Paul Thurrott - Windows 8 Secrets

If you’re looking for a more versatile tool that can do it all when it comes to photos— photo acquisition, viewing, editing printing, e-mail sharing, burning to disc, tagging, captioning, geotagging, advanced slideshows, sharing with numerous online services including SkyDrive, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, panoramas, and more—look no further than Photo Gallery. This amazing application, shown in Figure 9-20, is everything you need, all in one place.

Figure 9-20:Photo Gallery

If you’re in a pinch, Microsoft Paint, included in Windows 8, also provides some basic photo-editing features.

Photo Gallery is the full meal deal, and because it provides a superset of the features available in a basic Windows 8 install, we recommend using it over the built-in tools.

The only problem with Photo Gallery is that you may not find it on your PC or device. If that’s the case, browse to windows.com, where you’ll find this and other useful Windows applications.

Microsoft has supported music lovers with various Windows-based applications and platforms for over a decade, beginning with its first true jukebox, Windows Media Player, which debuted in Windows Millennium Edition (Me), way back in 2000. In Windows 8, well, things get a little Metro-y.

that Windows Media Player and Media Center are not available in Windows RT at all.

Yes, Windows 8 includes Windows Media Player, which you may remember from Windows 7. And Windows 8 Pro users (only) can optionally buy and install Windows Media Center, which was also available in Windows 7. So the range of functionality provided by these applications is still available in Windows 8, if not improved. (In fact, as far as we can see, they are the versions of Windows Media Player and Media Center from Windows 7, carried across unchanged.)

Over the past several years, Microsoft also cultivated a separate and somewhat incompatible media platform called Zune, which included software, device, and music and video service components. Zune was meant to be a one-stop-shop solution that could compete head-to-head with Apple’s dominant iPod/iTunes, but suffice it to say that never happened despite some interesting advantages on the Microsoft side. So Zune has been discontinued as a brand.

The trouble is, just declaring Zune dead doesn’t magically erase the parts of this tragic platform that are still out in the world. Millions of people still use the Zune PC software, which offers some interesting advantages over both Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player and competing applications such as Apple iTunes. The Zune software and services were integrated into the first two versions of Windows Phone, as well, also in use by several million people around the world. And key parts of the Zune platform, including the music and video marketplaces, are good enough to survive the death of this brand. And, as it turns out, they’re continuing forward, minus the Zune name.

So in addition to carrying forward its legacy music applications for old-timers, Windows 8 also provides a Metro-style music experience, called Xbox Music, which while based on Microsoft’s Zune efforts, now accesses Xbox-branded services on the back end. Not coincidentally, it looks and works much like the Music experience on the Xbox 360, and it accesses the back end Xbox Music Store that used to be part of the Zune platform (as Zune Music Marketplace). Since this is the biggest change, music-wise, in Windows 8, we’ll focus largely on that app and its supporting services here.

Microsoft’s new Xbox Music app is a front end for your own content—which you store on your own PC or in the cloud-based SkyDrive service—as well as content that’s found in the Xbox Music Store. Shown in Figure 9-21, Xbox Music provides a basic but attractive Metro-style app that uses different functional groups across its horizontally scrolling interface.

Figure 9-21:The Xbox Music app

Oddly, the first group, My Music, is found off to the left of the main view, while the other groups can be found by scrolling more normally to the right. Available groups, from left to right, include:

• My Music:Here, you’ll find some of your own music, arranged as a grid of albums, as in Figure 9-22.

Figure 9-22:Your own music collection, or as much of it as will fit in this display

However, if your collection is empty—most likely, since most people don’t have gigabytes of music content sitting on their PCs—this interface will more closely resemble the barren wasteland shown in Figure 9-23.

Figure 9-23:A more typical view of the My Music group

• Now Playing:This group, which is the default view for the app, provides a large Now Playing tile if you’ve been playing music, and a music promotional pane if not, along with a handful of smaller promo panes.

• Spotlight:This group works much like the identically-named group in Windows Store: It’s a place for Microsoft to highlight artists, digital albums, and the like. There’s even an annoying advertisement.

• Most Popular:Here, you’ll find a rundown of the albums and artists that are most popular in the Xbox Music Store right now.

Put simply, there may be multiple groups in the Xbox Music app, but there are really only two basic activities occurring here. You’re going to access your own music collection, or you’re going to browse, potentially buy, and, if you have an Xbox Music Pass, even play music online.

Naturally, we’ll look at both.

To access your music collection, scroll over to the My Music group and tap the My Music heading. You’ll be presented with the full screen My Music view shown in Figure 9-24, which provides a nice if somewhat inefficient album-based view of your music collection by default.

Figure 9-24:My Music

This view is about as simple as it looks, but there are some navigational components worth noting. These include the following:

• Back:As with many multi-screen Metro-style app experiences, the Xbox Music app provides a browser-like Back button for returning to the previous screen.

• View menu and Arranged by:You can change the view between Albums, Artists, Songs, and Playlists. Each has a similar presentation, though you can also choose to sort each a bit differently. For example, in Figure 9-25, you can see the Artists view sorted alphabetically.

Figure 9-25:The Artists view, alphabetically

The Music app includes an app bar, but it doesn’t do much beyond allowing you to open an individual music file unless you’re already playing music. We’ll examine that functionality in just a bit.