interface.
• Help: This option launches Windows Help and Support, Microsoft’s attempt at in- product documentation. They try.
While the top part of the Settings pane is context-sensitive and will change depending on what you’re viewing on-screen, this interface is also a system-wide interface. So the Settings pane also provides various system settings, which always appear near the bottom of the pane. We discuss these settings in Chapter 3.
Notifications
Windows 8 supports new kinds of system and app notifications, both of which work consistently in the Metro and desktop environments. And, as we’re sure you must suspect by now, these notifications are of course Metro- based experiences. So they appear as an overlay of sorts over the screen, whether you’re looking at the Start screen, a Metro-style app, or, yes, the desktop.
The new Windows 8 notifications are also discussed in Chapter 3—along with a ton of other Metro user experiences—but let’s see how they interact with the desktop. There are two key notification types to consider: Full-screen, modal notifications and notification
Okay, they’re not technically modal in that you can, in fact, interact with the underlying screen if you really want to. But the full-screen notifications do make it hard to do so.
An example of a full-screen notification is shown in Figure 4-17. These notifications are modal in the sense that they must be addressed before you can move on. You’ll see this type of notification when something important happens, such as when the new SmartScreen security feature suspects you’re downloading a malicious file and wants you to think twice before proceeding.
Figure 4-17: A full-screen notification
Notification toasts are far more subtle. They appear as small floating windows near the top right of the screen, as shown in Figure 4-18. If you don’t address this kind of notification, it will simply disappear.
Figure 4-18: A notification toast
Notification toasts appear for all kinds of reasons, including when you install a new application that can change file associations, when you plug in a USB-based storage device, and so on. Also, many Metro-style apps, like Mail, Calendar, and Messaging, utilize these types of notifications. For example, Mail can be configured to notify you each time a new e-mail arrives.
Managing Files and Folders
File Explorer was called Windows Explorer in previous Windows versions.
As with previous versions of Windows, you use the desktop interface to interact with the filesystem and manage files and folders. This occurs, as before, via the File Explorer interface, which has been nicely updated in Windows 8 with a new, ribbon-based design similar to that used by Microsoft Office and Windows applications, such as Paint and WordPad and a new Metro-like (but
Understanding the New File Explorer
File Explorer debuted (as Windows Explorer) in Windows 95, but Windows has of course always had a graphical interface for managing files and folders. In fact, even the first version of Windows, dating all the way back to 1985, included a basic file manager application called MS-DOS Executive.
While File Explorer was evolved over previous Windows versions, it’s been thoroughly overhauled with a new, Metro-like and ribbon-based UI in Windows 8, and as a result, this version is the best yet. But don’t take our word for it. Let’s compare the Windows 8 version of Explorer to Windows Explorer from Windows 7 to better understand what’s changed.
First, take a look at Windows 7. As you can see in Figure 4-19, this version of File Explorer is streamlined, with most advanced options hidden under the Organize command bar item.
In Windows 8, Explorer drops the Aero glass and adopts the new ribbon-based UI, replacing the previous version’s command bar with a more powerful but denser interface that puts all the options you’ll ever need—and then some—right up front. Fortunately, thanks to feedback during the Windows 8 prerelease cycle, Microsoft opted to hide the ribbon by default. So the Explorer UI you’ll probably see the first time you use this application will likely resemble the one shown in Figure 4-20.
Figure 4-19: Explorer from Windows 7
Figure 4-20: The Windows 8 Explorer has a ribbon UI, but it’s hidden by default.
To expand the ribbon and see more commands, click the Expand the Ribbon control in the top-right corner of the window. (It resembles a downward-pointing arrow. You can also type Ctrl + F1.) When you expand the ribbon UI, File Explorer will resemble Figure 4-21.
Other tabs are possible. For example, if you select an image file, you’ll see a Manage: Picture Tools tab appear. Select a disk and Drive: Disk Tools appears.
Interestingly, what you see here only represents a subset of the commands that are available in the new File Explorer. And that’s because the ribbon has several tabs, and only one of them—Home, in this case—is displayed at a time. You can click the other two tabs that are always available, Share and View, to see the commands they provide.
Figure 4-21: With the ribbon displayed, far more commands are readily available.
While it would be overly pedantic to step through every single command in this interface—we do have certain assumptions about your capabilities, after all—a short discussion of each of the new default tabs is perhaps in order.
You can also access Explorer’s Frequent Places list from this menu. This list is otherwise available via the File Explorer taskbar button.
First, there’s a tab that’s not a tab: The colored File tab is really a button that displays the new File menu. Shown in Figure 4-22, this menu provides several useful options, including the ability to open a new window, ideal
