Tip o’ the Week #289 – Edge, Cortana & Win10 keyboard tips

Posted on July 31, 2015 by ewand

clip_image002

Assuming everyone has upgraded to Windows 10 by now, it’s a useful time to post some tips that could help the new user get a leg up more quickly. So far, reaction seems to be going well – even some Mac users quite like it (though if you read to the very end, it’s not all a bed of roses) – and if, nothing else, there are some notable improvements over previous Windows versions.

I’m close to the Edge

The new Edge browser is one of the more celebrated bits of Windows 10, at least for now. It’s fast, it’s standards-compliant (and that’s something of a double-edged sword to a degree, as it means legacy plugins and old-layout web pages might not work). Even naysayers admit that Edge is a Good Thing, on the basis that it’ll put a firecracker into the Webkit bonfire, even if it’s not perfect itself.

For new upgraders, the first thing you might decide to do with Edge is to restore your favourites from IE – click on the multi-line icon on the toolbar, then the star (which represents Favourites), and click Import favourites to bring yours from IE. Some degree of username/password history will come across as well, though you may need to select the username on the first visit to a web page (as cookies are not migrated across).

To use Edge on intranet sites when attached to a corporate network, you can force the browser to try the intranet address only by adding a trailing slash to the end of the name – eg msweb/. This will stop it from trying to find that name on the internet, if for any reason it can’t get to the site internally.

If you are find sites that don’t like Edge, you can always click on the ellipsis (…) menu on the top right, and click Open in Internet Explorer, and the page will launch in IE11. Whilst you’re at it, you might want to pin the IE icon to your taskbar by right-clicking on it – then you can always go straight to IE next time.

If you’d like to change your default browser altogether, just type default web browser at the start menu, and that will let you reset to IE or another browser.

Keyboard CTRLs R US

Most of the usual keyboard shortcuts still apply in Windows 10, though there are a few changes & additions – with the removal of the Charms bar,

WindowsKey+C fires up Cortana with voice input, if you’ve already got that working (see below)
WindowsKey+S for everyone else, reduced to typing Cortana search commands or not having Cortana at all
WindowsKey+A for the Action Center – the new notifications area that appears to the right of the screen
WindowsKey+I for Settings of all sorts – very handy
WindowsKey+TAB – quick way of seeing all the running apps, across multiple desktops
WindowsKey+X still brings up the “power user” menu – a great way of getting to otherwise fairly hidden functionality like Device Manager

There have been some keyboard-related tips in recent weeks, and others regarding new apps that come with Windows 10. If you’ve not been using the preview, you might have missed them. See:

#279 – Windows 10’s multiple desktops
#280 – Telling time on Windows 10
#281 – Calculator rebooted
#286 – Windows Explorer tweaks in Win10

Hey Cortana! Oh, you’re not available…

Depending on how your upgrade has gone, Brits who run Windows 10 might find that Cortana isn’t showing up as available in the region, even though she’s supposed to be. The same might be true of other lingos – your mileage may vary.

If you’re having trouble getting old Blue Eyes to play ball and you’re in Blighty, you’ll need to make sure all your language settings are tickety-boo.

Check you’ve got the right country set in the high-level settings, but don’t stop there –make sure the language pack isn’t still searching Windows Update, and that each of the components has been downloaded.

Select the Windows display language shown, and within Options, click on Speech and clip_image005 make sure the language you speak is correct.

If you make sure that you have the correct language pack installed, and that it’s set as the speech language, then you should be allowed to enable Cortana.

If you have a microphone on your PC, then you can also switch on “Hey Cortana”, clip_image009 which will mean she’s listening out for you to say that all the time… and will jump in with a spoken response to your every query. Just make sure your Windows Phone isn’t nearby or you’ll end up cheating on one Cortana with another. Let’s wait for the Cortana vs Cortana Youtube videos.

Tip o’ the Week #286 – Windows Explorer tweaks in Win10

Posted on July 24, 2015 by ewand

Here’s a quick tip on navigating around Windows 10, courtesy of Stuart Leeks, concerning the File Explorer app (now, thanks to Internet Explorer being moved to the background in favour of the Microsoft Edge browser, maybe the name Explorer will be primarily known again as way to get to the file system).

