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Exploring Your Computer’s Features
Exploring the desktop
App tiles
The app tiles can be accessed and launched from the Start
menu.
Typical app tiles are the Calendar tile and Mail tile, as well as
tiles representing all other applications downloaded to your
system.
Taskbar
Each time you open a program, an icon associated with that
program appears on the taskbar. With some programs, an
icon appears on the taskbar for each document or window
you open. You can use these icons to quickly switch
between the programs or windows.
To make a program or window the currently active one, click
or touch the associated taskbar icon.
Notification area
The notification area displays icons of tasks or programs that
run continuously in the background and displays
notifications. To learn more about each task, position the
pointer over the icon for a few moments and a short
description of the task appears.
Typical tasks in the notification area are Current time, Power
usage mode, network connectivity status, and speaker
volume.
To activate a specific task, click or touch the appropriate
notification area icon.
Notifications
There are many types of notifications you can employ to help
you with the many tasks you perform every day.
User experience notifications can be set for toast, tile,
badge, and raw notifications.
Toast notifications
—Designed for time-sensitive delivery
of personalized content, such as an instant message from a
friend.
Tile notifications
—Used by applications that are not
currently running with an at-a-glance characteristic, giving
you a quick preview of the subject line of your latest email or
the current weather conditions.