The tile-based version of Internet
Explorer is meant to be an immersive experience. A website should be
displayed with little or no browser interface shown onscreen, thus
maximizing the content’s size. What you see in Figure 1 is the New York Times website in full-screen mode. Notice that not one interface element shows on the page.
Figure 1. Metro Internet Explorer 10 full-screen mode
When you need to alter the content of the
browser, a gesture will either allow you to perform an action or open
an area of the screen in which you can use touch commands.
You can perform edge swipes to open an
address box and enter text with the virtual keyboard; open the Charms
bar to change settings; or open a panel containing tabs, recent pages,
or favorites all displayed as tiles. Tile-based IE10 has corresponding
mouse and keyboard equivalents, but the interface was designed with
touch in mind. Menu systems are gone in the tile-based interface: When
you need to make selections, a small dialog box with a limited number
of choices appears.
There are a number of features built into the
tile-based IE10 that make the browsing experience faster and more
natural. It’s easy to take them for granted. For example, Microsoft has
built in a prefetch feature that looks for the link to the next page;
when you are reading a story online, tile-based IE10 takes you to the
next page with a right-to-left swipe without you
having to locate that next link and click it. When you enter text from
the virtual keyboard, the browser predicts what your next entry might
be and displays sites you have been to, displays sites that are
popular, and offers word recognition and auto-correct. The goal is to
get you where you want to be as quickly as possible.
Since tile-based IE and Desktop IE are not
separate programs, when you create a favorite site it appears in both
versions of the interface. You can pin your favorite sites or pages to
the Start screen and launch the browser to that page with a single tap
or click. If you log into Windows Live, your favorites, your history,
and other settings are synchronized across several devices.
To scroll
• Swipe up to scroll down a page.
• Swipe down to scroll up a page.
• Use your mouse’s scroll wheel to scroll up or down a page.
• Use the page’s scroll bars to scroll up or down a page.
Tip
You may like the responsiveness of the
tile-based interface but need the tools that you find in the Desktop
version. If you are using a multi-monitor display, put the tile-based
version on one monitor and Desktop on another.
