Outline of Microsoft

Transcription

This tutorial provides an overview of Microsoft Windows 10, and it’s new features. This tutorial covers using Windows 10 with a keyboard and mouse. When finished I will link to a tutorial showing how to use Windows 10 on a touch device like the Microsoft Surface. “Start Menu”. The Start Menu is back. The Start Menu has been part of Windows from Windows 95 all the way up to Windows 7. When Windows 8 was introduced it removed the “Start Menu” completely. It replaced the “Start Menu” with the “Start Screen”. Users complained so much that Microsoft returned the “Start Button” but not the functionality. Microsoft has learned its lesson and with Windows 10 the “Start Menu” is back. The Windows 10 “Start Menu” is a hybrid of the Windows 7 Start Menu and the Windows 8 Start Screen. On the left we have a Windows 7 style “Start Menu”. The middle section shows the “Most used” and any “Recently installed” apps. To show all the apps installed on the system select the “All apps” button. All installed apps show in the list in alphabetical order. There is a scroll bar on the right of the list to scroll through the apps. If we scroll down under the “W’s” we will see some of the entries have down arrows to their right. There are folders that contain additional apps that will expand when selected like the “Windows Accessories”. To return to the default start menu, we’ll select the “Back” button. We can select “File Explorer” to open the app to browse through the files and folders on this computer. If we select the right arrow we will see the “File Explorer” callout menu. Here we have some “Pinned” file folder shortcuts for the “Desktop”, “Downloads”, “Documents”, and “Pictures”. We can add or remove whatever folders we want from this jumplist. To remove one of the items from the list select the “unpin from this list” button to the right of each item. At the bottom of the jumplist we have “Frequent” folders such as “Music”, and “Videos”. This list will dynamically change showing the folders you most commonly open. Selecting any of the folders in the list will open “File Explorer” directly to this folder. “Settings”. The “Settings” app is a more simplified easy to use version of the old Windows “Control Panel”. Microsoft is gradually moving as many settings as possible to the new interface so there is a single user experience across Desktops, Laptops, Tablets, and phones. If you prefer to use the old “Control Panel”, or need a feature not available in the new “Settings” app, it is still available through the Quick Access Menu. Right-click on the “Start button”, and select “Control Panel”. Let’s close out of the control panel. From here we can make changes to the “Network & Internet” connections, personalize the background image and colors with “Personalization”, setup bluetooth devices, printers, and mice with “Devices”, and make changes to the user accounts with “Accounts”. We will cover the various functions of the “Settings” app in later tutorials in more detail and link to them here. Close out of the “Settings” app. “Power”. Selecting “Power” will open a callout showing the available power options. From here we can “Shut down” the computer, or “Restart” it. Some devices may have other options like “Sleep” and “Hibernate”. At the top is the name of the currently logged in account. If we right-click on the account name we will get a menu with several options. At the bottom we can select “Sign out” to logout of the current account and log in using a different account. In the center we can select “Lock” to lock the computer with this user logged in. Nobody would be able to use the computer without putting in the password for this account, or another account on this computer. At the top we can select “Change account settings”. This opens the “Settings” app on the “Accounts” screen. From here we can manage our account, connect to work or school network resources, and manage sync settings. Let’s close out of the “Change account settings” window and open back up the start menu. The right side of the “Start Menu” has a Windows 8 style “Start Screen” with dynamic tiles. Tiles are representations of Apps, like we saw in the “All Apps” section of the left side of the keyboard. All app tiles on the right side of the Start Menu also show up on the left side under “All apps”. Unlike the icons for apps on the left side of the keyboard, these are “Live Tiles” that dynamically change the information they show. Apps that are set up to use “Live Tiles” can show us app information without having to open the app. The apps that can use “Live tiles” are called Windows 10 Universal Apps. We will cover these in depth more later. The “News” app is showing a slideshow of the latest current news stories and the “Weather” app is showing the current weather conditions. Some of the tiles currently just show the name of the app like calendar and mail. After these apps are set up and used, they will begin showing new constantly updating information. These tiles can be rearranged by selecting and holding on the tile and dragging around the menu. As we add or resize dynamic tiles it will increase the size of the “Start Menu” dynamically. The tiles come in 4 available size options. As we can see on the start menu the four available options are Small, Medium, Wide, and Large. Let’s right-click on the “News” app tile to review this and other options. “Resize”. Selecting “Resize” from the menu will open a fly-out menu to select the size “Unpin from Start”. Selecting this option will remove the live tile from the Start Menu. It can be added back again by selecting “All apps”, finding the app in the list, and then drag and drop it back. “Turn live tile off”. Selecting this option will turn off the real time updating of information in the tile. “Pin to taskbar”. Selecting this option would attach the “News” app to the taskbar for quick access like the “Edge” browser