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Follow us on FacebookFixing Windows 8′s Shortcomings: An Easier Way to Open the All Apps View
@ 2013/04/10The All Apps view in Windows 8 is quite useful, considering many of the applications a geek might want to use won’t be pinned to the Start Screen – but it is a pain to get there. We set out to find a better solution.
When it comes right down to it, the All Apps view is the most similar analog to the All Programs view from the Start Menu going all the way back to Windows 95. Windows Vista changed it significantly, and Windows 7 a little more, but overall, the Start Menu was the way to access all of your apps, and the All Apps view is the same thing, just full screen.
And sure, you can pin all of those other Windows apps like Event Viewer and your regular desktop apps directly to the Start Screen, but the icons look awful on the screen, since you also can’t replace them with a pretty Metro-style picture icon. If you could do that, we might be in business, but since they are ugly, and we are system tweakers, there is no way we’re pinning them there. So we need the All Apps screen.
The problem is that getting there is confusing and lousy.
When it comes right down to it, the All Apps view is the most similar analog to the All Programs view from the Start Menu going all the way back to Windows 95. Windows Vista changed it significantly, and Windows 7 a little more, but overall, the Start Menu was the way to access all of your apps, and the All Apps view is the same thing, just full screen.
And sure, you can pin all of those other Windows apps like Event Viewer and your regular desktop apps directly to the Start Screen, but the icons look awful on the screen, since you also can’t replace them with a pretty Metro-style picture icon. If you could do that, we might be in business, but since they are ugly, and we are system tweakers, there is no way we’re pinning them there. So we need the All Apps screen.
The problem is that getting there is confusing and lousy.
