WHEN MICROSOFT INTRODUCED THE NEW Start
screen in Windows 8, the change was always going to be extremely
significant for IT professionals, enthusiasts, and people who work with
the administrative and management tools in Windows.
The changes aren’t limited to the new Start screen. When you visit
the desktop, you will notice that the Start menu is gone completely, and
seemingly nothing has been introduced to replace it.
When you start Windows 8 and you’re presented with the new Start
screen, one of the Tiles you will see is the desktop. In some ways, the
desktop in Windows 8 has been downgraded to an app itself, but only in
the respect that it’s not loaded until you actually need it. If you
don’t need to use the desktop at all in a computing session, then you’ll
notice Windows 8 is slightly quicker without the memory and processor
overheads of having the desktop loaded and running (see Figure 1).
So, what’s new or changed on the desktop? Well, for starters, there’s
no Start menu, though some third-party utilities are available to
either switch it back on or replace it with something else entirely.
The ever-present Start button in the lower-left corner that has been a
part of so many versions of Windows has been replaced by the new
Windows 8 charms. You can access the charms, which appear from the right
side of your screen, from both the Start screen and on the desktop. To
reveal the charms, use one of the following three methods:
-
On touch devices, from the right edge of the screen, swipe inward with your finger.
-
Move your mouse to the “hot corners” in the upper- or lower-right corner of your screen.
-
Press the Windows logo key+C on your keyboard.
The rest of the taskbar in Windows 8 hasn’t changed at all from
Windows 7. If you have already been using Windows 7, you should be
instantly familiar with it.
You can “pin” program icons to the taskbar, but not apps. To pin
program icons, right-click an icon on the Start screen, and then from
the option menu that appears at the bottom of your screen, select Pin To Taskbar.
Jumplists still
exist and work in the same way as in Windows 7. I always thought that
Jumplists were one of best features of Windows 7. You access them by
clicking and swiping up from a taskbar icon with your mouse or by
right-clicking the icon.
In Jumplists, you can access commonly used features within a program
or run a second instance of that program. Many jumplists also contain
lists of recently accessed files, and you can pin files to Jumplists so
that they will always appear.
Additionally, you can pin websites
to the taskbar by dragging their icon from the Internet Explorer
address bar onto the taskbar, and many websites have some features and
functions programmed in so that their Taskbar Jumplist will contain
specific parts of the website or functions directly from the Windows
desktop.
Accessing the Action Center and Notification Area
At the far right of the taskbar, you will see the white flag icon for the Action Center (see Figure 2),
which is the central location for all Windows 8 messages and
notifications regarding troubleshooting, security, maintenance, and
backup.
To the left of the Action Center is a small up arrow. Click this up arrow to open the notifications area “bucket,” which is perhaps better known as the system tray. Any running software that has its own tray icon can be found here.
If you have a touch-screen, then Windows 8 will add the on-screen keyboard icon to the system tray, as well.
Finding the Full Control Panel
When it comes to administration, probably the first thing you’ll look
for in Windows 8 is the Control Panel. There are many aspects of your
computer’s administration that you can only configure in the desktop
Control Panel, but Windows 8 now offers an alternative way by which you
can quickly configure common system settings. To take advantage of this,
click the Settings charm. This displays just a few settings. If what
you need to access is not there, click the Change PC Settings link to
open the new PC Settings panel.
Here again, though, the options are still very limited, so where is the full Control Panel, and how do you access it?
To access the full Control Panel, open the charms from the desktop. Next, click the Settings charm. Links appear at the upper-right corner of the screen (see Figure 3) for Control Panel, Personalization, PC Info (which is the System screen in the Control Panel), and Help.
By default, the Control Panel opens with the Categories view, but in
the upper right of the window, you can change the View By option to show
Large or Small icons, which displays all of the Control Panel items, as
shown in Figure 4.
