Unfortunately, there’s no direct way to open a page you’re viewing in IE for desktop in IE Metro. But if you really want to do this for some reason, the simplest way is to just copy the URL of the page, switch to IE Metro, and paste it into the IE Metro address bar. As always, keyboard shortcuts are your friend: Alt + D will select the One Box/address bar in either browser, and Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V can be used to copy and then paste, respectively.
IE 10 and Default Browser Selection
Before moving on from our look at web browsing and Windows 8, there’s a final, somewhat uncomfortable topic to discuss. And that’s what happens when you change the default web browser in Windows 8 to anything other than the Metro version of Internet Explorer. Trust us; this is going to get weird.
First, understand that in a clean, unchanged install of Windows 8, the Metro-style version of Internet Explorer 10 is indeed the default browser. This means that anytime a web browser is needed by the OS, another Metro-style app, or a desktop application, IE 10 Metro is invoked.
Likewise, in this default configuration, you will find an IE 10 Metro tile on the Windows 8 Start screen. What you won’t find, curiously, is an IE 10 desktop tile. And there is no way to add an IE 10 tile to the desktop when IE 10 Metro is the default. That’s just the way it is.
Unfortunately, Windows 8 is oftentimes not configured in this way. And of course, you can change things yourself. So let’s look at some of the scenarios in which IE 10 Metro is not the default browser, and see what happens.
If you’d rather use the desktop version of IE 10 as the default browser and not IE 10 Metro, you can do so by accessing Internet Options from within IE 10 desktop as described earlier in the chapter. Then navigate to the Programs tab and change the Choose how you open links option to Always in Internet Explorer in the desktop.
And if you want the desktop IE tile on the Start screen (and any pinned websites) to open desktop IE instead of IE Metro, also check the box titled Open Internet Explorer tiles on the desktop.
When you perform both of these steps, IE Metro, for all intents and purposes, is removed from your system. It’s not literally gone, of course; it’s just inaccessible. And it will remain so until you change those settings back.
Like previous Windows versions, Windows 8 allows you to install your choice of third-party browsers. But when you do so, things can change with IE 10, depending on how the other browsers are configured.
Specifically, if you configure a third-party browser—Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox for example—to be the default browser in Windows 8, the Metro version of Internet Explorer disappears.
The only way to return IE Metro is to make IE the default browser in Default Programs again.
You can see the change on the Start screen: The tile for IE has changed to a tile for desktop IE, not IE Metro.
If you upgrade a Windows 7–based PC to Windows 8, you may notice that the IE tile on the Start screen is for the desktop version of IE 10 and not for the Metro version as expected. This is for the same reason as stated earlier, and you had configured a different browser as the default browser before upgrading. So Windows 8 hides IE 10 Metro. Again, to return IE as the default, you will need to access the Default Programs interface.
Summary
If ever there were a poster child for the dual—one might say dueling—nature of the Windows 8 user experiences, it’s Internet Explorer 10. As with the OS on which it runs, Internet Explorer 10 offers two separate but complementary user experiences: a standard Windows application that runs in the desktop environment and a touch-first, Metro-style app.
The Metro-style version of Internet Explorer 10 works best on tablets and other touch-based devices, offering all of the gesture support you’d expect combined with the best features of the desktop browser.
For users on traditional PCs, or those who prefer the more full-featured desktop versions, Internet Explorer 10 builds on the improvements of previous IE versions, offering better performance, better web standards support, and, of course, some great integration with the Metro browser.
The strangest part of this dual browser experience, perhaps, is understanding how each of these products works with the other and, more confusingly, with third-party browsers. Here, the dual nature of Internet Explorer becomes more confusing than complementary. But with a little bit of understanding, you’ll be able to configure your PC to work with the browser or browsers you prefer.
Chapter 8
Get It Done with Windows 8’s Productivity Apps
• Understanding the relationship between your Microsoft account and key Windows 8 productivity apps
• Using People to manage contacts
• Using Mail to manage e-mail
• Using Calendar to manage your schedule
• Using Messaging to communicate with others
• Using SkyDrive to store and access files online
• Using Windows Reader to view PDF files
• Using Bing Maps to get directions and find your location
• Understanding the Other Metro productivity apps
• Using Microsoft Office for advanced productivity tasks like document editing, spreadsheet creation, presentation making, and note-taking
Throughout its decades-long existence, Windows has been known primarily for its use as the basis for the PC productivity workhorse, and it has long included a suite of useful productivity applications. These applications have always ranged from marginally useful to truly useful depending on the version of Windows and the tool in question. But with Windows 8, you are given a truly impressive arsenal of useful Metro-style productivity apps and, of course, traditional Windows applications.
This chapter examines the new Metro-style apps that Microsoft includes with Windows 8 and RT, whether they’re acquired with a new PC purchase or downloaded separately from the Windows Store. These include new contacts, e-mail, calendaring, and messaging solutions that replace legacy Windows Live applications, as well as useful new apps for cloud storage access, PDF reading and annotation, mapping, and more. This chapter also briefly examines the Office 2013 applications—Word RT, Excel RT, PowerPoint RT, and OneNote RT—which come exclusively with Windows RT, the ARM-based variant of Windows 8.
Thanks to the dynamic nature of its new apps platform, the Metro-style apps that Microsoft includes with Windows 8/RT will change over time, so it’s highly likely that the apps described in this chapter will appear somewhat differently over time and will include additional features. This is normal, and as a general statement, it’s probably fair to say that the Metro-style productivity apps you use will provide a superset of the functionality we describe in this chapter.
A Note About the Windows Productivity Apps and Your Microsoft Account
Before we can discuss the individual productivity apps that are considered part of the full Windows 8 experience, you need to be aware that many of these apps—including the core People, Mail, Calendar, and Messaging apps—all rely on connectivity with your Microsoft account, or what used to be called a Windows Live ID. You may recall from previous discussions in this book that we strongly recommend using a Microsoft account for your sign-in with Windows 8 instead of an old-fashioned local account because that former account type provides such useful integration capabilities. But we realize that some of you will ignore this advice, either because you feel you know better or because you simply don’t have a choice, perhaps because the Windows 8 PC you’re using is supplied by work or for other reasons.