LAB 1 No Programming Experience Exploring the New Windows 8 Modern User Interface (UI) and Windows 8 Apps Overview In this lab you will Explore some of the features of the new Windows 8 Interface. Requirements To complete this lab you will need: Windows 8.1 Pro Internet connection Duration 30 Minutes or less Step 1: Accessing the Start Screen In Windows 8 the Start Screen replaces the Start menu found in previous versions of Windows. This is where you can pin and group applications for easy access, This includes new Windows Store apps and legacy applications (depending on the version of Windows 8). Below is a typical Start Screen:
You can access the Start Screen in a number of ways: It is the default screen shown at logon, so is usually available immediately. Press the Windows key on your keyboard Click the Start Button on the left of the Taskbar on the legacy desktop Press Windows Key + C on the keyboard, then click the Start option on the Charms bar For touch screens, swipe from the right edge of the screen, then click the Start option. Step 2: Customising the Start Screen Right-click anywhere on the background of the start screen and select Customise from the AppBar at the bottom: You can then do any of the following: Unpin apps Move apps around to re-order or group them Name the app groups Uninstall apps Turn of the app live tiles Re-size the app icons
Step 3: Viewing All Apps By default most apps are not shown on the Start Screen.. Click the small down arrow at the bottom of the Start Screen to see all the available applications: From here you can pin apps to the main Start Screen. Step 4: Launching Apps You can launch apps from the Start Screen by clicking or tapping them. They are designed to run ful screen.. However, you can snap up to 3 apps (depending on your screen resolution) side-by-side by clicking or swiping the top of an app and dragging it down and to the side of the screen: Although you can launch lots of apps one after the other, only the app(s) currently visible to the user are actually running. All others are suspended in the background these are immediately unsuspended if the user switches them to the foreground. While suspended, the apps cannot perform any activity, which is why Windows Store apps have mechanisms for performing background taks which execute even when the app is closed.
Step 5: Navigating Inside Apps There are a number of common design patterns for Windows Store apps, including Simple grid views and hub style apps, such as the Bing news app: Usually the content is used to navigate around. For example, to read a specific article in Big News, you simply tap or click the article. A back button is supplied to get back the previous screen. If a lot of content is present in a page, then this can be scrolled (usually horizontally) by swiping across the screen, or using the scrollbar that appears when you hover the mouse at the bottom edge of the screen. Step 6: Semantic Zoom For apps with a lot content, it is common to find them using Semantic Zoom. This is a mechanism that allows you to zoom out of the details of the content to higher level to more easily navigate between categories of related content. This is how semantic zoom look in the Bing News app: Clicking a category takes you back to the main list of news, but jumps you to the appropriate point in the list.
You can also use Semantic Zoom on the Start Screen: You can zoom by either pinching the screen with two fingers or clicking the small minus sign that appears beside the bottom scroll bar of a page (usully hidden until you hover the mouse over it). Step 7: Sharing Content Apps can register as the source of shared content or able to receive shared content (or both). This means, for example, an email app may be able to receive links, text and pictures from news app and send these in an email message. Below you can see the Bing News app and a list of apps which are able to share the current article: Share content by swiping the Charms bar onto the screen (or pressing Windows Key + C), then click the Share option. Feel free to explore the new Windows 8 interface and look for some other feature not mentioned so far. For example, see if you can find an application that support secondary tiles.