This right-click menu also lets you copy the text to the Windows clipboard.
• Annotations: You can make annotations (but not edits) to a PDF document with Reader by selecting a block of text, right-clicking, and choosing Highlight (to add a colored highlight to the text) or Add a note (to embed a note in the PDF). You can then save the changes to the original PDF or to a copy.
Reader won’t save rotation changes you make to the document, for some reason.
• Rotate: If you’ve ever gotten a PDF file that seems to be visually sideways, you know how useful this command can be.
• Print: Since Windows Reader is a document-based app, you may actually want to make a hard copy from time to time. That works as it does elsewhere in the Metro environment: You access the Devices charm (Winkey + C, Devices) and then select the appropriate printer from the list. Or, access the printer list directly with Ctrl + P.
The Bing Apps
In Windows 8, Microsoft has adapted many excellent Bing services into Metro-style apps. And while some of them are worth only a passing mention, one app in this group, Bing Maps, is quite useful.
Bing Maps
As it does for Windows Phone, Microsoft provides an excellent Bing Maps app for Windows 8 that brings the beautiful and useful Bing location and directions functionality to a new generation of Windows PCs and devices. You’re welcome to use Maps on any PC, of course, but it works best on highly mobile devices such as tablets and hybrid portable computers that have pervasive Internet connectivity, perhaps via a cellular-type connection, and of course a GPS sensor.
We’ll often refer to Bing Maps simply as Maps, and it is that latter, simpler name that is used in the user interface.
It won’t be surprising, perhaps, that Bing Maps prompts you to access your location information before running for the first time, as shown in Figure 8-55.
Figure 8-55: Bing Maps needs access to your location for fairly obvious reasons.
Once your location is available, Maps will then zoom into your current location, using a nice animation that’s the hallmark of Bing Maps across the web and various mobile implementations.
Maps works much as expected, and much like other Metro-style apps, with a clean interface and most options hidden in an app bar. You can swipe around on-screen to move the view in various directions, or, on a mouse-based system, simply “grab” the map with the mouse cursor and then move the mouse in any direction to achieve the same effect.
For keyboard users, there’s a neat navigational shortcut that’s not immediately obvious. Simply tapping the arrow keys does nothing. But if you hold down the Ctrl key and then tap an arrow key, the map will navigate one- half-screen’s worth in that direction. Type Ctrl + Left Arrow, for example, will navigate a bit to the west. (How much will depend on the current zoom level.)
Speaking of zoom, this functionality works as expected as well. On touch-based systems, you can pinch to zoom out and reverse-pinch (or double-tap) to zoom in. Mouse users can access the on-screen zoom controls that appear in the left side of the screen, as shown in Figure 8-56. You can also use the mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
Figure 8-56: No touch? No problem: You can still zoom with a mouse!
Keyboard users can zoom with Ctrl + - (zoom out) and Ctrl + “+” for zoom in (which is to say, Ctrl, Shift, and “+”).
If you get lost, you can always find your current location by selecting the My Location button on the app bar. (If it’s hidden, you can display the app bar by tapping Winkey + Z, right-clicking, or by tapping and holding.)
You can change the look of the Maps presentation in two ways:
• Show Traffic: By default, Maps doesn’t muddy up the view with traffic indications— roads that are colored green, orange or red depending on the traffic level—but this is obviously useful information if you’re using the app on the go. To enable this display, activate the app bar if necessary and tap Show Traffic in the app bar. The view will change to reflect the current traffic conditions, always excellent in the Boston area. To disable this display, simply toggle Show Traffic again.
• Map Style: Maps supports two display styles, Road View, which is the default, and Aerial View. You can toggle this view with the Map Style button in the app bar.
If Maps gets lost for some reason, you can use the My location button in the app bar to find yourself again. Simple.
To find a particular location with Bing Maps, you use the system-wide Search contract functionality, available from the Search pane. There are many ways to display this pane, but the simplest, perhaps, is to type Winkey + Q; mouse or touch users can display the Charms instead and then choose Search.
To search, simply type a location name into the search box and press Enter (or select the Search button). When you do, Bing Maps will likely navigate to the exact location, unless you’ve been too vague. A direct hit can be seen in Figure 8-57.
Figure 8-57: Find a location with Bing Maps.
Bing Maps utilizes Bing’s search technologies on the back end, so you might expect searching to be fairly granular. It’s not. Yes, you can use
Where Bing Maps really shines is in its ability to help you find your way. If you want to get directions, click the Directions button in the app bar to display the Directions pane shown in Figure 8-58.
Figure 8-58: Bing’s Directions interface
Then, you can enter starting and ending locations in the provided boxes. The first will default to
When you’re ready to get the directions, click Enter (or tap the right arrow icon to the right of the bottom box). Bing will think for a bit and then provide its attractive, full-screen driving directions as shown in Figure 8-
