windows8 customizing the start screen with live tiles

You know you can move tiles on the Start screen to another area of the screen to make those tiles more accessible. You can also personalize a few select tiles independently so that the information available from them suits your personal needs. For example, you can tell the Weather app where you live (or give it permission to determine your location), and the app will supply current weather information from the Start screen (provided it can get that information from the Internet). If you want to know more about the weather, you just click the app to open it. These interactive and cus- tomizable tiles are live tiles, which means that they are often updated with new information.

Customizing any interactive tile generally only requires you to open the app, access the customizable tools and features (called charms) that enable you to change the settings, and input the desired information or make the desired choices.

In this exercise, you’ll personalize the interactive Weather app located on the Start screen.

Moving tiles on the start screen

You’ll use some tiles more than others, so you might want to reposition the tiles on the Start screen to make your most-used tiles easily accessible. For instance, if you use the Music app

often, you might put that app in the first position on the Start screen.              1

In this exercise, you’ll move a tile from its current position on the Start screen to the first

position. Repeat with other tiles as desired to personalize your Start screen.

sEt Up Start your computer and unlock the Lock screen. You need access to the Start screen.

Tip When an instruction requires you to click something with a mouse, note that you can generally touch the item (if applicable) to achieve the same result.

1               From the Start screen, click (or touch) and hold Music.

2               Drag the Music tile to the first position in the far-left side of the screen and drop it

there.

clEan Up The app is repositioned.

Tip If you move too many tiles now, what you see on your Start screen will be different from what you see in this chapter.

Moving around in the start screen

If you have more tiles than can appear on the Start screen, and you know that other tiles are available to the right or left of what you can see, you need to know some techniques

for getting to those tiles. To move around in the Start screen, you can use your mouse, key- board, track pad, or appropriate touch gesture. The method you choose depends on what kind of computer you have. Listed here are a few ways to move around in the Start screen (and there are others not listed here).

▪    SCRoLL BAR left-click, hold, and drag the scroll bar. on a laptop with a track pad, hold down the left mouse button while you drag across the track pad. on a tablet, you will see the scroll bar across the bottom when you flick left and right, but you don’t need to have

your finger on it to use it.

▪    FLiCk Place your finger on an empty area of the screen and flick from left to right or right to left. You can also drag your finger slowly in lieu of flicking quickly. You must have touch-compatible hardware for this to work.

▪    AuTo SCRoLL  Use your mouse’s scroll wheel (in an up-and-down motion) to move through apps from left to right.

▪    RigHT-CLiCk  you can right-click an empty area of the start screen and then click or touch All Apps to access all the apps and programs on your computer. On a tablet, flick upward from the bottom.

▪    pinCH Using touch, position two or more fingers apart from each other on the screen. pinch inward to make all the tiles smaller, which will enable you to see more tiles on the screen, as you can see here.

Tip To make everything smaller on the Start screen without using the pinch technique, position your mouse in the bottom-right corner and click the - sign that appears on the right end of the scroll bar. Click anywhere to return the tiles to their original size.

As you might expect, if you click or touch any tile, the app, program, or window opens, and the Start screen disappears. What you see when you move away from the Start screen

depends on what you’ve selected. If you open an app, it opens in its own screen and might offer configuration options, often in the form of charms. You’ll see an example of this later in this chapter when you open and configure the Weather app. If you open a program (such as Microsoft Word or Paint), a traditional window appears on the desktop. You’ll experience this later in the chapter when you open a file in Notepad. What you see with desktop appli- cations will look familiar.