and Microsoft “Store”. “Uninstall”. Selecting “Uninstall” will allow us to completely remove the app from this computer. Any apps you uninstall can be reinstalled in the Windows “Store”. If you do uninstall a built in app like “News” you can get a complete list of the preinstalled apps by searching for “Microsoft Corporation”. Selecting in any of the blank space on the “Start” menu will exit the menu without making any changes. We have the option to change the size of the “Start Menu”. If we hover the mouse over the top edge of the “Start Menu” the mouse icon will change to a double sided vertical arrow. Click and hold and drag up and down to change the size. It can be increased to this size as the maximum and this size as the minimum. If you are someone who fell in love with the “Start Screen” that replaced the “Start Menu” in Windows 8, it can be turned back on through the Taskbar properties. “Windows 10 Universal Apps”. “Windows 10 Universal Apps” is the new name for what Microsoft previously referred to as “Metro Apps”, ”Modern Apps”, “Windows Store Apps”, and “Windows 8 Apps” among others. Unlike traditional Windows applications that only run on the Windows desktop, “Windows 10 Universal Apps” will run on all Windows 10 devices including Windows Desktop/Laptop, Windows Phone/Tablet, and the XBox One. With traditional “Windows” applications we would typically go to a webpage and download an application and then install it. To simplify things with universal apps we would install and uninstall through the “Microsoft Store”. Let’s open a Universal app like “Calculator” by selecting the “Start Button”, “All Apps”, “Calculator” . It opens full screen by default in a window. Unlike the universal apps in Windows 8, “Windows 10 Universal Apps” have controls in the top right just like traditional Windows applications. “Close”. The “X” in the top right of the Window will close the app. “Minimize”. The left button will minimize the app to the taskbar. The app will still be running and can be restored to the previous state by selecting it from the taskbar. “Restore”. The middle button is used to restore the app to a size that does not take up the entire screen. Select the “Restore” button. We can see the calculator app has reduced it’s size to a small window that is easier to work with. We can now work with “Windows 10 Universal Apps” just like traditional applications, and best of all “Calculator” doesn’t need to be fullscreen. Most ”Windows 10 Universal Apps” have a menu of available options located in the top left of the screen. Let’s select the “X” in the top right of the window to exit the app. “Taskbar”. Let’s review the Windows 10 Taskbar. The taskbar runs along the bottom of the Windows desktop, and includes everything from the “Start Button” on the left to the “Clock” on the right. “Cortana”. Just to the right of the Start Menu is “Cortana”. Cortana is an intelligent digital assistant. Cortana is Microsoft's answer to Google Now and Siri. Cortana gets its name from the Microsoft XBox video game franchise Halo that contains a female artificially intelligent character by the same name. Cortana is able to recognize natural spoken language and provide assistance. Cortana can search the web, search your computer, help with calling and texting, calendars and reminders, note taking, alarms, maps and directions, local business questions, weather and flight information, weights and measures and currency conversions, stock and finance, and much much more. Cortana monitors what you do and over time as she learns she will provide more useful advice and assistance. We can access Cortana using our voice if we have a microphone attached to the computer. To use voice search with Cortana select the “Microphone” button to the right of the text entry field or say “Hey Cortana”. To use the keyboard to interact with Cortana select inside the text entry field where it says “Ask me anything”. The default screen will fill with informational cards containing things like news and weather information. The cards that show up in the feed can be modified on the “Notebook” tab. Selecting the down arrow at the bottom of a card, like the weather card here, will expand the size of the card to show more detailed information like the weather for the next five days. The top right of each tile has a menu button represented by three dots. Let’s ask “Cortana” some questions to get a feel for her capabilities. Select inside the entry field again where it say “Ask me anything”. “Cortana” can provide information about local businesses. “Show me Chinese restaurants nearby”. Some questions like this will be answered by searching the web with the new “Microsoft Edge” browser. With “Windows 10” Microsoft has replaced the default web browser included with “Windows”. Previously the default web browser since “Windows 95” was “Internet Explorer”. After 20 years “Internet Explorer” was growing a little long in the tooth. “Microsoft” developed the “Edge” browser with speed and modern technologies in mind. As we can see in this example “Cortana” searches Bing and provides detailed reviews from Yelp and a local map showing each location. Hovering over any of the restaurants listed in the reviews will highlight their location on the map. “Cortana” can provide reminders based upon time, date and location. We could enter commands like “Remind me to buy gas when I leave work”, “Remind me to put out the trash when I get home”, or “The next time I’m at the grocery store, remind me to buy milk”. As an example let’s enter the command “Remind me at 6pm to watch the local news”. This will open the reminder settings window. We can customize the reminder text, the date, the time and the frequency for the reminder to occur. . If everything is entered correctly select “Remind”. To review the Reminder we just created select “Reminders” from the “Cortana” menu in the top left of the app. By default it shows “All” of