Release the mouse button to snap the app into the Snap area on the left.
While there is no keyboard-based shortcut for enabling side-by-side mode, as you’ll discover next, there are keyboard shortcuts for modifying the presentation of side-by-side apps.
• Touch: Swipe in from the left edge of the screen. As you do so, the previous app in the Back stack will appear as a thumbnail image under your finger. Stop moving your finger and the side-by-side Snap bar will appear. When it does, release your hold on the screen and the secondary app will snap in place.
Figure 4-13: You can drag a previous app off Back or Switcher and then snap it in place alongside the desktop or another primary app.
Once you’ve got two apps snapped into position in side-by-side mode, you can further customize the display, albeit in fairly limited ways. Here are the options available at your disposaclass="underline"
• Snap to the right instead: While many are happy to snap a secondary app to the left side of the screen, some will prefer the snapped app to appear on the right. While performing the snap operation, simply drag the app thumbnail to the right side of the screen instead of down and to the left.
If you’ve already snapped an app to the left side of the screen and would like it to appear on the right side instead, the easiest way to do so is via a mouse: Just move the mouse cursor to the top edge of the snapped app, and when the cursor changes into a small hand, grab the app and then drag it to the right side of the screen. With a keyboard, you may find it easier to simply close the snapped app, as described shortly, and just redo the snap action and place it on the right instead. But the convoluted way in which you can do this goes like so: Press Winkey + . (period) three times to snap the secondary app to the right. Then press Alt + Tab (or Winkey + D) to return the desktop to the primary display area.
• Swap the snapped and primary apps: Press Winkey + J to swap the snapped (secondary) and primary apps on-screen. Or via touch or mouse, simply drag the Snap bar toward the other side of the screen, letting go before you hit the screen edge.
• Close the snapped app: If a secondary app is snapped on the left, press Winkey + Shift + . (period) to close the snapped app. Otherwise, press Winkey + . (period). You can close the snapped app via touch or mouse by dragging the Snap bar to the closest screen edge.
Side-by-side screen sharing is more interesting for those who wish to stick with Metro-style apps, and we cover this feature in Chapter 3 as well as a result. But it’s worth mentioning here, because the desktop is considered an app, too, and can participate in this task management solution. Certainly, some apps will work well in this snapped mode, even when used in tandem with the desktop.
Charms
In Windows 8, Microsoft exposes many system-level services through a new user experience called Charms. These Charms are accessible via a bar that appears on the right edge of the screen in a manner that is consistent across every user experience in Windows 8, including the Start screen, all Metro-style apps, and the desktop. This can be seen in Figure 4-14.
Charms are central to using and understanding Windows 8, so we cover them as needed throughout this book. The main discussion about this experience, however, can be found in Chapter 3.
You can access the Charms bar in a variety of ways, and as a top-level interface in Windows 8, it has simple triggers for all the major input types:
• Mouse: Move the mouse cursor into the lower-right corner of the screen. As the cursor hits against the natural edge of the screen, a transparent preview of the Charms bar appears, as shown in Figure 4-15.
Figure 4-14: The Charms bar is a system-wide user experience that works in the Start screen, Metro-style apps, and the desktop. When the Charms bar displays, an overlay for the time and date also appears.
Figure 4-15: A preview of the Charms bar appears when you mouse into one of the screen’s rightmost corners.
Mouse-based Charms access also works from the top-right corner of the screen. But when the transparent preview of the Charms appears, you must move down the right edge of the screen to fully activate the Charms bar.
To fully enable the Charms, move up the right side of the screen. The Charms bar will appear normally and you can access the various options normally.
This is perhaps the simplest way to enable the Charms, and if you remember just one Windows 8 keyboard shortcut, this should be it.
• Keyboard: To enable the Charms bar from the keyboard, type Winkey + C.
• Touch: With a multi-touch display, you can swipe in from the right edge of the screen to enable the Charms bar.
Why is the Charms preview shown here? Microsoft realized that many users would move the mouse cursor near the right edge of the screen for a variety of reasons, such as to access the Peek functionality or to click an application’s scroll bar. So the Charms bar appears in preview mode first. If the user doesn’t move the mouse cursor along the right edge of the screen when this preview appears, the Charms will disappear and you can continue doing whatever it is you were doing.
Once you’ve displayed the Charms bar, you can then access the various Charms and perform system-wide or context-sensitive actions. Some of the more common actions you may access from this interface include Settings, Search—by which you can find desktop applications (as well as Metro apps and PC Settings and Control Panels)—and Devices, which helps you interact with various hardware devices, including secondary displays, removable storage devices like hard drives and USB memory devices, and the like. These functions are all discussed later in this chapter.
Of the remaining two Charms, one, Share, does not work with the desktop or Windows applications at all. Instead, the Share charm is aimed solely at Metro-style apps, which use this system capability to share information with other apps. The other remaining Charm, the Start icon, can be used as a toggle for the Start screen.
How you access these Charms varies by input device. With the mouse, you simply navigate the mouse cursor to the appropriate Charm and click it once. Via touch, it’s a simple tap. And if you access the Charms bar from the keyboard, you can use the arrow keys to navigate around and then press Enter (or Space) to activate a Charm.
Settings
While Windows 8 offers the same Screen Resolution and Personalize context menus from the desktop as did its predecessor, Windows 7, Windows 8 also expands on this notion of desktop settings by making some of these features available via a handy new Metro-based Settings interface as well. This feature is accessed via the Charms bar, as noted previously. But if you’re a keyboard maven, you can also access Settings from the desktop (or from any Metro-style experience) more quickly by tapping Winkey + I.
However you choose to enable it, the Settings pane for the desktop should resemble Figure 4-16.