Finance
The Finance app is Windows 8’s one-stop shop
for business, economic, and investing news and statistics, gathered by
Bing Finance. The main Finance app screen is divided horizontally into
eight sections:
• Today—The top story of the day as well as recent values of market indices such as the Dow and the NASDAQ.
• Indices—Current
values and daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly charts for four market
indices: Dow, S&P 500, NASDAQ, and Russell 2000 (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. The Indices section of the main Finance app screen.
• News—The latest news stories from the world of finance.
• Watchlist—A list of
stocks that you’re watching. Note that you only see this section if
you’ve added at least one stock. To add a stock to your list,
right-click the screen, click Watchlist in the app bar, click Add (+),
type the company name or stock symbol, and then click the stock you
want in the list that appears.
• Market Movers—The
stocks with the highest percentage gains and losses on the day, as well
as the most actively traded stocks. NASDAQ stocks are displayed by
default, but you can see other exchanges by clicking Market Movers and
then clicking NYSE or AMEX.
• Across the Market—Recent values for various currencies, bonds, commodities, and exchange-traded funds.
• Rates—Recent rates for mortgages, savings accounts, and credit card accounts.
• Fund Picks—Lists of top-performing mutual funds in various categories.
Note
By default, Finance shows you information
tailored to your current Windows 8 regional setting. To see news and
data from a different region, press Windows Logo+I (or display the
Charms menu and click Settings), click Settings, and then use the
Display Content From list to choose the location you want. Restart
Finance to put the new setting into effect.
You can also see extra news and data from
various categories by right-clicking the screen and using the app bar
to click a category: Today, Watchlist, News, Rates, Currencies, World
Market, or Best of Web.
Internet Explorer
The Internet Explorer app is a vastly
scaled-down version of desktop Internet Explorer. Besides standard web
browsing (that is, typing a new address, clicking links, and using the
Back and Forward buttons to navigate your session history), you can
only do the following with the Internet Explorer app:
• Select a frequent site—When
you click inside the Address box, Internet Explorer displays a list of
the websites you’ve visited most often, as shown in Figure 3. Click one of those tiles to surf to that site.
Figure 3. The Internet Explorer app maintains a list of sites you’ve visited often.
• Pin a site—Rather
than storing favorites, as in desktop Internet Explorer, the Internet
Explorer app enables you pin a site, which you do by clicking the Pin
Site icon to the right of the Address box and then clicking Pin to
Start. This not only adds the site to the Pinned section of the browser
(this section appears to the right of the Frequent section when you
click within the Address box), but it also adds a tile for the site to
the Start screen.
• Add a tab—To load a
page into a new tab, right-click the screen and then click New Tab (+),
or press Ctrl+T. To load a link into a new background tab, hold down
Ctrl as you click the link; to load a link into a new foreground tab,
hold down Shift and Ctrl as you click the link. To shut down a tab,
right-click the screen and then click the Close (X) button in the
top-right corner of the tab.
• Browse privately—To
start a surfing session where Internet Explorer doesn’t store your
browsing history (addresses visited, page data, cookies, and so on),
right-click the screen, click Tab Tools (the ellipsis icon), and then
click New InPrivate Tab.
That, we’re sorry to say, is about it. There
are a few (a very few) options you can configure by pressing Windows
Logo+I and then clicking Internet Options. What about security, you
ask? The Internet Explorer app runs in enhanced protected mode by
default, so it’s super-secure right out of the box, although that also
means it doesn’t support add-ons and other interface extensions.