The simplest way of getting the File Explorer running is either to click on the icon that’s pinned to the taskbar by default, or else simply press the WindowsKey+e. Out of the box, you’ll see a couple of changes to simplify File Explorer when compared to Windows 8, namely to show recent files and folders and the Quick Access pane, as the main display of the Explorer window, rather than clip_image006 just showing a list of drive letters or network locations.

If you prefer going back to seeing “My PC” as the default, click on the View menu > Options > Change folder and search options, and modify that behaviour. Quick Access is new in Windows 10, and replaces the previous Win8.x Explorer’s Favorites section.

The original feature that Stuart referred to has been found to partially exist in Windows 8.1 too, so maybe it’s a bit of a hidden gem – when in File Explorer, if you press ALT+d, the cursor & focus jumps to the address bar and you clip_image010 can start typing the name of key folders and recent files, and you’ll see the name show up in autocomplete – so to get to Downloads, just start typing down and then with a single press of the down cursor key then enter, you’ll jump straight there. This may seem trivial but to hardened keyboardistas, any reason to not use the mouse without getting too obscure, is a good one.

clip_image012 If you still like using the pointing doodah, you can click on the caret to the side of the icon that shows whatever folder you’re in (and it will change as you move around), and you’ll get a short cut menu that also includes regularly used folders.

clip_image014 Another neat one, for some at least, is that if you select a folder within Explorer, and go to the File Menu, you’ll get the option of launching a command prompt or PowerShell window with the focus directly on that folder

Tip o’ the Week #284 – Music on OneDrive

Posted on July 17, 2015 by ewand

clip_image001

Did you know you can now put music on your OneDrive, and stream it to the Xbox music app on your phone, your PC, the web or even your Xbox Console?

You don’t need an Xbox Music Pass to do it, either – though in time, you may find that having both XMP and music on OneDrive is a good thing, especially if music-playing hardware that supports them both is available.

Uploading loads of uploads

The trick is to basically copy or even move all your music to your OneDrive storage – you may need to get some more of that. It can be a bit challenging doing the actual upload, though – what if you’ve got 500Gb of music ripped from your CD collection at home? Try uploading that little lot over your domestic ADSL and you might well break the internet as far as your family is concerned.

Upload speeds on a lot of broadband connections are pretty poor, you see. The A in ADSL stands for Asynchronous, meaning it’s very much not 50:50 up and down. Doing online backup and/or bulk upload of loads of files could take a looooong time, and whilst you’re maxing out the upload bit of clip_image003 the link, the download bit will be getting very constrained too – so you could see your overall network performance drop dramatically. Take a look using the Network Speed Test app (for Windows, for Windows Phone) to see the latency (otherwise known as network delay or sometimes PING time – anything into 3 figures is basically bad news), upload and download rates that are available – during heavy usage periods, it’ll seem like your network is performing poorly.

Managing music & OneDrive together

One trick to making sure your music is synced properly, is to put music folder into your OneDrive cache. If you have the OneDrive app installed on your PC, you’ll have a location that is set to sync the OneDrive storage from the cloud onto your machine. If you move your Music folder to be a subdirectory of your OneDrive location, then your PC will sync all that music up into OneDrive for you, and yet it will still show up as local choonz library for playback on your PC, if you tell it so (find Music library in Windows explorer, right-click and you can Move from there).

The downside? It might take weeks to actually copy your music to the cloud and you may not want to nail your broadband to the ground in the meantime. A solution is at hand, however – ~~take your PC into the office and use the network there~~ set up a schedule so your home machine starts OneDrive at times when nobody is using the network, and can kill it off when you might want to.

clip_image005 clip_image007 Depending on your version of Windows, the specifics may vary a little, but they generally start by looking for the Task Scheduler in control panel – something that’s existed since the very earliest days of Windows NT, though used to be a command-line only thing. Now with Task Scheduler, you can create jobs that do something on your machine according to a load of conditions – running at user logon, or at a time but only if someone’s logged in, if it’s been idle for a while etc.

