If you use your PC regularly, there’s an
excellent chance that its hard drive is crammed with thousands, perhaps
even tens of thousands, of files that take up hundreds, perhaps even
thousands, of gigabytes. That’s a lot of data, but it leads to a huge
and growing problem: finding things. Everyone wants to have the
proverbial information at their fingertips, but these days our
fingertips tend to fumble around more often than not, trying to locate
not only documents and other data we’ve created ourselves, but also
apps, Windows settings, and that wealth of information that exists “out
there” on the Web, in databases, and so on.
Windows 8 attempts to solve this problem by combining all
search operations into a single interface element called the Search
pane. Using this deceptively simple pane with its single text box,
Windows 8 lets you search for apps by name, for Windows 8 settings and
features, for documents, for app data, and more.
To get to the Search pane, display the Charms
menu and click Search. (You can also use some shortcut methods, which
we’ll discuss as well.) Figure 1 shows the Search pane that appears.
Figure 1. The Windows 8 Search pane.
The Search pane consists of a text box followed by a collection of icons. Here’s what they do:
• Apps—Click this icon
to search for an app by name. Note, too, that app searching is the
default in Windows 8, so you can initiate an app search from the Start
screen just by typing your search text.
• Settings—Click this
icon to search for a setting that’s available either in the PC Settings
app or the Control Panel. Note that this is a search that includes
metadata (specifically, descriptions embedded in each setting), so you
don’t have to search for a specific setting name. To display the Search
pane with Settings preselected, press Windows Logo+W.
• Files—Click this
icon to search through your user account libraries. To display the
Search pane with Files preselected, press Windows Logo+F.
• Within apps—The
rest of the Search pane icons represent individual Windows 8 apps that
implement a search contract. When you select one of these icons, you’re
doing a search within that app. For example, click Internet Explorer to
search the Web using Bing; click Maps to search for a location; or
click Music to search for bands, songs, or albums.
As you type, Search displays the results that match your search text, as shown in Figure 2. When you see the item you want, click it.
Figure 2. The Search pane displays as-you-type results.
