pane will resemble Figure 7-17.

Figure 7-17:To trigger an Internet search from IE Metro, you must use the search pane.

As we explained in Chapter 3, the Search contract that backs this functionality is available system-wide in Windows 8 to any Metro experiences that choose to support it. And many do: This interface is used to search for Metro-style apps, classic Windows applications, settings and control panels, and files, as well as many different Metro-style apps—including, as it turns out, Internet Explorer Metro.

Here are a few things to note about this functionality.

First, the default search engine is Bing. This choice is inherited from the desktop version of Internet Explorer and is extremely laborious to change. If you simply want to perform a one-time search via Google, or some other service, you’re better off navigating to that service’s website manually.

Okay, so you really want to change the search provider? Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Here are the hoops you need to jump through:

First, open the desktop version of Internet Explorer, as you can’t change search providers using IE Metro. Now open the Tools menu by clicking the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the window (or type Alt + T); then, click Manage Add-ons. This opens the Manage Add-ons window.

On the left, click Search Providers, then drill down to your preferred search service on the right; then, click the Set as default button.