windows 8 intro what you'll need to relearn

what you'll need to relearn

Windows 8 has been with us for over half a year now, and if you're used to previous versions of Windows then you're going to notice that quite a bit has changed. In fact, Windows 8 has seen the biggest change since the jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.

Out goes the Start menu, in comes the new touch-oriented Start screen with new Windows 8-style apps and new interface conventions. Even experienced PC users may be left feeling a little lost.

There's plenty to like about Windows 8. It can synchronise settings across all your devices; the File History tool is perfect for simple backups; there are a host of useful new tools in the Windows Store; it's fast, includes some excellent repair options, and the list goes on.

What really matters this time, though, isn't just what Microsoft has added to the Windows mix: it's what it has changed, or taken away.

And that's because this is no gently incremental upgrade. Rather, Windows 8 has undergone a major redesign which sees the Start menu scrapped, the desktop demoted, and years of interface conventions thrown away.

Can you learn to live in a Windows 8 world, then? That all depends on how you feel about what Microsoft has done. Let's take a closer look.

The Start Screen

Log on to Windows 8 for the first time and you'll notice that the Start menu has been replaced by the colourful new Metro Start Screen. This looks so good that you may not mind, at least initially, but it won't take long before you run into problems.

The Start menu provided easy access to every aspect of your system, for instance: search, Windows tools, settings, installed programs, recent documents and more. There simply isn't room to display all this on the Start Screen, though, and so many functions have now been scattered around the system, making them much harder to find.

After launching Windows 8, for instance, experienced users may want to customise it - but there's no Control Panel tile. The Start Screen does have its own Settings dialog, but this is so hidden that many users will probably only find it by accident (you need to move your mouse cursor to the top-left corner of the screen to launch the Charms menu, and click Settings). And even then they'll be disappointed, as it doesn't contain very much.

nstalling applications isn't difficult, and they'll extend the Start Screen with tiles of their own. What you won't find is a Documents menu, though, or a clear way of pinning files to the Start Screen.

And it's not even obvious how to perform a simple task like shutting down or restarting your system. In Windows 7 clicking the Start button was enough to point you in the right direction: now you have to move your mouse cursor over to the top-left corner of the screen, hit the Settings option (not the most obvious location), click Power and choose the option you need.

It's not all bad news, though, fortunately. The Start Screen does include a simple menu which provides easy access to some system tools: Control Panel, Task Manager, the Command Prompt and more (press Win+X to see it).

Task management

One notable problem with Windows 8 is that it tried to bring together two largely separate worlds: one for the programs you're running now, and another for its Start Screen apps. And this can complicate the way you work. Let's take task management as an example.

If you want to launch a regular Windows program, for instance, then clicking the Start Screen "Desktop" tile will launch something which looks much like the Windows 7 desktop (less the Start menu, anyway). Run programs here, matching buttons will appear on the taskbar and you'll be able to switch between them with a click, as you can now. But you won't see buttons for any Start Screen apps you have running. It's as though they don't exist.

Press the Windows key to switch back to the Start screen and everything changes. You can launch multiple apps, but there's no taskbar to switch between them, so instead you must move your mouse cursor to the top left corner of the screen to see the previously used app, then drag down to see all the others. And while this will show you the desktop as one of the apps, you won't be able to switch directly to a specific program which you've launched from there.

Again, there is a sort-of solution here: just use Alt+Tab. This displays all your programs on a single screen, whether desktop or Start Screen-based, and allows you to switch to the one you need. But this may not necessarily be straightforward - switching from one running program to the next might take a while, especially if you've lots of Metro apps running in the background - and the underlying problems still remain.

right click on opened tabs to close them.