The Start screen, with its live tiles and easy access (just press the
Windows Logo key), is meant to be a kind of automatically and
frequently updated bulletin board that tells you what’s going on in
your life: your latest messages, your upcoming appointments, the music
you’re listening to, the weather, the latest news and financial data,
and so on. The key phrase here is “your life,” meaning that
it’s unlikely the default configuration of the Start screen will be a
reflection of who you are, what you do, and how you use Windows 8.
Fortunately, the default Start screen layout isn’t set in stone,
so you’re free to customize it by resizing and moving tiles, grouping
tiles, adding new tiles, and much more. The next few sections provide
the details.
Resizing a Tile
The Start screen tiles come in two sizes:
small, as seen with the Internet Explorer and Store tiles, and large,
as seen with the Mail and Calendar tiles. The large size is useful for
tiles that are live, because the tile has more room to display
information. However, if you’ve turned off the live tile for an app, then the large tile size now seems like a waste
of screen real estate, so you might prefer to use the smaller size.
Similarly, if your turn on the live tile for an app that’s using the
smaller tile, you might see only limited information in the tile. For
example, when the Mail app is small, it only shows the number of new
messages you have, compared to showing you a preview of the new
messages when the tile is larger.
Whatever the scenario, you can resize a tile
by right-clicking it (or swiping down on it if you’re using a tablet
PC) to display the app bar and then clicking Smaller (if the tile is
currently large; see Figure 1) or Larger (if the tile is currently small).
Figure 1. Right-click (or swipe down on) a tile and then click Smaller or Larger.
Moving a Tile
One of the problems many new users have with
the Windows 8 Start screen is the slight delay that occurs when they
try to find the app they want to launch. This is particularly true when
you have many live tiles on the go, because you no longer see the app
name in each tile, just the app icon. If this is the case with just the
default Start screen tiles displayed, it’s only going to get worse once
you start adding more tiles .
One way to reduce this problem is to
rearrange the Start screen in such a way that it helps you locate the
apps you use most often. For example, you could place your favorite
apps on the left side of the screen, or you could arrange similar apps
together (for example, all the media-related apps).
Here are the techniques to use to move an app tile:
• Regular PC—Use your mouse to click and drag the tile and then drop it on the new location.
• Tablet PC—Use your finger (or a stylus) to tap and drag the tile and then drop it on the new location.