It’s a snap to create a task that will start up OneDrive on a timed basis clip_image009 – just create a new task, tell it when you want it to fire (midnight, when everyone’s gone to bed, and 9am, when everyone’s left the house could be good times?) and set the action to run.

Now, rather than running the OneDrive app directly, you might want to create a little command file that can do some other goodies too – try running (WindowsKey+R) notepad %userprofile%\start.cmd to create a new start command, and paste the following into it (and save it when you’ve done that):

echo Started OneDrive %date% %time% >> %userprofile%\onedrive.log

%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive\OneDrive.exe

… and, while you’re at it, create a similar stop.cmd file with:

echo Stopping OneDrive %date% %time% >> %userprofile%\onedrive.log

taskkill /IM onedrive.exe 2>> %userprofile%\onedrive.log

clip_image011

Now, schedule the start.cmd to run at the times you like, and stop.cmd to do the same – eg if start is midnight and 9am, maybe stop should be 7am and 6pm. Both will write a line to a log file to say what date/time they ran.

clip_image013 clip_image015 Assuming it’s running at the time, you should be able to see the OneDrive icon in the Windows taskbar, and if it’s busy uploading you’ll see just how it’s getting on by clicking on the icon.

If you find your network is taking a hammering and you need all the bandwidth you can get for a Skype call, right-click on the icon, choose Exit and then click on the Close OneDrive button. This will stop all syncing of OneDrive content until either you manually start the program again, or until the next scheduled time kicks in.

Tip o’ the Week #285 – Windows 10 picking up pace

Posted on July 2, 2015 by ewand

The release of Windows 10 has started to pick up speed as it nears its planned July 29^th RTM. If your home PC isn’t running Windows 10 yet (ie. you haven’t opted in as a Windows Insider), then you can reserve your free upgrade today and you’ll get it via Windows Update when it releases in a few weeks’ time. Windows Insiders will get theirs first, and reserved upgrades will roll in waves thereafter.

The latest builds of Windows have been coming thick and fast – 10158, 10159 and 10162 have all been pushed to the “Fast” ring this week, meaning users who opt in to be a bit more on the bleeding edge and to get their builds quickly will see upgrades more frequently. “Slow” ring users may well get 10162 next week. ISO images of 10162 are available now.

This is the first time Microsoft has really done the “flighting” approach where a quality bar is set, and if the daily build meets that bar, it gets released to a wider audience. Now that we’re getting nearer the end (the deathmarch, as it’s sometimes known in software engineering), the quality of daily builds is that much better and therefore we’re seeing more frequency of upgrades.

Latest in the crop, are the new login experience with the fancy new Windows 10 wallpaper, the proper appearance of the Microsoft Edge browser, some new apps and a load more. Build 10158 also fixed a blocking issue with Surface 3 meaning it couldn’t upgrade, and the whole thing is optimized better for Surface devices. In fact, the word is that 59 and 62 builds have a load more performance improvements across the board. There are some cool new features in Cortana, and a load more – see here for one take on the top 5.

It’s going to be an exciting few weeks!

Tip o’ the Week #281 – Calculator rebooted

Posted on June 11, 2015 by ewand

clip_image001

So, Windows 10 will be with us in less than 2 months. As well as many significant improvements and new experiences, there are a number of subtle clip_image003 but still cool updates. One such is the new calculator app, a “modern app” which has been enhanced compared to the old-fashioned Windows Calculator (which itself was updated in Windows 7, covered way back in ToW #90).

