Gadgetory

now the next thing I want to talk about is a bunch of UI improvements we've made to the mouse and keyboard experience of Windows and I mentioned already that I can boot straight to the desktop or resume to the desktop but now I want to talk about one of the most used area of computing real estate in the universe and that is the windows taskbar if you are a Windows user that's been a Windows user for a long time you probably have a deep and intimate relationship with the taskbar it's the way you think about switching between apps or launching apps and we've enhanced it significantly in this update to work with new Windows Store apps so you'll see down here i have a few apps that are win32 apps and then over here i have a bunch of taskbar buttons for apps that are our store apps so here is the facebook app and you'll notice when i open it up right up here at the top we show the title bar because windows users that are that i have a mouse and keyboard are incredibly accustomed coming up here to choose minimize and that now works in a modern app i'll switch back here to facebook again and you notice the taskbar was displayed on the bottom as well so if i moved down here to the bottom of the screen the taskbar will pop up and i can use that to switch between modern apps there's mail there's facebook or i can switch back to a win32 app like I ie the desktop is brought up I no longer have to think about a different switching model for apps whether they are win32 desktop apps or modern and I want you to keep in mind thank you I want you to keep in mind that the work that we've done to make touch grade is unaffected by these changes if I were holding a tablet in my hands being able to swipe in from the left and do task switching is convenient natural and that's still present but it's no longer required for my mouse and keyboard use now similarly if I'm using a tablet when I swipe in from the right with my thumb it's handy to have the start button and settings and search right there but that was something that we wanted to fix for mouse and keyboard users as well so let's take a look at the start screen when I go to the Start screen you'll notice we've made a few changes here to make it easy for mouse and keyboard users to get to those functions so right here we've put a PC settings tile in because Windows 7 users expect to find settings or control panel on start up here we've added a power button and a search button so those functions which previously hung off your right thumb are now easy to find on start the second thing we've tried to do is not just make it compatible so it's easy to learn but get all of the new value live tiles in a customizable Start screen to be more familiar for Windows mouse and keyboard users so we implemented a right-click context menu that pops up in a familiar way a way that all Mouse users have grown to love and it makes it easy for me to do things like resize a tile into its large or small size and so on even beyond that there are power user commands that Windows users are familiar with like holding down the control key and selecting a bunch of app tiles and then when I do that I can grab them all and drag them around together I'll move these tiles all to here and you can see that set of three all moved or I can choose a set and change them all to small tile so I have a powerful and quick way to interact with the Start screen via the mouse ok now the last thing i want to show is ways that we've improved windows 8.1 via this update to help users find your apps so i'm going to come back to the desktop and i want to point out here you might have noticed and this is on all pc's that get the windows 8.1 update we are pre pinning the Windows Store to the task bar so that desktop mouse and keyboard users will get will find the store much more discoverable it's right there it's always available and in fact I also want to show you that this is a store update that will be coming a little later we're improving the store you I to be really mouse and keyboard friendly and instead of some of these functions being off-screen handy if you have a touch tablet but not so discoverable on a pc with no touchscreen now it'll be much easier for people to discover these categories find recommended apps and so on and so on so the store update as well is going to become mouse and keyboard friendly and that's something we'd like you all to do with your apps we're going to be providing samples for you and doing right click menus and the kinds of things that make your UI discoverable and on screen for mouse and keyboard users so that's the first change the second change that we've done besides making the store really visible is when people are using their pc to do things like searches we want your apps to be present so here i am on the start and I could like a click search or I could just start typing and if I start start to start typing something like pinball you'll see right here we recognize there are apps in the store that match we serve them up to the user so finding a nap and installing an app is incredibly easy right there at the top of search I could just click here to jump to the store and install that and then the last thing is that we've seen some people get a little bit confused about where did the appt go when i installed it an installed app is no good if there's not user engagement after the fact so you see down here just as in Windows 7 we added a prompt to show you where new apps are installed and you see here that new apps are highlighted in the all apps list and of course I can just right click on one and choose to pin it to my Start screen or now pin it to my taskbar so whether I'm a desktop mouse and keyboard user or a tablet user focused on touch I can find the apps I care about I can make them accessible and they work well in the modality that I care most about so that is a quick look at the windows 8.1 update the windows 8.1 update will be available to all windows 8 and 8.1 users via windows update starting april eighth next tuesday