Windows 8 Consumer Preview: A closer look at the Windows 8 Start screen

Windows 8 Consumer Preview: a fresh start for Microsoft

A closer look at the Windows 8 Start screen

You’ll get used to it. You might even learn to like it.

The Start screen is the first thing every Windows 8 user will see after logging on. It’s a program launcher, a dashboard, and an app switcher that unifies functions that are distributed along different parts of the Windows 7 taskbar.

Out of the box, the Windows 8 Start screen consists of a mass of brightly colored blocks identified with white icons. But after you customize the Start screen and connect individual apps to online services, it takes on a completely different character.

Here’s a before-and-after look. That’s the default Start screen on top, and a fully customized version below it.

Yes, the garish green background of the Developer Preview is gone. You can replace the Start screen background with a combination of colors and textures (but not an image). When you connect new apps to web services, the live tiles light up with pictures and updates from those apps: unread messages, upcoming appointments, what album or tune is playing in the background, and so on.

Although shortcuts to Metro style apps dominate the default layout, you can pin anything to the Start screen: individual files and folders, local or network drives, Control Panel snapins, shortcuts to Windows desktop program, links to web pages—in short, just about anything you would pin to the Windows 7 Start menu or taskbar. (You can’t assign friendly names to pinned file-system items on the Start screen, however.)

Just as in Windows Phone 7, you can also pin individual items within an app to the Start screen, as long as that app supports it. So, if you follow someone on Twitter or Facebook, you can visit that person’s page in the People app and pin it to Start for live updates and one-click-or-tap access.

In the Consumer Preview, options for grouping icons on the Start screen are far more robust than they were in the Developer Preview. That’s important, because the number of icons you can pack onto the screen increases dramatically as available display size increases. (On a 24-inch display, you can show up to seven rows of tiles, with an unlimited number of groups.)

To manage those groups, use the pinch gesture on a touchscreen or hold down Ctrl as you use the mouse wheel to zoom the display so you can zoom out to see all tiles—an option calledsemantic zoom. You can drag any group to move it into a new position. Selecting a group displays a Name group option in the app bar. The name you enter appears above the group when you return to normal view.

On smaller displays, screen real estate is far more limited. At 1366×768, for example, you get three rows of tiles, with no more than three groups (plus a hint of a fourth) visible on the Start screen. You can use the mouse wheel to scroll to the right to show hidden tiles, but it’s much easier to just bump the edge of the screen with the mouse pointer; in the Consumer Preview, that simple action automatically pans to show you what’s off the screen—no clicking or scroll bars required.

The Start screen also turns into Search as soon as you begin typing, and there are now a full assortment of search-enabled apps that you can use to change the scope of a search.

If you’re hoping for a way to replace the Start screen with a Windows 7–style Start menu, I have bad news for you. That option will not be there. It’s not in the Consumer Preview, and it won’t be in the final release. And the registry hack that temporarily enabled the Start menu in the Developer Preview doesn’t appear to work in this release.

Much (far too much, in fact) has been written about the demise of the Start button and the Start menu on the Windows 8 desktop. While it’s true that the familiar Windows flag is no longer present at the left side of the taskbar, Start is not gone. Indeed, you’ll find its successor in two different places in the new Windows 8 user interface, as I explain on the next page.

from zdnet.com