The new calculator app in Windows 10 functions largely the same as before, though it looks a bit groovier (with the now-standard clip_image005 “Hamburger” menu in the top left). The refresh makes it touch-friendly without being unwieldy to desktop or keyboard users, and there are a bunch of cute touches too…

If you tap on the ‘burger, you can set different modes of operation, including the conversion of weights, measures and the like. As well as giving you the answer to your conversion query, it also furnishes an equivalent estimation …

clip_image007 clip_image011 clip_image009

Have a play – how many kilojoules are there in the equivalent food calories of a slice of cake? How many elephants does your car weigh?

clip_image013 The calculator doesn’t do currency conversion, but Bing.com clip_image015 does a decent job of that – just type the currency symbols or standard identifier into Bing and you’ll get an approximation. Add the quantity too if you like.

In fact, Bing also does calculations and other conversions, too – try a few for size. It’ll give you a simple calculator if you enter a sum.

clip_image017

Tip o’ the Week #280 – Telling time on Windows 10

Posted on June 4, 2015 by ewand

clip_image001 For some time now, the death of the watch has been predicted, as people increasing use other devices to tell the time. The frenzy of interest around the Apple watch (even if it’s only being worn as a bit of bling) maybe shows that there’s life in the wristwatch idea yet, and whatever happens, people still need to know what time it is.

Maybe now is the era where many watches are exclusively for style and feeling, rather than for the simple utility of timekeeping. Just as celebrity petrolhead blabber Jay Leno described the automobile as the “savior of the horse” (in that horses would no longer be collectively abused as mere transport, and instead be cultivated & enjoyed as leisure), perhaps the world of horology is all about cheap and essentially disposable watches; devices like clocks, phones or computers that also tell the time; and old-fashioned mechanical watches & expensive fripperies that are primarily about “looking good” and showing off (hmmm), just like Mr Lagerfeld’s fruity phone.

Of course, as you sit at your PC, there are a number of ways to see the time – something that has been covered in the past on ToW (for Windows 7 and Windows 8). There’s a snazzy new clock application in Windows 10, that is also now worth taking a look at…

Double-click on the date/clock in the system tray and you’ll see clip_image002 the current time and a date picker that’s been redesigned to be clip_image003 touch-friendly. Clicking on Additional clocks also launches the new Alarms & Clocks application which integrates a couple of useful stopwatch & timer functions as well as a day/night view of the world map, and a configurable list of locations that you may want to keep an eye on, so you know the time at a glance.

There’s a nice “Convert” option too, where you can drag a time slider and see what the time (and condition of daylight) would be at all your listed locations; so there’s no excuse if you’re setting up calls with people from all over the globe, in choosing a time that’s inherently unsuitable. This app has the default aspect ratio of a phone app, and we can look forward to the same sort of functionality when Windows 10 lands on phones, too.

If you don’t have Windows 10 yet (check it out here), there is a simple way of finding out the current time in an overseas location, and even displaying a real-time proper clock…

clip_image004

If you enter “time <place>” into Bing.com, you’ll see the current time and time zone there – in fact, lots of locations also have other details that are shown alongside, like maps, current weather, travel tips etc.

clip_image005

Tip o’ the Week #279 – Windows 10’s multiple desktops

Posted on May 22, 2015 by ewand

clip_image002 Windows 10 is developing apace. A new build (10112) arrived this week if you’re on the “Fast Ring” for getting updates (check here if you’re already on Win10 but are not sure about how quickly you’ll get updates). Sometimes, latest builds get two steps forward and one step back, though; if you want to be on the leading edge, be prepared for occasional gremlins.

If you’re not using Windows 10 yet, then check out the Windows Insider program (there are millions of participants already).

One of the nice features of Windows 10 that’s maybe less obvious than the Start Menu, the windowed Modern apps etc etc, is the ability to have multiple desktops. clip_image003 To access, just click on the the Task View icon on your taskbar – assuming you are showing that icon (if not, right-click on the task bar and enable it). Another means to access it is to press WindowsKey+TAB (remember that Flip 3D feature in Vista that nobody used outside of demos?)

clip_image007

The Task View gives you a nice layout of all the running applications’ windows, so you can see what’s happening and quickly jump between them. Down in the bottom-right corner, there’s a New Desktop button… click that and you can create multiple, virtual desktops to arrange your windows on.