the reminders. We can also show the reminders sorted by “Time”, “Place” or “Person”. To return back to the default “Cortana” screen select Home from the menu. Some questions will be answered directly within “Cortana”, like math problems and weight and measure conversions. Let’s enter “365 x 24 x 60” to calculate how many minutes in a year. To enter another search term we can either close the “Cortana” app and reopen it or select the text and delete. Let’s enter “How many kilometers in a mile”. At launch there are hundreds of useful commands available with new ones being included continuously by Microsoft. For a more complete list of “Cortana” commands we can search Bing for “Cortana commands”. Currently the best list is the first search result at techranker.net. “Task View” Virtual Desktops. Task view is a new feature in Windows 10 that is like virtual desktops that are available in other operating systems. Previously all applications you opened would open on the same desktop. If you are working and playing on the same computer things can get cluttered. Task view allows you to create multiple virtual desktops, each with their own open applications. You could have one virtual desktop running your business applications like Word and Excel, and have another virtual desktop running Facebook and Twitter. This makes it easier to separate the two types of use for the computer, while allowing you to pick right back where you left off. The “Task view” button is located on the Taskbar just to the right of “Cortana”. So that we are able to see the difference in desktops, let’s make sure that several apps are open. . We can tell that the apps are open by the blue line underneath them. The “File explorer” app is pinned to the taskbar, but it is not running. Select the “Task view” button. The two open apps are displayed side by side to easily determine what is happening on this desktop. We currently only have the single desktop open, so we only have the option of “New Desktop”. Select the “New Desktop” button. We now have the original desktop tile open on the left, the new 2nd desktop tile in the center, and a tile to add a “New Desktop”. Let’s open the new desktop by selecting “Desktop 2”. For comparison purposes let’s select and open the “Calculator” app from the “Start Menu”. Select the “Task View” button again to review the virtual desktops. We can see the currently selected desktop is highlighted with a preview of the content above. There is a small preview of the desktop content in the tile. If we hover the mouse over either of the virtual desktops, we will see a preview of all the open apps running on that virtual desktop. To move between the two desktops select the “Task view” button and then the virtual desktop. This is a great feature to increase productivity and separate tasks. We can close any of the open virtual desktops by selecting the “X” in the top right of the desktop preview tile. We currently have 2 apps open in the 1st desktop and 1 in the 2nd desktop. If we close out of the 2nd desktop it does not just close out of the apps you had on that desktop. It will move them to the 1st desktop. We can now see that we have all 3 of our apps open on “Desktop 1”. Select any of the apps to bring it to the foreground to work on it. Close the “Calculator” by clicking on the “X” in the top right corner of the window. “File Explorer”. “File Explorer” is a file management application for Microsoft Windows. “File Explorer” provides a way to browse and interact with your files. Select the “File Explorer” item on the “Taskbar”. “File Explorer” opens to a new layout. The default view has “Quick access” selected on the left, which shows the “Frequent folders” and “Recent files” on the right. The “Quick access” items include links to the “Desktop”, “Downloads”, “Documents”, “Pictures”, “Music”, and “Videos”. Some of the items in the “Quick access” list will always show in the list because they are pinned. Pinned items have a gray pushpin icon next to them. We can see that currently “Desktop”, “Downloads”, “Documents”, and “Pictures” are pinned to the Quick access list. The unpinned folders will change as you use Windows to show the folders you most commonly access. Currently it just shows the defaults for “Music” and “Videos”. Let’s pin a new folder to the “Quick access” menu.. For testing we will expand “This PC”, and select “Local Disk (C:)”. Let’s say we wanted to add the “Users” folder. Right-click and select “Pin to Quick access”. Let’s move back to the default screen by selecting the “Quick access” menu. We can now see our new folder “Users” listed in the “Quick access” menu. To remove an item from the “Quick access” we need to right-click and select “Unpin from Quick access”. “OneDrive”. OneDrive is free online storage from Microsoft that comes as part of every Microsoft Account. Microsoft says it is like an extra hard drive that is available from every device and is safer than using USB flash drives. “OneDrive” is integrated directly into Windows 10. “OneDrive” comes with 15GB of online storage for free accounts. OneDrive shows in “File Explorer” for quick access to files stored in the cloud. Copy your important files here, and they will be available on all your Windows devices. “This PC”. Expanding “This PC” shows the quick access folders at the top and expandable links to the hard drive and CD/DVD Drive. “Network”. Selecting “Network” will show computers connected to the same network as this computer. “File Explorer” now has builtin “Share” capabilities. Scroll up on the left and select “Documents” in the “Quick access” list. For testing I will use this “TestTextDocument.txt” file that I created by selecting it so it is highlighted in blue. More than one file can be shared at a time by selecting multiple files. Selecting the “Share” link on the menu will open the detailed “Share” ribbon menu. We have options here to “Email” the file, “Zip” the file