One of the things I was very impressed by was when I went from 7-8 on the same hardware, finger input for even little things was much easier. I could click on small buttons with high accuracy, even in the Developer Preview. I went to tap on things and found myself usually not needing to try a second or third time when I was trying to hit a small target. In addition, there is a whole new UI. While on the desktop you will generally see most of the stuff you are used to. The task bar is at the bottom, running apps on the bottom right by the clock, and on the far right you can click to see the desktop. There have been enhancements that work with your keyboard and mouse using hot-corners, hot-keys, or by swiping your finger.
Swipe to the left on the right side, and you get what Windows is calling Charms, 5 icons that lead to finger or mouse friendly menus that allow you to interact with various aspects of your computer. The first one at the bottom is for accessing your settings including wifi and restarting your computer. Above that is a spot for Devices, which can be used to set up a second screen among other things. In the middle is the start charm which leads to the start page (more on that later). The last two are share and search, which you guessed it, allows you to share things from your computer with others and search for things that you specify. Something that is different about search, and even share however, is that Windows 8 allows you to show a lot more control over what you are searching for. You can search for programs to launch, settings which are for the kinds of things you would find in your control panel and files. This isn’t completely new, but what is new is that you can search within apps or share from within the new metro style apps as well, if you use them.
In Addition, if you Swipe to the right on the left side, you can switch between metro apps if any are running. Swipe to the right and hold, and you can snap a metro app beside your desktop or another metro app. Swipe to the right and pull back, and you can see a list of running Metro Apps, including your desktop, with a place to select the start page at the bottom of this list as well.
Tomorrow we will take a look at the metro start page. Until then let us know if you have used touch on Windows 8 and what you like or don’t like about it’s new user interface.
[…] we will take a look at the touch experience in Windows 8. Have you had any experience using tablet/touch on Windows 7 or previous versions? What do you like […]