Windows 8 Developer Preview Hands-on: Inside All the New Features
Sep 13, 2011 12:00 PM EDT by Internet Explorer 10: Totally Chromeless
The developer preview of Windows 8 includes the new Internet Explorer 10 browser, which provides a full-screen view of websites. Swiping down from the top of the screen reveals the tabs and address bar. In this view you can also pin sites or specific articles to the Start screen. When you start typing into the address bar, you’ll see a list of Frequent sites up top for quick access. Pressing and holding on the new Tab button starts an InPrivate session for those who don’t want to leave a trace of their online activities.
Picture Password
Windows 8 lets you log in with a password, but you can also create a Picture Password. You select a photo, then perform three gestures on the picture that you can easily remember. For example, on a face you might touch the two eyes than and then draw a line between the peepers with your finger.
News Headlines and Magazinify
Windows 8 has a built-in Headlines app that lets you select feeds from multiple content sources, as well as add your own via a URL. For now the pickings are slim in various categories (such as Inc. in business and TMZ in entertainment), but it’s easy to customize to create a mashup of content you care about. You can even create your own mini magazine with a feature called Magazinify. Once you check off the stories you want to read from your feed, you can tap the Magazinify button at the bottom right of the screen. The resulting layout is very clean but not quite as dynamic as Flipboard. Then again, this is a developer preview of the OS.
Windows 8: Inside the New Features
- Input: Touch, Mouse, or Pen | Multitouch on Steroids | Semantic Zoom
- IE 10′s Frameless Design | Picture Passwords | News Headlines & Magazinify
- Smarter Touch Keyboard | Search, Sharing, & More
- Better Control Panel | Multitasking | New Explorer and Task Manager | Desktop App
- Apps & the Cloud | App Store | Windows 8 Outlook
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September 14th, 2011 at 2:26 am
“The mere fact that you double click on something to open an app or file in desktop mode versus once in Metro mode tells you that they are different worlds.” — Umm, we’ve been able to single click to open things since Windows 98. Get your mind right.
September 14th, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Mark-
Great overview of the new features. Very helpful.
One thing you were complaining about a couple times is that you supposedly don’t have a place to switch between all your running apps. If you have a keyboard you can actually ALT+TAB through them the same as in older Windows versions.