Windows 8: A new way to use your PC
Log into a Windows 8 PC, and you're greeted with the Start screen. In place of a Taskbar full of applications and a desktop packed with shortcuts, your screen consists of a grid of tiles. As with icons, clicking or tapping a tile launches an application; unlike icons, these tiles display useful data. The weather tile, for instance, displays the current weather and updates itself without your input. If you've seen Windows Phone 7, you'll immediately recognise this 'Metro' interface.
In Windows 8, whether you're using a touchscreen tablet or a powerful desktop PC with a keyboard and mouse, the default interface displays a horizontal grid of tiles that are arranged into customisable groups.
Applications made for Metro work like tablet apps and display well on smaller, finger-driven screens. They display fullscreen, without any of the 'chrome' you find around desktop programs – there are no minimise or maximise buttons, scrollbars or drop-down menus.
Swipe a finger from right to left on a tablet or touchscreen PC and you're presented with the five Windows 8 'Charms': Start, Search, Share, Devices and Settings. Start always returns you to the Start screen, but each of the other Charms brings up a context-sensitive menu relative to the application you're using.
In a photo-viewing app, the Search button searches through your photos. Share allows you to post a photo on Facebook, Twitter, or any other app that can receive images in this manner. The Devices Charm lets you access a printer to print a photo or a camera to import new ones. Settings displays a list of photo-specific settings, such as brightness and contrast, plus core system-wide settings such as volume, power and networking.
Swipe a finger from the left of the screen and you flip back through your running applications. A swipe from the bottom or top of the screen reveals an 'app bar' overlay, which fulfils a similar function to a right-click context menu in Windows 7. In a photo app, you might find commands for cropping, resizing, rotating and fixing red-eye in this bar. An overlay at the top of the screen handles in-app navigation, such as bookmarks or recent documents.
Touch navigation, even at this early stage, is fast and responsive. It's simple and intuitive, and it has all the niceties you'd expect to make a touchscreen device feel right, including several built-in touch keyboards. These keyboards could use refinement, but they're already better than what you get in Windows 7, and they have autocorrect and spellcheck enabled.
