Microsoft today confirmed with TechCrunch that it has made the desktop Start Screen tile non-default in Windows RT 8.1.
Do one or more of the following: Select the Picture Position list to crop the pictures fill the screen, fit the pictures to the screen, stretch the pictures to fit the screen, tile the pictures, or center the pictures on the screen.
Microsoft paved the way with Windows Phone 7, which used rectangular on-screen tiles as both display areas and controls.
In essence, it brings the attractive, useful concept of Start-screen tiles, currently available on Windows Phone 7 phones, to laptops, desktop PC's and tablets.
Exhibit B: The new, full-screen tiles of photos don't appear at a satisfying rate unless you have a faster Internet connection.
There's the standard Windows desktop, and there's a new overlay, which I call TileWorld (because Microsoft hasn't named it) — a colorful land of big, bright, touch-screen tiles.
Upon its debut, it let readers browse full-screen tiles of different news articles in categories like sports, world news, and business, plus a stylized version of their News Feed.
On the default screen, "live tiles" act as shortcuts to frequently used apps and also display information such as snippets of calendar events.
The Start screen's tiles — those colorful, clickable squares that serve as shortcuts to files, folders, programs, bookmarked Web sites, contacts, games and more — can be dragged around the screen into an order that makes more sense to the individual user.
