Top 10 tips for navigating Windows 8 Metro

Moving around Windows 8 Metro isn't intuitive, so here are some pointers

The classic example: How do you turn off a Windows 8 machine?

The answer: swipe out the Charm menu from the right side of the screen, choose Settings, touch the power button, and choose Shut Down. Simple, yes?

RELATED: This Windows 8 tablet might actually be a PC

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HARDWARE: 12 available devices to test drive Windows 8

Windows 8's Metro interface is anchored by the Start screen, a collection of colored rectangles called tiles that are labeled with text to explain what they are. So the mail application says Mail and has a stylized envelope displayed on it. The tile to access the Windows store says Store on it and features a stylized shopping bag.

The Start screen stretches out horizontally and may take up several screens that can be scrolled by sliding a finger on a touch screen or left-clicking the arrow buttons in the bottom corners.

Metro is distinguished by its use of the full screen to display current applications. All the chrome of the navigation bars and systems tray so familiar in earlier versions of Windows are gone. Tools that serve these functions are hidden off-screen.

Some of these comprise the charms bar, a set of buttons hidden to the right of the screen. They can be called out with the swipe of a finger on a touch screen. These charms are labeled Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings.

Swipe the left side, and you get the applications bar, which displays a thumbnail of each running application. Pressing any one of them brings it to fill the main screen.

Those are the basics, but there's still a lot to know. Here are 10 tips for performing useful tasks in Windows 8 that you might never discover on your own. Tasks can be carried out using touch or mouse and keyboard.

1. Returning to the Start screen: It's easy to lose your way in Windows 8 when you're just learning it, and finding the Start screen can help re-anchor you. To find it using a touch screen, swipe out the Charms bar on the right and press the Start charm. With a mouse, click the bottom-left corner screen. You'll know it's ready for the click when a tiny image of the Start screen pops up. On a keyboard, press the Windows key.

2. Organizing the Start screen: The Start screen is made up of a large number of tiles, so separating them into categories makes it easier to find the ones you want. Drag tiles either with a finger or using a mouse and dropping related tiles near each other.

3. Naming groups of tiles: Zoom out on the Start screen to get an overall view of the Start screen tiles. This can be done using a two-fingered pinching gesture or clicking on the minus button in the lower right. Find the group you want to name, right-click on it and choose Name Group, type the name and press Enter. Or touch the group, choose Name Group and type in the name.

4. Pinning tiles: Not all applications are displayed on the Start screen. To add one, right-click or touch a blank spot on the Start screen and click or touch All Apps when it appears on the bottom. Right-click or touch the app you want to pin, then click or touch Pin to Start.

5. Displaying administrative tools: Right-click the mouse in the lower left corner. Or press the Windows key + X and the tools menu appears in the lower left. Or, while on the Start screen, press the Windows key + I, select Tiles, press Enter, press the space bar to change Show Administrative Bar to Yes. Administrative tool tiles will be pinned to the extreme right of the Start screen. Or swipe out the Charms bar, touch Settings, touch Tiles, flip the switch to Yes.

6. Search: In Windows 8, the Search charm can be used to search the system or, if it is invoked while in an application, to search the application. To search, access the Charms bar, choose Search and type in the search term. If you want to search the Start screen, just start typing your search term on the Start Screen. After your first keystroke, a search window appears. It will be searching apps by default, so if you want to search something else, you have to press or click on it.

7. Switching from app to app: When you have more than one app open, click in the upper right to reveal thumbnails of all active apps and click on the one you want. With touch, swipe out from the left side of the screen then back to the left side again without lifting your finger. That will reveal the thumbnails (this display is called the Switcher). Press the one you want.

8. Snapping apps: Metro supports displaying two apps at once, one in a narrow strip at either the right or left and one occupying the rest of the screen. The smaller one is said to be snapped to the side. To do so, type Windows key + . and it snaps on the right; press them again and it snaps to the left; do it again and it becomes full-screen. To switch between the snapped app and the main app, drag the vertical dividing bar between the two toward the center until the main app snaps to the other side.

9. Closing a Metro app: Metro apps idle in a low-power state in the background when not in use, but to shut them down, swipe from the top of the screen and, without lifting your finger (or releasing the left key if you're using a mouse), drag to the bottom. The app will first shrink and, as it reaches the bottom, will disappear.

10. Getting out of Metro: Had enough Metro? Press Alt + Tab and release when you get to the desktop.

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Windows 8 Update: Steve Ballmer's 80-inch Windows 8 tablet

Also, Office for iPads, Ballmer misquoted, Michael Dell predicts no corporate rush to Windows 8

While it lacks the mobility usually associated with this class of device, there's an 80-inch tablet serving the head of Microsoft as a wallboard and as a substitute for other work-related gear.

