Windows 8 Tablet Simulator

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• HD (54MB)
• Tablet (25MB)
• Phone (16MB)

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Windows 8 - Tablet Simulator

Thank you for joining us today.  I’m Rudy Stebih and welcome to Episode 4 – Windows 8 Tablet Simulator here on Help Desk TV.

By now you’ve had a chance to look over our Windows 8 videos featured on the desktop.  But how would you like to experience Windows 8 on a Tablet.  I know, I hear you.  You were not one of the conference attendees at Build that were treated to a Samsung tablet to take with them to preview & develop Windows 8 apps on. Not to worry though.  Windows 8 Development Preview comes bundled with a Windows Tablet simulator. And all you have to do to experience this is to:

Start the file explorer. And click on:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Simulator\Microsoft.Windows.Simulator.exe”

After a few seconds, the virtual tablet will pop up giving you your very own virtual tablet experience inside of Windows 8.

First, before we go any further, make sure you have clicked on the hand icon on the side bar to start the touch simulation. You will notice that now your mouse icon has a ‘+’ symbol surround by a circle attached to it.  This we will call your ‘Finger Target’. Essentially, anywhere you place this finger target, and click the mouse button, will simulate a finger press.

Following along those lines, if you click the left mouse button on the tablet screen, and hold the mouse button down, then swoosh your mouse pointer to the left  and letting go of the mouse button near the end of your swoosh, the tiles will scroll to the left. Doing this procedure in the reverse direction will scroll the tiles to the right.

Now, to get at the ‘Charm’ menu, place your finger target on the right side of the tablet screen, and click-drag to the left.

Clicking anywhere on the screen will hide the ‘Charm’ menu.

If you’d like to change the tablet screen resolution, just click the little square box on the side bar, and from the pop up menu, select the screen resolution of your choice.  You can then drag one of the corners of the tablet to resize the window as normal.

Just above the tablet resolution button, there are 2 buttons to rotate the tablet to simulate a portrait orientation.  Selecting one or the other button will rotate the tablet either in the clockwise  or counter clockwise direction.

By clicking on the big windows logo on the bottom of the tablet, you will simulate pressing the Windows key on the ‘Charm’ menu.

Now comes my favorite feature. Selecting the double arrow icon on the side bar will activate the pinch/zoom feature. And you will now notice that your mouse cursor has 2 ‘Finger Targets’. You simulate a pinch zoom by holding the left-mouse button down while rotating your mouse scroll wheel to either zoom in or zoom out. After finishing zooming the page to your desire magnification, left-clicking and dragging the mouse around, will move the zoomed window inside your tablet screen.

And now lastly, left clicking and dragging from the left side of the screen will switch between your active apps.

I hope you enjoyed todays Help Desk TV. If you have a comment about this program, a question, or a shortcut you would like to share with me, send us an e-mail message to feedback@helpdesktv.ca.

Thanks for watching!