If you run lots of applications and want to group them appropriately, you could dock them onto each clip_image009 of the virtual desktops that appear at the bottom of the task view screen – just drag & drop the windows of your running apps.

Now, if you look in Task View, you’ll only see the windows that are docked onto the virtual desktop you have selected, though if you use the old ALT-TAB way of switching between apps, you’ll see all of them in the list, regardless of which virtual desktop they’re currently sitting on.

Keyboard shortcut junkies might want to know that WndKey+CTRL+D will create you a new desktop and jump straight to it, WndKey+CTRL+F4 will close the current desktop and move any windows that are on it, to the next desktop. Perhaps the most useful combo of all is WndKey+CTRL+LEFT or +RIGHT, which flicks between the desktops you have open – so if you’re doing work that needs you to quickly move between two apps, especially if you only have a single physical screen, then this is a great way of doing it.

Tip o’ the Week #270 – Renaming Windows Phone

Posted on March 20, 2015 by ewand

No, we’re not talking about the rumoured change of brand from Windows Phone to simply, Windows 10. This week’s tip is inspired by Edward Hyde, whose several-phones-in-one-family position meant that it was difficult to tell one from the other when referring to them by name.

Edward’s specific scenario is when you’ve paired the phones to a car’s Bluetooth setup, and particularly if you’ve had the car longer than your current phone, you may end up with multiple “Windows Phone” pairings in the list on-screen.

Not that we’re suggesting your phone is developing sentience, but to see what it calls itself, look under Settings -> about (quite far down the list… keep swiping…) and you’ll see what name it has taken or been given. If you’d like to personalize it, first you’ll need to connect to your PC using a micro USB cable.

After the phone has connected (and if it’s your first time, you might need to wait for it to install a driver or two), then look in Windows Explorer and you should see it appear as a storage device. Select it, tap F2 or click the Rename icon in the ribbon, and you can give your device a better moniker. Better still, if you use the Windows Phone app on your Windows PC, you’ll be more easily able to name and put content like ringtones & music onto the device, and manage other stuff like photo libraries.

Keeping the travelling public on their toes

The device name only really shows up when you connect the phone to something else – whether via a cable or long-dead Danish King, but another identifier is probably more visible to other people – the name you give the WiFi hotspot created when you enable internet sharing.

Why not, just for giggles, give your device a name that stands out from the crowd of “Steve’s iPhone” etc that you’ll see from a PC when looking to connect to your own device?

Now that Bluejacking is largely a thing of the past, how else will you keep yourself amused on the grind into the smoke?

Tip o’ the Week #263 – Starter for 10: Windows 10 Tips

Posted on January 29, 2015 by ewand

“Starter for 10” – a phrase that evokes thoughts of Paxo berating some poor swot, or Bambi and the Scumbags. But what we have now is a few tips to get started with on Windows 10, and a promise of more to follow in due course (and maybe a picture round). If you have a favourite tweak or trick, please send it across and you’ll be covered in glory in some future missive.

Anyway, hot on the heels of the unveiling of Windows 10 last week came the availability of the Technical Preview (or Technical Preview 2 as it’s being known unofficially by some). It’s available publicly & free to everyone who signs up as a Windows Insider on here.

Most obvious changes

There are a few biggies with Windows 10 – the Start Screen has gone, and been replaced with a new Start Menu that includes Live Tiles as well as the Apps List beloved of Windows 7 users. Some Windows 8 users aren’t too pleased with what feels like a step back to the old way of doing things, but do bear in mind that this is still a preview and things will change. And there’s a lot more besides the Start menu too…

Modern apps – can now run in a window as well as full screen.
Charms – gone (though there is a context menu at the top of Modern app windows, that gives access to the charms, but the old swipe-from-the-right is gone).
Settings menu – fairly different (and quite a bit nicer – more like a Modern app take on the old Win7 control panel).

If you put your Taskbar on the side of the screen instead of the bottom (an approach which is arguably better use of screen real estate if you have a widescreen monitor or laptop display), then pressing the Windows Key to get the Start menu up won’t let you type the names of apps or other things to search. Windows 7 allowed this with a Search box on the start menu, and Windows 8 allowed you to just start typing on the Start Screen to do the same thing. If the task bar in Windows 10 TP2 is on the bottom of the screen, pressing the Windows Key shows a text box on the taskbar and you can start typing right away.