"Steve Ballmer has an 80-inch Windows 8 tablet in his office. He's got rid of his phone, he's got rid of his note paper. It's touch-enabled and it's hung on his wall," the company's vice president Frank Shaw told wired.co.uk. "It's his whiteboard, his email machine ... and it's a device we're going to sell."

MORE: Windows RT management could be a key to success for Windows 8 tablets

While there's not a huge consumer market yet for such enormous tablets, that could change over time as customers become familiar with these devices and their demands change, Shaw says. "It's not a consumer thing now, but we know historically that that's how all things start," Shaw told wired.co.uk. "The idea that there should be a screen that's not a computer, we'll laugh at that in two years."

A Sharp 80-inch touchscreen running Windows was demonstrated at CES earlier this year, but Ballmer's jumbo tablet is something different, made by a different manufacturer, Shaw says.

This screen size goes well beyond the 27-inch "family hub" device described in a Building Windows 8 blog earlier this year that details how to scale the operating system to different screen sizes, but that was not a comprehensive list. "Windows will support just about any screen dimension so long as the graphics driver and hardware combination provide the correct information to Windows," the blog says.
Office for iOS?

The rumor has popped up again, this time from mobile news site bgr.com, that Microsoft plans to release a complete Office suite for iPads and Android tablets. This rumor comes from "a reliable source," the site says.

Contributing doubt to this rumor is that doing so would shoot Microsoft's Windows RT efforts in the foot, something the company is certainly capable of and that in the big picture may be a good tradeoff.

Windows RT, as the ARM-based Windows 8 offering is known, is the closest thing Microsoft will have to an iPad, and like Apple does for the iPad, Microsoft is limiting what software customers can add to it. One of the features Windows RT comes with is a bundle of four out of seven Office applications. (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote included; Outlook, Publisher, Access left out.)

So that would be a worse package than the "complete Office suite" described in the rumor. Why would Microsoft introduce a tablet whose major differentiator is that comes with some Office and then make a better package of Office apps available for iPads? Doesn't make sense.

Of course Microsoft wants to do a lot more than sell Windows RT. It may make more sense and more money to, say, make the very popular iPad more friendly to work environments with some Microsoft software that reaps licensing fees. The company could reap additional license revenues for software to manage the devices.
Microsoft: Ballmer misquoted on Windows 8 uptake estimate

Steve Ballmer predicts that 500 million devices will run Windows 8 by the end of next year, wire service Agence France-Press reported, but Microsoft says that's not what he really said.
The startling estimate would represent an amazing adoption rate for a new operating system, particularly one so different from its predecessor. So startling, in fact, that it turns out not to be true, or at least that's what Microsoft says in response to the unsurprising flood of skeptical commentary about the number.

So what did he say? According to Microsoft, Ballmer was regurgitating numbers the company floated last year when it said that if all the current Windows devices were upgraded to Windows 8 that number could be reached. Big difference and a big if.
Michael Dell on Windows 8

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Businesses won't rush their Windows 8 upgrades, Dell founder Michael Dell predicts, according to a transcript of the company's earnings call.

"We don't see -- corporations are still adopting Windows 7, so we don't think there'll be a massive adoption of Windows 8 by corporations early on," Dell says.

That doesn't mean Dell isn't interested in the new operating system and its potential for consumer devices. "[C]learly, there's Windows 8 dynamic, but that's much more of a consumer business impact relatively late in the year but won't necessarily impact our overall commercial business," Dell says.

In fact, he says, Windows 8 has compelling new capabilities that Dell plans to support with its hardware. "But certainly, the addition of capacitive touch capability into Windows 8, we think, will be a welcome addition and will have a full complement of products at time of launch," he says.
Flash for Metro version of Internet Explorer 10

Windows 8 supports two versions of Internet Explorer 10: "the new Internet Explorer in the Windows Metro style UI experience that is optimized for touch devices, and the familiar browsing experience of Internet Explorer for the desktop," says Microsoft.

And, the company says in a March 13 article, "only supports plug-ins in Internet Explorer for the desktop." Many thought that meant IE10 for Metro wouldn't support Adobe Flash, but would instead rely on HTML5 to support rich Web features.

Now rumor has it that Flash will be integrated into IE10 by Microsoft itself, and employing a version that suits Microsoft after it combed through the actual source code and tweaked it to its liking, according to Within Windows.

"Microsoft does work closely with Adobe, closely enough that Adobe actually provided Microsoft with source code access to Flash, allowing them to seamlessly integrate the technology into IE10," the site says. "Thus, Microsoft did not need to make an exception to its no-add-on policy for Internet Explorer Metro."

If true, that means users of IE 10 Metro will have a better experience at more sites

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