Paul Thurrott - Windows 8 Secrets

Windows Reader also works with Microsoft’s aborted XPS document format.

After fighting against the tide of Adobe’s popular PDF document format for years, Microsoft has finally given in and created its own Windows PDF reader app. Dubbed Windows Reader, this great little app works as expected and is a lightweight and fast alternative to Adobe’s bloated Reader application, even for those who prefer to stick largely with desktop applications.

Windows Reader presents a very simple full-screen interface, like many Metro-style apps, but some interesting features are revealed, as always, by activating the app bar (Winkey + Z, swipe toward the center of the screen from the top or bottom edge, or right-click anywhere). Windows Reader is shown in Figure 8-54 with its app bar displayed.

Figure 8-54:Windows Reader with its app bar displayed

Windows Reader provides the following features related to PDF document viewing:

• Zoom:In any of the available view styles, you can zoom in and out to better see the document. Zooming works as it does elsewhere in Metro: Via pinching on touch-based systems, with Ctrl + - (zoom out) and Ctrl + + (zoom in) keyboard shortcuts, or by holding down the Ctrl key and using your mouse’s scroll wheel.

Zoom out enough and you’ll see a nice thumbnail view.

• View styles: The Two pages, One page, and Continuous buttons in the Reader app bar work like toggles so that only one can be on at a time. In Two pages view, Reader will display two pages of the current document side by side. In One page view, only one whole page will be seen at a time and you must use the app’s navigational controls (discussed next) to move from page to page. In Continuous view, only one whole page will be seen at a time, but you can scroll through the document continuously, with the start of the next page being visually attached to the end of the current page.

• Navigation:In Two pages and One page view, you can swipe left and right, use the left and right arrow keys, or click the pop-up navigational controls that appear to move through the document.

In Continuous view, navigation works differently. That is, instead of behaving like a standard Metro-style app with horizontal navigation, it behaves like a traditional document-based Windows application and utilizes vertical navigation instead. In this mode, you can move through the document by swiping up and down, by using the up and down arrow keys, or by utilizing the scroll bars that appear on the right side of the application.

• Find:By using the Find button in Reader’s app bar, you can search for text within the current document. This interface supplies Previous and Next buttons so you can find individual references to the search text, and an optional results pane, that calls out each instance of the search text in the document for quick navigation.

This right-click menu also lets you copy the text to the Windows clipboard.

• Annotations:You can make annotations (but not edits) to a PDF document with Reader by selecting a block of text, right-clicking, and choosing Highlight (to add a colored highlight to the text) or Add a note (to embed a note in the PDF). You can then save the changes to the original PDF or to a copy.

Reader won’t save rotation changes you make to the document, for some reason.

• Rotate:If you’ve ever gotten a PDF file that seems to be visually sideways, you know how useful this command can be.

• Print:Since Windows Reader is a document-based app, you may actually want to make a hard copy from time to time. That works as it does elsewhere in the Metro environment: You access the Devices charm (Winkey + C, Devices) and then select the appropriate printer from the list. Or, access the printer list directly with Ctrl + P.

In Windows 8, Microsoft has adapted many excellent Bing services into Metro-style apps. And while some of them are worth only a passing mention, one app in this group, Bing Maps, is quite useful.

As it does for Windows Phone, Microsoft provides an excellent Bing Maps app for Windows 8 that brings the beautiful and useful Bing location and directions functionality to a new generation of Windows PCs and devices. You’re welcome to use Maps on any PC, of course, but it works best on highly mobile devices such as tablets and hybrid portable computers that have pervasive Internet connectivity, perhaps via a cellular-type connection, and of course a GPS sensor.

We’ll often refer to Bing Maps simply as Maps, and it is that latter, simpler name that is used in the user interface.

It won’t be surprising, perhaps, that Bing Maps prompts you to access your location information before running for the first time, as shown in Figure 8-55.

Figure 8-55:Bing Maps needs access to your location for fairly obvious reasons.

Once your location is available, Maps will then zoom into your current location, using a nice animation that’s the hallmark of Bing Maps across the web and various mobile implementations.

Maps works much as expected, and much like other Metro-style apps, with a clean interface and most options hidden in an app bar. You can swipe around on-screen to move the view in various directions, or, on a mouse-based system, simply “grab” the map with the mouse cursor and then move the mouse in any direction to achieve the same effect.

For keyboard users, there’s a neat navigational shortcut that’s not immediately obvious. Simply tapping the arrow keys does nothing. But if you hold down the Ctrl key and then tap an arrow key, the map will navigate one-half-screen’s worth in that direction. Type Ctrl + Left Arrow, for example, will navigate a bit to the west. (How much will depend on the current zoom level.)

Speaking of zoom, this functionality works as expected as well. On touch-based systems, you can pinch to zoom out and reverse-pinch (or double-tap) to zoom in. Mouse users can access the on-screen zoom controls that appear in the left side of the screen, as shown in Figure 8-56. You can also use the mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

Figure 8-56:No touch? No problem: You can still zoom with a mouse!

Keyboard users can zoom with Ctrl + - (zoom out) and Ctrl + “+” for zoom in (which is to say, Ctrl, Shift, and “+”).

If you get lost, you can always find your current location by selecting the My Location button on the app bar. (If it’s hidden, you can display the app bar by tapping Winkey + Z, right-clicking, or by tapping and holding.)

You can change the look of the Maps presentation in two ways:

• Show Traffic:By default, Maps doesn’t muddy up the view with traffic indications—roads that are colored green, orange or red depending on the traffic level—but this is obviously useful information if you’re using the app on the go. To enable this display, activate the app bar if necessary and tap Show Traffic in the app bar. The view will change to reflect the current traffic conditions, always excellent in the Boston area. To disable this display, simply toggle Show Traffic again.