Windows 8 Guide: The Hot Corners

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Microsoft finally put some good use on those corners that had been ignored for decades. If you are serious about considering using Windows 8 extensively down the road, you need to know and get familiar with these hot corners. The more you use them, the more you get out of it.

And here is a quick guide on these hot corners to get you start with.

First of all

The corners are not for a tablet or touch device. They have their own weapon, swiping across the screen board, but we leave that for another day.

Upper Left Corner

It’s where you pull out the new Windows 8 Switch List that thumbnails all running apps. Moving your cursor to the upper left corner brings up the switch list, if there are more than one app running at the time. Simply click one of them to switch.

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Lower Left Corner

With mouse left click, it toggles between the Desktop (if opened) and new Start Screen (Metro screen)

With mouse right click, it brings up new Power User Menu with all admin tools like Device Manager, Control Panel, Command Prompt, etc..)

Screenshot 4 thumb - Windows 8 Guide: The Hot Corners

Upper Right Corner

Pulls out the new Windows 8 Charm bar.

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Lower Right Corner

Brings out the Windows 8 Charm bar.

On Desktop, you have the choice of Aero Peak or Show Desktop, with a right click at the corner.

Screenshot 3 thumb1 - Windows 8 Guide: The Hot Corners

Windows 8 has retired the old fashion Start Menu but introduced more options trying to improve the overall usability. These hot corners definitely has made up some for the missing Start Menu.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Every Windows developer should be forced, from time to time, to work on a Mac to get experience how a user friendly environment feels like.
    After almost 10 years on Mac I have to work on a work laptop with Windows 8. In short: terribly complicated and unintuitive.
    An example is this setup of hot corners – limited choice of options which mnakes me wonder what the hell are you doing all the time at MS? Who are the designers, testers? Something so simple made co difficult and limited.

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