3. Customizing the Interface
The desktop can be customized in very much the same way as in Server 2008
R2 or any other recent Windows operating systems. Right-click any
empty space on the desktop to pull up a submenu from which you select
“Screen resolution.”
From the Screen Resolution window (shown in Figure 7), you can adjust the display settings.
Clicking the “Make text and other items larger or smaller” link brings
up the Display window (Figure 8).
If you have ever tweaked the display settings in Windows, this
screen will be familiar. You can change the desktop background, window
colors, the screen saver, and more to customize the desktop. One
desktop option you don’t have in Server 2012 is the Aero theme. You
can give Server 2012’s desktop more of a Windows 8–style look by
installing the Desktop Experience feature. To do so, from Server
Manager’s “Add Roles and Features” wizard, select the checkbox next to
Desktop Experience underneath the “User Interfaces and Infrastructure”
feature.
You can place apps from the full Start menu onto the desktop by adding them as shortcuts. For example, if you
want to add a shortcut to Control Panel, you can right-click anywhere on the
desktop, click New, and then click Shortcut. In the Create Shortcut
window you then simply type Control
Panel, but you could also choose to browse to the
program’s location by clicking Browse. You then click Next, name your
shortcut Control Panel, and then click Finish. You now have a shortcut
to Control Panel on the desktop.
You can also pin apps to the taskbar. Switch into the Start menu view and open “All
apps.” Right-click the app you want to pin, and the tile gets
highlighted with a checkmark. At the bottom of the screen, several
clickable options appear once a tile is checked: “Pin to Start,” “Pin to taskbar,” “Open new
window,” “Run as administrator,” and “Open file location.” Clicking
“Pin to taskbar” places the tile’s associated program as a shortcut on
the taskbar on the desktop. In Figure 9, the Performance Monitor
tile is checked.
In Figure 10,
the Performance Monitor shortcut is pinned to the taskbar. There isn’t a set
limit on the number of shortcuts you can pin to the taskbar. When the
number of items pinned exceeds the length of the taskbar, up and down
arrows are shown at the far right of the taskbar. These arrows allow
you to scroll through all the pinned items. Pinning too many items
causes the taskbar to get crowded, however. Scrolling through many
shortcuts defeats the purpose of quickly accessing and opening an app,
so reserve pinning for apps you use frequently.
Unpin the shortcut by right-clicking it from the taskbar and selecting
“Unpin this program from taskbar.”
When an app is pinned to the taskbar in desktop view, its tile
remains in the full Start menu. You can also unpin shortcuts from the
taskbar from the Start menu.
Customizing the Start menu
The Start menu view is also customizable. Although by default the Start
menu has only seven tiles, you can add more. To add another app tile to the Start menu, right-click anywhere on the
screen in the Start menu view to pull up “All apps.”
Adding tiles follows the same steps as pinning items to the
taskbar. Right-click the app to check it and select “Pin to Start”
from the bottom menu that appears.
You can also choose to hide administrative tools, which is useful if you manage the
server remotely and don’t want anyone accessing them on the local
machine. To do so, bring up the Charms menu. Click Settings. In the
resulting window, click Settings again. To hide the tools, toggle to
No under the “Show administrative tools” option. (See Figure 11.)
