With Windows Store, you can feel secure that Microsoft’s curated app store will provide you with the best possible experience, one that bridges the gap between the insecure Wild West of Google’s Android platform and the overly controlling and nonintegrated Apple App Store. This best-of-both-worlds experience draws on the lessons Microsoft learned from Windows Phone Marketplace, as well.
Using the store is a breeze, thanks to its intuitive, Metro-style UI, logical category-based organization, and a plethora of app discovery and feedback tools. You can use Windows Store to find, download, try, and buy Metro- style apps, and then update them with new features as needed. Only app uninstall occurs outside the store, and that’s a simple process that won’t litter your PC with leftover files and registry entries.
With this experience under your belt, you can begin further exploring Windows 8’s rich app landscape. And in the remainder of this section of the book, you’ll do just that, as you examine Internet Explorer 10 and the various productivity and entertainment apps that make this OS the best Windows yet.
• Understanding the relationship between the two versions of Internet Explorer that ship with Windows 8
• Using the Metro-style version of Internet Explorer
• Configuring IE 10 Metro
• Using the Desktop version of Internet Explorer
• Configuring IE 10 desktop
• Knowing when to use which browser
• Understanding the weird interaction between IE 10 desktop, IE 10 Metro, and third-party browsers
In keeping with the dual user experience nature of Windows 8 itself, Microsoft has reimagined Internet Explorer—and, really, web browsing in general as well—in this new operating system, creating a fascinating, dual- mode version of the most-frequently used Windows application. Internet Explorer 10 is, in many ways, the poster child for this Windows 8-based vision of the future, offering both a Metro-style user experience and a more traditional, desktop-based web browser version as well.
It’s a model that other web browser makers, and perhaps other application makers, will emulate in their own solutions. But because web browsers play such a special role in Windows, having both Metro-style and traditional browsers available comes with some unique new constraints as well. So this chapter explores these changes, as well as the new features of both versions of Internet Explorer 10.
Two Browsers, One Brain: Understanding Internet Explorer 10
How you view Internet Explorer 10 will depend greatly on how you view Windows 8 and its two separate user experiences. That’s because, like Windows 8 itself, Internet Explorer 10 offers two faces to the world: a full- screen, Metro-style version of the browser and a more traditional, desktop-based version.
Let’s see what that means. In Figure 7-1, you can see the Metro version of Internet Explorer, with its normally hidden application user interface (or
Figure 7-1: The Metro-style version of Internet Explorer 10
In Figure 7-2, meanwhile, you see the desktop version of Internet Explorer 10. This looks and works much like previous IE versions and is tailored for the traditional desktop environment. It offers a richer feature set, with full support for add-ons and browser extensions.
These two solutions are separate but also connected. That is, the Metro-style app and the desktop application are indeed two different executables, or programs. But they utilize the same rendering engine under the hood, share numerous features and data, and, most confusingly, interact with each other, and with other browsers and the underlying OS, in brand-new ways.
Figure 7-2: The desktop version of Internet Explorer 10
While we tend to use the term app to describe Metro-style solutions, and application for desktop solutions, this is just for convenience. Effectively speaking, both types of solutions are applications. (And, as it turns out, both are apps too!)
Microsoft describes these dual Internet Explorer applications as two different experiences, or skins, with one underlying browser engine. But that’s a bit of a stretch. In reality, Internet Explorer 10 acts as two distinct applications, and that becomes more evident when you configure Windows to use a different default browser (like Google Chrome).
As a result, it’s perhaps a bit fairer to say that Windows 8 offers two very different browser experiences, though each do share some underpinnings. Which one you use will depend very much on how you use Windows 8.
That is, if you find yourself using the Metro user experience a lot, perhaps because you’re using a touch- based device like a tablet, you’ll probably want to stick with Internet Explorer for Metro. But if you are using a more traditional mouse- and keyboard-based system, perhaps a desktop PC or laptop, the desktop version of Internet Explorer will be what you’re looking for.
Or maybe things aren’t so black and white. As it turns out, our devices, just like the OS they run, are changing. And as you read this, you could be using a tablet that docks and connects to a larger display and a keyboard and mouse, and other peripherals, while you’re sitting at a desk. Or perhaps you’ll opt for a hybrid laptop or Ultrabook that can work as both a traditional PC, with keyboard and mouse, or, with the flip of a screen, can be used like a tablet.
IE 10 Metro and IE 10 desktop also share many useful security features, such as SmartScreen and InPrivate Browsing.
With such devices, your usage will vary not by the device type—since these new kinds of PCs are so versatile—but rather by the situation. They can change on the fly, in fact, and you can move between the different Internet Explorer applications as your usage changes. And because these two applications share browsing history, typed addresses, settings, and more, moving back and forth is fairly seamless.
IE 10 Metro and IE 10 desktop also share many (but not all) underpinning technologies, including hardware acceleration of web-based text, graphics, video, and audio, and compiled JavaScript—you know, if you’re a web geek.
Another thing to consider, though this may be hard to believe: You may just end up liking Internet Explorer
