Gadgetory

the surface tablet is a daring new piece of hardware from Microsoft but between the hybrid tablet design and the windows 8 software it takes a little bit of practice to find your way around I'm Donald Bell I'm going to show you some tips and shortcuts for navigating the Microsoft Surface first some basics but the touchscreen is pretty obvious that you can touch things on the screen to interact with them but what isn't obvious is that a lot of the navigation here is done by swiping in from one of the four edges of the screen swipe in from the right and you'll get the charms bar for adjusting settings like Wi-Fi connections or screen brightness swipe in from the top or bottom to view all of your available apps or swipe in from the left to jump between open programs the left edge also has a few other tricks if you pull over an open program halfway you can view it side-by-side with another window and if you swipe in from the left just a little and circle back you can see shortcuts for all of your open apps now if you have the keyboard cover with your surface you can do a lot of these same tricks without even touching the screen here are some useful key combos that all center around the windows key windows ce will bring up the charms bar windows e will take you to the file explorer windows tab will cycle you through all the open programs and perhaps the most important shortcut here is from the home screen just start typing to search for anything on your computer finally some tips on personalizing the home screen all the tiles here can be rearranged adjusted or even hidden you can rearrange by holding on the icon and then sliding it where you want it for more options try dragging the tile to the bottom of the screen and letting go now you'll see settings for the tile you can make the tile bigger or smaller or unpin it from the home screen so you don't have to look at it every time you use your computer so there you go those are my tips for getting around on the microsoft surface for more cool stuff to do with windows 8 visit how to cnet com if you want more from me and go follow me on twitter for cnet com I'm Donald Bell you