Configuring Accounts and Preferences
To do this, move the mouse cursor to the upper- or lower-right corner of the screen and then move the cursor along the right edge of the screen toward the center. It’s a bit more natural to perform than it is to describe.
Like other Metro-style apps, Windows Store provides a simple Settings interface, and it is through this interface that you can access your account settings and other store-related preferences. Likewise, accessing this interface occurs as it does in other Metro experiences, through the Settings pane. You can access this pane from within Windows Store by typing Winkey + I, by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, or by using the mouse to enable the Charms bar and then choosing Settings.
The Windows Store settings pane is shown in Figure 6-32.
Figure 6-32: Windows Store settings
Click App updates to manually check for app updates.
While the Preferences option may seem to be the most relevant, it leads to a screen with only two configurable choices—Make it easier to find apps in my preferred languages (which is enabled by default) and Make it easier to find apps that include accessibility features (which is not). Instead, click Your account. When you do, you’ll see a full-screen interface like that in Figure 6-33.
Figure 6-33: Your account
From here, you can configure some useful settings related to Windows Store. These include the following:
• Your store account: You can sign out of your current account and use a different account for store activities.
• Payment and billing information: Windows Store uses the credit card information that is registered with your Microsoft account for purchases by default, so this option is generally set to No. However, if you’d prefer to manually sign in to your Microsoft account every time a purchase is made for security reasons, you can make that change here.
• Your registered PCs (and devices): When you install any app (paid, free, trial) on a PC or device, it is added to the list of 5 PCs/devices to which you can install apps. These apps, of course, and the 5 PCs/devices list, are tied to your Microsoft account. Via this interface, you can remove a PC/device from the list of your registered PCs and devices, as shown in Figure 6-34. Doing so will prevent those apps from running on the deselected PC/device going forward.
Figure 6-34: Removing a PC from your list of registered PCs and devices
Summary
With Windows Store, you can feel secure that Microsoft’s curated app store will provide you with the best possible experience, one that bridges the gap between the insecure Wild West of Google’s Android platform and the overly controlling and nonintegrated Apple App Store. This best-of-both-worlds experience draws on the lessons Microsoft learned from Windows Phone Marketplace, as well.
Using the store is a breeze, thanks to its intuitive, Metro-style UI, logical category-based organization, and a plethora of app discovery and feedback tools. You can use Windows Store to find, download, try, and buy Metro-style apps, and then update them with new features as needed. Only app uninstall occurs outside the store, and that’s a simple process that won’t litter your PC with leftover files and registry entries.
With this experience under your belt, you can begin further exploring Windows 8’s rich app landscape. And in the remainder of this section of the book, you’ll do just that, as you examine Internet Explorer 10 and the various productivity and entertainment apps that make this OS the best Windows yet.
Chapter 7
Browsing the Web with Internet Explorer 10
• Understanding the relationship between the two versions of Internet Explorer that ship with Windows 8
• Using the Metro-style version of Internet Explorer
• Configuring IE 10 Metro
• Using the Desktop version of Internet Explorer
• Configuring IE 10 desktop
• Knowing when to use which browser
• Understanding the weird interaction between IE 10 desktop, IE 10 Metro, and third-party browsers
In keeping with the dual user experience nature of Windows 8 itself, Microsoft has reimagined Internet Explorer—and, really, web browsing in general as well—in this new operating system, creating a fascinating, dual-mode version of the most-frequently used Windows application. Internet Explorer 10 is, in many ways, the poster child for this Windows 8-based vision of the future, offering both a Metro-style user experience and a more traditional, desktop-based web browser version as well.
It’s a model that other web browser makers, and perhaps other application makers, will emulate in their own solutions. But because web browsers play such a special role in Windows, having both Metro-style and traditional browsers available comes with some unique new constraints as well. So this chapter explores these changes, as well as the new features of both versions of Internet Explorer 10.
Two Browsers, One Brain: Understanding Internet Explorer 10
How you view Internet Explorer 10 will depend greatly on how you view Windows 8 and its two separate user experiences. That’s because, like Windows 8 itself, Internet Explorer 10 offers two faces to the world: a full-screen, Metro-style version of the browser and a more traditional, desktop-based version.
Let’s see what that means. In Figure 7-1, you can see the Metro version of Internet Explorer, with its normally hidden application user interface (or chrome) displayed for context. This version of IE offers a full-screen, touch-friendly, immersive user experience.
Figure 7-1: The Metro-style version of Internet Explorer 10
In Figure 7-2, meanwhile, you see the desktop version of Internet Explorer 10. This looks and works much like previous IE versions and is tailored for the traditional desktop environment. It offers a richer feature set, with full support for add-ons and browser extensions.
These two solutions are separate but also connected. That is, the Metro-style app and the desktop application are indeed two different executables, or programs. But they utilize the same rendering engine under the hood, share numerous features and data, and, most confusingly, interact with each other, and with other browsers and the underlying OS, in brand-new ways.
Figure 7-2: The desktop version of Internet Explorer 10
While we tend to use the term app to describe Metro-style solutions, and application for desktop solutions, this is just for convenience. Effectively speaking, both types of solutions are applications. (And, as it turns out, both are apps too!)
Microsoft describes these dual Internet Explorer applications as two different experiences, or skins, with one underlying browser engine. But that’s a bit of a stretch. In reality, Internet Explorer 10 acts as two distinct applications, and that becomes more evident when you configure Windows to use a different default browser (like Google Chrome).
As a result, it’s perhaps a bit fairer to say that Windows 8 offers two very different browser experiences, though each do share some underpinnings. Which one you use will depend very much on how you use Windows 8.