Windows 8 start menu

Windows 8: One guy’s opinion!

As far back as the release of Windows 8 Developer Preview the internet has been overrun with complaints about how much Windows 8 had changed and how bad the changes were.

The complaints were not wide-ranging. Most complaints centered around the “Start” screen and the removal of the “Start” button on the desktop. The complaints about the lack of a “Start” button morphed into complaints about the removal of the “Start” menu. This is the complaint that I want to focus on for this post.

Start Menu: Names have been changed to protect the innocent!

In previous versions of Windows, a click on the Start button resulted in a fly-out menu from the button. You then had to navigate with your mouse to find the program you want to click on. The functionality of Windows 8 start menu has not changed, but way to the start screen has changed.

Access to the start menu was changed from the start button to a tile activated when you move your mouse to the lower left corner of the monitor. This caused a lot of grumbling among the tech community, but to me this is the same as the start button, but is moved a few centimeters from the previous location of the start button.

So, now we move the mouse to the lower left corner and click the “Start” tile. This opens the start menu, but instead of a fly-out menu on the desktop, the Start menu is a full screen menu of applications, both Windows 8 apps and desktop apps. From this screen you can do everything to an icon that you could in the previous Start menus.

You have the right to click!

Right click on a tile on the Start Menu (Windows 8 now calls these tiles instead of icons) and a menu will pop-up at the bottom of the screen with different options based on the type of application (Windows 8 app or Desktop application).

The options you will see when right clicking on a Windows 8 app are:

  1. Unpin from start – This will remove the tile from the start menu, but does not uninstall the app.
  2. Uninstall – This is pretty straight-forward. If you click it, it will uninstall the app.
  3. Smaller/Larger – If the tile is large, this will be labeled “Smaller” and will reduce the size of the tile. If the tile is small, this will be labeled “Larger” and will increase the size of the tile.
  4. Turn live tile on/Turn live tile off – This will only be available on tiles that have information that is always changing. Examples are Mail (if mail is configured), News, and Travel, etc. This selection will toggle the live tile on and off.

The options you will see when right clicking on a Desktop Application are:

  1. Pin/Unpin to taskbar – Select this if you want to pin the application to the taskbar in the desktop environment.
  2. Open new window – Select to open a new window of the application.
  3. Run as administrator – Select to run the application with administrator credentials.
  4. Open file location – Select to open the location of the application files.
  5. Desktop applications will also have Uninstall and Unpin from Start selections.

“What about installed applications that don’t show up on the Start menu,” you may be asking. This is also very easy to do from the start menu.

Right click on any Tile or anywhere on the Start Menu and on the far right of the menu along the bottom of the screen is a selection labeled “All apps.” When selected this will bring you to a listing of Windows 8 apps and Desktop applications.

Click, Click, Clickety!

I know that’s too much clicking, but with Windows 8, you don’t have to click your mouse at all to access an app unless you want to use one of the items on the right click menu. How? Very simple.

If you want to access an application, simply press the Windows key on your keyboard and start typing the name of the application. When you start typing a search box will appear on the right side of the screen and as you type more letters, you will see applications appear on the left side of the screen.

For instance, if you type “no” without the quotes, you will see “Sticky Notes” and “Notepad” on the left side of the screen. You will also see more selections below the “Search” box. These options will tell you the number of results in other areas of the Operating System.

Miscellaneous

I’ve seen talk about the ability to close Windows 8 apps, or should I say the lack of ability to close Windows 8 apps.

Closing windows 8 apps is as easy as tapping the windows key and then move your mouse to the upper left hand corner of the screen and all of the open Windows 8 apps will appear on the left side of the screen, you can also open this list with “Windows Key”+Tab. If you right-click on the app, you can select close and the app will close, or you can click on the app and it will become the active app.

There is no change in closing desktop applications and you can also switch between apps and applications using Alt+Tab.

Windows 8 has caused more complaining among the tech community than Windows Vista did, but I think in the end, as more people buy new computers that have Windows 8 installed, the complaints will dwindle until there are only a few staunch anti-Microsoft people complaining.

I have been using Windows 8 since the Consumer Preview was released and have only had problems with one application, but it is a specialized application for connecting to a digital sound board and I did not expect it to work. Other than the one application every application I used in Windows 7 ran in Windows 8 without issue.

I want to leave you with this; don’t discount Windows 8 on the basis of someone else’s opinion and don’t blindly commit to Windows 8 based on this post or other people’s opinions. Go to your nearest retailer that has Windows 8 PCs on display and mess with the Operating system and form your own opinions.

Restoring a start menu

If you absolutely require a start menu, there are various options to install to restore the start menu. There have been many blogs written about this subject, so I’m not going to rehash the information here. One of the best blogs on the subject was written over at How-to-Geek.

Are you using Windows 8? What are your thoughts or secrets. Do you like it, not like it, or indifferent? Leave you thoughts in the comments.

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