There is an icon under or to the left of the Start button which invokes a Search box, so if you like to have a vertical taskbar then just get used to clicking that, or pressing WindowsKey+S to invoke the search. If you’re outside of the US, you’ll probably end up seeing that the Blue One isn’t yet available.

If you’re particularly keen to have Cortana on your desktop, you can set your Region & language to United States and English (US) by going into the Time & language section of the new Settings app, change the region, add English (United States) as a language, then make it primary.

This does mean you’ll be forever fighting the keyboard layout (or press WindowsKey+Space to quickly switch between US English and your normal one), or the alternative might be to just wait until some future update rolls out Cortana to non-US English speakers and maybe even other languages too.

Windows Insiders can set how aggressively they want to receive subsequent updates to the preview – known as flighting – which should be regular in their appearance, and will be distributed via Windows Update for the first time. Just go into the Update & recovery section of the Settings app, and look under Advanced Settings.

Is this the final monolithic release of Windows? According to Ed Bott, at least, it will be. We’ve already announced that it’ll be free for the first year after release, to Windows 7 and 8.x users. This means that for the first year, the upgrade will be freely available, not that there’s some plot to start billing people after the first year or usage…

With Windows 10 being made available via Windows Update to Win7 and Win8.x users, it’s quite possible it could achieve a high %age of users within the first year after release, and after that, who knows what the arrangements would be for laggards to upgrade.

It’s been already confirmed, though, that the updates will be free for the life of the machine it’s being installed on.

Tip o’ the Week #262 – Windows Phone 8.1 Update

Posted on January 23, 2015 by ewand

clip_image002 Well, it’s been an exciting week. We might not have laser beams but we will get “HoloLens” (though we’re not quite at the “Help me, Obi-Wan…” level of holo-projection). Augmented Reality may be about to get really powerful and mainstream, though one departed great was adding to reality at the height of Reaganomics, almost 30 years ago…

Windows Phone as a name is reportedly going away, to be replaced with just “Windows 10”, but there’s still some innovation to come before the availability of the new phone version, later this year (preview here, maybe?).

The upgrade known as “Windows Phone 8.1 Update” is making its way in the world; some new phones already have it installed, while others are getting it as we speak. Lumia users will see a new package of updates that includes Windows Phone 8.1 Update, known as “Lumia Denim”: see here for an overview or look here for detailed rollout information.

Some highlights

clip_image006 There are a few particularly cool additions; like the ability to group icons on your home screen into folders, where a tap on the group will expand it out into a s clip_image004 ection with larger tiles so you can start the apps quickly. It’s one extra tap on the home screen but it means you can get quicker access to key apps without needing to scroll around on the usual list of apps.

There’s also a nice feature called Apps Corner, which lets you pick a few (like Maps, or a good Stopwatch) and allow them to be launched by anyone, without needing you to unlock the phone. It’s a bit like Kids Corner but for everyone else, and you do need to specifically activate it (either by navigating through the settings menu to enable it, or pinning a shortcut to the start screen) before handing the phone over.

clip_image008 action center

Everyone who’s on Windows Phone 8.1 will no doubt like the action center, with its quick glance at battery life remaining, the easy jump straight to the phone’s settings or the 4 big tiles that take you to common settings like WiFi and Bluetooth… but did you know you can customise it? Go into settings > notifications + actions and you can replace the 4 default tiles with choices of your own.

Windows Phone 8.1 Update adds the ability to show mobile data on this list – so if you’re travelling and want quick access to be able to switch roaming data on and off, there’s no easier way.

Finally, internet sharing on the Update gets a tweak – you can set your phone as before to be a WiFi hotspot and share out its own data connection to other devices, but you can also now do internet sharing over Bluetooth.

For a full list of what’s new in the update, and for the OS version numbers, see here.