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DownTheShore
Pray for Ukraine
Premium Member
join:2003-12-02
Beautiful NJ

DownTheShore

Premium Member

[WIN8] A Windows 8.1 Head-Smack Moment

I know that moving the mouse to various corners on the desktop view of Win 8.1 brings up things like the Charms Bar and the Metro screen, but up until today, I never knew that putting the mouse pointer exactly to the right of the time indicator in the lower right corner of the system tray would bring up the desktop when other windows are open on the screen.

I think that I may have read about that supposedly being able to happen, but I guess that when I tried it out in the past, I didn't drop the pointer down far enough and only the Charms Bar would appear. What I've been doing up to this point is right-clicking on the taskbar and clicking on "Show the desktop". It's been a PITA, so today I was looking for a way to pin a desktop icon onto the taskbar.

On Vista, I had a desktop icon on the taskbar immediately right of the Start button, and apparently from what I've now read, on Win 7 that was changed to a blank space to the left of the time, but indicated by a separator line. That line doesn't show up on Win 8.1 unless you mouse over it, so it's virtually hidden.

Learn something new everyday....
lorennerol
Premium Member
join:2003-10-29
Seattle, WA

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4 recommendations

lorennerol

Premium Member

Right. Falls in line perfectly with the Win8 theme of making the UI controls invisible to the user. So very, very intuitive.

sivran
Vive Vivaldi
Premium Member
join:2003-09-15
Irving, TX

1 recommendation

sivran to DownTheShore

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to DownTheShore
Pretty sure there's been a button on the end of the systray like that since Vista.

DownTheShore
Pray for Ukraine
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join:2003-12-02
Beautiful NJ

DownTheShore

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On my Vista computers (Dell and Gateway) there is an actual desktop icon on the left side of the taskbar, right next to the Start button that was there when I first started up the computers. You can personalize the taskbar to include an up arrow that will list the various desktop programs. That appears to the left of the icons in the systray section of the taskbar if enabled.

The same feature can be enabled on Win 8.1 by personalizing the taskbar. The word "Desktop" appears to the left of the systray, which will open up a listing of the Desktop programs. I've never liked that, having to scroll down a listing of programs. They're easier for me to find by visual position on the desktop.
Dauntae
join:2014-03-09
New Bedford, MA

1 recommendation

Dauntae to DownTheShore

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to DownTheShore
I jump on win 7 with the Beta and got it right when it came out from windows XP and had a duel boot at the time and once I got used to 7 I almost never used my XP boot so finally got rid of it, Just built a new system and decided to go with 8.1 for a few of the newer options available. Seems it's all there just in new places and the learning curve is MUCH sharper than it was for windows 7 so it's taking a little longer to get used to which IMHO is one of the things that people hate about it. Too much change from what they are used to since we are ALL creatures of habit and unexpected change is always a bad thing to most. Sure there are some things I don't really like but there are some I like a lot. The fast boot-up times I love. Just have to get used to it some more and finish migrating things from my old system to the new one. Have a ASUS Z87 board and a I5 4670K with 16 gigs of fast ram so It will chew through everything I have to throw at it and windows 8.1 is doing fine with it. Some people I know absolutely love windows 8 and for me, I still have to get used to it and tinker with more settings before I make my judgment on it but so far I'm liking it. Well one thing MS left out was the DVD playback in media player. THAT I may have to get a fix for, Use my pc for movies that I don't stream in stead of a DVD player or Blueray player. Will have to get a decent BR player since MS still seems sore about losing to Sony with there BR vrs MS HD disks. They have never had any support to play BR and that's just welll Wrong...

Dauntae

altermatt
Premium Member
join:2004-01-22
White Plains, NY

altermatt to DownTheShore

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DownTheShore, while there is that feature of hovering over the right corner bringing up the desktop, for those of us "oldies" there's also another easy way to bring up the desktop: right click the windows logo in the left corner and the last entry in "start menu" (or whatever they now call it) is desktop!

DownTheShore
Pray for Ukraine
Premium Member
join:2003-12-02
Beautiful NJ

DownTheShore

Premium Member

I've got Classic Shell installed, so that doesn't work.

That's the same as right clicking on the taskbar and then clicking "Show the Desktop", though.

plencnerb
Premium Member
join:2000-09-25
53403-1242

plencnerb to altermatt

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Another way for us "oldies" is to use the Windows Key + D.

Wily_One
Premium Member
join:2002-11-24
San Jose, CA

Wily_One

Premium Member

said by plencnerb:

Another way for us "oldies" is to use the Windows Key + D.

You beat me to it.