how to get around if you’re new to Windows, and if you’re an experienced Windows hand, how to reconcile your old finger memory with the new interface. It isn’t as hard as you think.
Really.
I also show you how to be input-agnostic — how to use either your fingers, or a pen, or your fork, er, mouse to get around the screen. And I give you a few not-at-all-obvious tips about how to get the most out of your consorting with the beast.
Windows’ New Beginnings
Somewhat experienced at some version of Windows and primarily comfortable with a mouse and keyboard. (More than 1.5 billion people have used Windows.)
Experienced at Windows but want to learn touch input.
Windows 8 refugee who’s hoping and praying Windows 10 isn’t so disorienting.
New to Windows, prefer to use touch.
New to Windows and want to visit the 19th-century dentist’s office to see what all the screaming’s about.
TAP OR CLICK, PAPER OR PLASTIC?
Lots of people have asked me whether I’m serious about tapping on a Windows machine. Yes, I am, and I hope you will be, too.
I tried the old stylus Windows interface, back when the luggable Windows tablets first appeared, in the Windows XP days. I hated it. I still hate it. I hated it so much that when I saw someone using an iPad, all I could think was, “Oh, that must suck.” (Remember, suck is a technical term.)
An hour later, I tried an iPad, and suddenly using a finger was fine. More than fine, it was tremendous. When my then-18-month-old son spent a few hours playing on the iPad and started using the interface like a virtuoso, I was hooked. The tap-and-swipe interface is astonishingly easy to learn, use, and remember.
Windows 10’s tap interface isn’t as elegant as the iPad’s. Sorry, but it’s true. The main difference is that Windows has to accommodate lots of things that the iPad just doesn’t do — right-click comes immediately to mind (although tablets have tap-and-hold to simulate right-click; the iPhone even has 3D touch, which goes way beyond clicking). But for many, many things that I do every day — web surfing, quickly checking email, scrolling through Twitter, catching up on Facebook, reading the news, looking at the stock market, and on and on — the touch interface is vastly superior to a mouse and keyboard. At least, it is to me.
That said, yes, you can get used to a tablet without a mouse and keyboard.
As I’m writing this book, I have three computers on my desk. One’s a traditional desktop running Windows 10, and one’s running the latest beta test version of Windows 10. The third is a Win10 tablet with a portable keyboard — a Surface Pro. When I want to look up something quickly, guess which one I use? Bzzzzzt. Wrong. I pick up my Nexus phone — or my iPad. “OK, Google, where is Timbuktu?” “Navigate to Costco.” “Call the Recreation Center.”
So this section offers a whirlwind tour of your new Windows 10 home that helps you start clicking and tapping your way around.
A tale of two homes
As you undoubtedly know by now, Windows 10’s Start menu has two faces. They’re designed to work together. You can be the judge of how well they live up to the design.
On the left side of the Start menu (see Figure 1-1), you see the Start menu that’s supposed to look like the Windows 7 (and Windows Vista and Windows XP) Start menu. On the right side of the Start menu, you see a bunch of tiles, some of which have useful information on them.
FIGURE 1-1: The Windows 10 Start menu as seen on a 1920 x 1080 (HD) monitor.
Although the left side of the Start menu is supposed to bring back warm, comforting memories of Windows 7 (and Windows XP), underneath the surface, the left part of the Start menu has almost nothing in common with Windows 7 and earlier Start menus. The old Start menu has been ripped out and replaced with this Windows 10-style list of links and, on the far left, a set of shortcut icons.
On the right side of the Start menu, you see a vast sea of tiles. Unlike the tiles on your iPhone or iPad or Galaxy, these tiles have some smarts: If prodded, they will tell you things that you might want to know, without opening up the associated app. In this screenshot, you can see a bit of the weather, a news story, a photo, a preview of an email message, and a little peek at the calendar. You also see lots and lots of ads. That’s the Windows tile shtick, and it’s apparent here in all its glory.
THE HISTORY OF THE HAMBURGER ICON
There have been many harsh words about the lowly hamburger. On the one hand, the icon doesn’t really say anything. On the other hand, so many systems and programs now use the icon that it’s close to being universal. Even cross-platform.
Ends up that the hamburger icon (like so many things we take for granted today) was designed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, PARC, for use on the first graphical computer, the Xerox Star. Norm Cox designed it at PARC, and you can see its first appearance at https://vimeo.com/61556918. Software designer Geoff Alday contacted Cox, and this is what he said:
“I designed that symbol many years ago as a ‘container’ for contextual menu choices. It would be somewhat equivalent to the context menu we use today when clicking over objects with the right mouse button. Its graphic design was meant to be very ‘road sign’ simple, functionally memorable, and mimic the look of the resulting displayed menu list. With
