Get a feel for Windows 10 in these first screenshots
By Jim Martin | PC Advisor | 02 October 14
We test drive the first preview build of Windows 10 so you can see its new features in action. See also: Windows 10 release date and price rumours
Let it be said first that this is only the first public preview of Windows 10, so plenty will change - including visually - by the time Windows 10 eventually launches next year.
It's also aimed at business users without touchscreens, but that should suit plenty of enthusiasts just fine as a focus back on the mouse and keyboard is what we've all wanted. It does mean, though, that there's no Windows Media Player and few consumer-oriented features. Those will come next year. This preview isn't representative of the final version, so we can't make any judgements about Windows 10.
First up, then, let's have a look at the most obvious feature: the return of the Start menu.
The left-hand side is a lot like Windows 7's start menu, complete with pinned programs and jump lists, plus recently accessed apps. To the right is a kind of cut-down Windows 8 Start screen.
The Start menu is resizable, by dragging up and down on the top edge. So you can make it tall or, if you drag downwards enough, wide.
RIght-click on the Start menu and there's the option to personalise it. This simply brings up the usual Windows colour options. If you instead choose Properties, you'll see these options:
The top one tells Windows to use the new menu instead of the Windows 8 Start screen. If you uncheck it, you'll get a warning to save your work as Windows will sign out and back in to switch to the old way of doing things. We suspect this is just to appease any users who actually liked the Start screen and would prefer to keep using it.
Other options are sparse. If you click the Customise button you'll see these options:
This list offers a quick way to set up your start menu to your liking.
Another new feature is virtual desktops. To see the desktops you click the new Task View button, which sits to the right of the new search icon - the magnifying glass, and looks like the multitasking icon in Android.
And this is the view you get:
It isn't dissimilar to the Alt-Tab task switching view, and is more like the Expose feature in Mac OS X. You can see enough detail to quickly choose which app you want to switch to.
TIP: If you hover your mouse over one of the thumbnails, a red cross appears allowing you to close the program - a feature that didn't exist in Windows before, but makes complete sense.
At the bottom of the screen is where your virtual desktops are displayed, but since there aren't any yet, you have to click on 'Add a desktop'. This is what it looks like:
You click on a desktop to go to it, and you can then open any apps you want as usual. These will then show on the thumbnail, and only those open on that particular desktop will be shown as larger images, as in the Task View mode. This is slightly different from pressing Alt-Tab, which will show all running apps. If you prefer shortcut combinations instead of clicking on icons you can press Win-Tab to bring up Task View.
TIP: You can switch between desktops using the shortcut Ctrl-Win-left arrow or Ctrl-Win-right arrow.
On each desktop there's a new quadrant layout for snapping apps. To snap an app, you click on the title bar and drag it to a corner of the screen. The quadrant will darken to show you've selected it, and you can release the mouse button to snap the app into that quarter of the screen. (You can also snap left and right to make the app fill half of the screen as before)
Above you can see we've snapped the Bing app to the right-hand side, and Firefox to the bottom left. In the remaining space, the Snap Assist feature - also new - offers other apps which are running that you can click on to fill it. Arrows below the thumbnails let you scroll through all the open apps. It's a neat feature that saves time when you want to have several apps in view at once.
File Explorer has been given some attention as well. Now, there's a Home icon at the top of the tree in the left pane, and this is the default view when you open an Explorer window. (You can do so by clicking the folder icon on the task bar, or by pressing Win-E).
What's great about the Home view is that it incorporates not just your favourite folders, but frequently accessed folders and - below that - recently accessed files. This makes it even quicker to get to folders and documents that you use all the time.
We'll add more screenshots to this article shortly. If you haven't already seen it, you can watch the video of Windows 10 being launched.
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