4.2.8 Use the Windows 10 Interface.txt

In this demonstration, we’re going to take a look at the Windows 10 user interface. Windows 10 has a lot of the features the customers liked from earlier versions of Windows and combined them to make an interface the most users like better. On Windows 10, if I click the Windows icon, down here, it b...

In this demonstration, we’re going to take a look at the Windows 10 user interface. Windows 10 has a lot of the features the customers liked from earlier versions of Windows and combined them to make an interface the most users like better. On Windows 10, if I click the Windows icon, down here, it brings up a start menu where we see a miniaturized version of my start screen. Apps 0:24-1:06 Notice that I have two different types of app tiles. We have the standard app tile whose display is static. We also have the live tiles whose display is not static. It’s dynamically updated with new information. For example, the Microsoft Store app, right here, has no information currently displayed, neither does the Microsoft Edge app; however, my weather app does have information displayed on it. It’s constantly being updated with new information for the current weather conditions in my location. To start a Windows 10 app, all I have to do is click it from the start menu and the app is loaded. You’ll notice that in Windows 10 there are a lot of controls that we use with standard desktop apps, like the close, maximize, and minimize buttons. The Start Menu 1:07-2:56 If we come back here to the start menu, we’ll notice that only a subset of the apps and the applications installed on the system are displayed on the right side of the start menu. If we want to see all of the apps installed on the system, we can see them right here on the left side of the start menu. Be careful with the word ‘apps’ because it can be kind of misleading. When talking about apps, you might think about Windows store apps. With Windows 10, we’re kind of getting away from the ‘application versus app’ concept; although, it is still valid. We’re starting to call all the programs running on the system apps, even if they are traditional desktop apps. For example, when we view all apps, we see both Windows store apps, like alarms and clock, as well as traditional apps such as Acrobat Reader, you can see that the user interface used by a desktop app uses an interface that’s very similar to that used by the Microsoft store apps now. By default, we see the recently added apps here at the top of the list. My own preference, however, is to see the most used apps, which provides you with an easy way to start the apps that you use the most. To change this, we go down here and type, “start settings”, and click to open it. Then we can toggle off the show recently added apps and then toggle on the show most used apps here. If we go back to the start menu the most used apps are automatically added to a ‘Most used’ list here. For example, on this system, you can see that I’ve used the File Explorer, Control Panel, Microsoft Edge, and Maps. Now, you’re not stuck with just these. If you want to manually add an app your start menu, you can scroll down to view apps, locate the app in question, such as Acrobat Reader, right-click it and choose pin to start. Then a tile for that app is added down here to the start menu. In addition, we have a link here for Settings. Click and it brings up your settings app. The Settings App 2:57-3:35 There’s something that’s significant with Windows 10; it is the fact that a lot of the features and functionality that we associate with Control Panel are slowly being migrated from Control Panel, over here, to the Settings app. You’ll notice as you work with Windows 10 that there are some settings that used to be available in Control Panel that are no longer available in Control Panel at all. If you want to use them, you have to go to the Settings app. You will also notice that there are many settings in Control Panel that are duplicated over here in the Settings app. Likewise, there are several settings that are available only in the Settings app, and, of course, there are still some settings, over here, in the Control Panel that are available only in Control Panel. Taskbar 3:36-3:58 The Windows 10 desktop also includes our notification area, over here. The look and feel of the notification area is slightly different, but the way it works is almost identical to the way worked in earlier versions of Windows. We also have our quick launch area down here on the taskbar, and we have the taskbar itself. Whenever we start an application, such as Acrobat Reader, an icon is automatically added to the taskbar. Task View & Virtual Desktops 3:59-5:18 There is another feature of the Windows 10 user interface that is new in Windows 10. It’s never been used in earlier versions of Windows, although, it has been widely implemented in the Linux operating system, the graphical desktop used by Linux operating systems. It is the concept of virtual desktops. Right now, were looking at the main Windows desktop. There’s this icon right down here. We click it; it’s called task view. We can add virtual desktops to our system by clicking ‘New desktop’ up here. I can switch between desktops. For example, we could run Acrobat Reader on desktop one here, or we can also switch to our new desktops, as well. We can go to Desktop 2 and I can run Microsoft Edge on this desktop. We can switch back and forth between them by clicking Task view. I can even add more desktops, as well. I have five desktops. You can delete any of these virtual desktops by clicking the X that appears when you hover over each desktop, like shown here. Keep in mind that any apps that were open in any of the closed virtual desktops will default back to your next available desktop. In task view, we also see here, below, apps and webpages that have been used earlier. If you click one, it opens it up in a highlighted virtual desktop above. This feature makes it really nice and helps keep your desktop from being cluttered up with lots of running applications. Cortana 5:19-7:02 The last thing we are going to look at in this demonstration is Cortana. Notice down here that there’s a search field and it says, “Type here to search.” Cortana is a personal assistant. It’s really like Siri on Apple iOS devices. There’re two different ways that you can use Cortana. One ways to type things in the search field, here, that you want Cortana to look for. For example, I can type “testout” in the search field. It will search, not only local resources, but also resources out on the Internet and help me find what it is I’m looking for. You can also use speech recognition to talk to Cortana. If you have a microphone set up on your system, you can use your voice to ask Cortana questions and Cortona will go out, on the Internet, and find the answers to what you’re looking for. We can’t do that in this demonstration because my voice is being recorded and it’s being piped away from the operating system, itself, so there’s no way to send voice commands to it, but I could if I wanted to. I want to show you, if you click Cortona, here, there’s a settings button, here, where you can customize how Cortona works. Right now, there are several different settings that you can configure. For example, you can configure the microphone, lock screen, language, Permissions & History, and so on. One of the ways that Cortana works is that it gathers information, based upon all the searches that you make. It stores that information in the cloud. That way, when you ask a particular question of Cortana, it takes a look at the stuff that you’ve looked up in the past and customizes the results based on what your preferences and interests are. You can manage this information using this right here. If I click the search bar, notice that I can customize my search as to what I’m looking for. For example, I can say I’m just looking for a particular app, or I’m looking for a particular document, or I’m just looking for something on the web. I can specify that here. That’s it for this demonstration. Summary 7:03-7:09 In this demo, we talked about the Windows 10 user interface. We first looked at the start menu, then we talked about virtual desktops, and we ended this demonstration by looking at Cortana.