“How do I find my programs?” is a very common question. People see the Windows-tiled Start screen and aren’t able to find the Start menu on the desktop, so they feel lost. If there’s no tile for it, it can be extremely difficult to locate and run the program that you know is on your machine.
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You can see the search box that automatically appeared as I started typing on the right and beneath that, a count of the number of apps that match (the seven currently displayed on the left), the number of settings that match (162), and the number of files (713). If I were to continue typing, the results would narrow. (If I finish typing the word “control”, for example, the results narrow down to three, 12 and 31 respectively.)
Finding that program is easy. Just start typing.
Swipe to close
When looking at one of the newer tiled apps, it’s not at all clear how to close it or get rid of it. There’s no title bar, no little “x” at the top to click or tap. In fact, there’s no visual indication of how to close the app at all.In true Windows fashion, there are several ways to close an app: a couple that are old and one that is new.
On a touch screen, if you swipe your finger from just above the screen all the way to the bottom, the tiled app is closed.
Don’t have a touch screen? If you move your mouse pointer to the top of the screen, you’ll see it change to a hand:
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Are you a keyboard person? Don’t like swiping and mouse manipulations? No problem. ALT+F4 – which has been a standard way to close windows for years. It still works, even with tiled apps.
And while we’re at it, ALT+TAB still works as well to cycle through the running apps and applications, whether they’re full screen or not:
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Use the other Internet Explorer
This is that questionable decision that I alluded to earlier. What many people don’t realize is that there are effectively two different versions of Internet Explorer in Windows 8: full screen/tiled and traditional. The tiled IE is easy to identify. It has the address bar at the bottom.
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