to compress it and make it smaller to save space, as well as “Burn to disc like a recordable DVD, or “Print” or “Fax” to an installed device. Windows 10 has a “Share” button on the left of the “Share” ribbon menu. This “Share” button allows you to share a selected item using compatible Windows 10 Universal Apps. Selecting the share button will open a panel on the right of the screen showing the item to be shared and the compatible Apps. This is the same as the “Share” functionality in Windows 8 with the “Charms” bar. The only App we have that is supported and setup is the “Mail” app. If we had other compatible apps capable of sharing we would see those listed below like Facebook or Twitter. Select “Mail”, or another sharing option of your choosing. The “Mail” app will open in the right side panel. The “Mail” app has been greatly improved since Windows 8. Select in the body under the attachment. There is a new ribbon interface at the top with “Format” settings like “bolding”, “underlining”, and other “Font Formatting” as well as “Paragraph formatting” options. The “Insert” tab allows us to “Attach” additional files, as well as insert “Tables”, “Pictures”, and “Links”. If we decide we didn’t want to send one of these “Attachments”, they can be removed individually by selecting the “X” at the top right of the attachment. Enter a recipient for the email, and select the “Send” button. If we decide that we really don’t want to share the file, we can select the “Discard” button to exit without sending. “Notification Area”. The “Notification Area” is located on the right side of the “Windows Taskbar”. The “Notification Area” contains app icons that provide notification and status information. The “Notification Area” is also known as the “System Tray”. Left clicking an icon will open the notification window for the app, right clicking will open a menu with additional options. The “Notification Area” includes things like “Volume”, Network Settings, and battery power level. If there are too many icons to fit in the “Notification Area”, select the up arrow to “Show hidden icons”. Some apps appear in the system tray to show that they are running in the background and are not completely closed. “Action Center”. At the far right side of the “Notification Area” is the “Action Center”. Select the icon to open the “Action Center”. The top of the “Action Center” contains notifications from Windows and installed apps. Some notifications will include updates being installed or new mail. Selecting a notification will open the corresponding app or system window. Selecting this new mail notification will open the “Mail” app to review the new message. Selecting the “X” on the right side of a notification will remove it from the action center. The bottom of the “Action Center” contains quick launch icons. Some launch new windows like “VPN” and “All Settings”. Others are enabled by touching them, which turns them blue to enable them, like “Location”, “Quiet hours”, and “Airplane mode”. Just to the right of the “Notification Area” is the “Clock”. Select the “Clock” to open the window. The Clock shows the current date and time at the top, with a calendar of the current month at the bottom. This calendar is for reference, like to check the day of the week a particular date falls on. If you want to change the date or time you would select “Date and time settings”. We can change the month by selecting the up and down arrows to the right of the month. Selecting outside the “Clock” app will close it. “Show Desktop”. To test this option make sure there are some apps open. To the right of the “Clock” there is a small space on the taskbar. Selecting this will temporarily minimize all open windows at the same time. This is useful to be able to quickly find items on the desktop, and then return back to what you were working on. Selecting the far right of the taskbar again will restore all the windows to their previous locations. “Snap Assist”. “Snap Assist” helps snap windows to the screen for easier multitasking. If we want to be able to see all three of our windows at the same time we could move each window around manually. “Snap Assist” allows us to snap up to 4 windows on the screen quickly and easily. To start, select and hold the title bar down on one of the Windows, then drag the window to the middle of either the left or right side of the screen. When the window touches the side of the screen you will see a gray outline where the window will snap when we release the mouse. Touching the middle like we have here will result in the window snapping to the left half of the screen. We can also touch the window to the corners instead to snap the window to ¼ of the screen. Let’s move it back to the middle to snap it to the left side of the screen. Upon releasing the window it will snap to the side of the screen and show the remaining windows on the other side. Here we can see the two remaining apps we had open. Selecting either one of these windows will snap it to fill the space. Windows 8 allowed us to have 2 windows snapped like this. Windows 10 adds the ability to have up to 4 windows open. If we want to have two apps open on the right side of the screen we need to select and hold the title bar. Dragging the window to the top right of the screen we can see a gray outline showing where the window will snap. We can take the remaining window and snap it to the bottom right by selecting it. Some apps might not be able to operate in ¼ screen mode. We can have one of the windows take up the entire screen by selecting the “Maximize” button as we are used to, or we can drag the window to the top of the window and release to snap to full screen. Thanks to the great new leadership of Satya Nadella Microsoft definitely seems to be moving in the right direction with Windows 10. Thank you for joining me on this tutorial. If you like the content please support me by subscribing to JAGTutorials.