One of the surprising things that came out of
the BUILD conference when Microsoft unveiled Windows 8 Developer
Preview was the idea that you didn’t ever need to close any app you had
opened. That just seemed odd to those of us who have been trained over
the years to finish what we start, put away our toys, and exit correctly
from any program we were using.
To make things a little more intuitive,
developers with Consumer Preview have added a close procedure. Now you
can swipe down to put an app away, effectively removing it from memory.
>>>step-by-step: Closing Selected Apps
When you’re ready to put away an app you’ve
been working with, closing it is a simple matter. First, save any file
you were working with and then follow these steps:
1. Touch
at the top of the screen and swipe down or, if you’re using a mouse,
position the mouse pointer at the top of the screen, and press and hold
the mouse while dragging down toward the bottom edge of the screen.
2. The app reduces to a small window and as you swipe it downward, it disappears completely.
There you go. Closed.
>>>step-by-step: Using the Task Manager
You can also close open apps by using the Task
Manager if you like. The Task Manager has been significantly revamped
in Windows 8 to give you all kinds of information about how much
processing power each app is using. Of course for some of us, this type
of information is overkill, so by default Windows 8 gives you the simple
version of Task Manager to work with.
1.
Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and click Task Manager to display the Task Manager
window. Or, if you’re on a touch device, swipe in from the right to
display the Charms bar and tap Search. Tap in the search box and your
touch keyboard appears. Type Task Manager and the utility appears in the result list. Tap Task Manager to open it.
2. To close a specific app, tap or click the one you want to close.
3. Then tap or click End Task.
4. If you want to see how much processing power each app is using, tap or click More Details.
5. Review the amount of processing power, memory, disk space, and network access each app is currently using.
6.
You can also view detailed information about each app by tapping or
clicking the various tabs at the top of the detailed Task Manager
display.
7. To return to the simple display, tap or click Fewer Details.
>>> Go Further: Assessing What You Want at Startup
