Windows 10 All-in-One For Dummies. Woody Leonhard

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Chapter 3

      Working with the Action/Notification Center

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      If you’ve ever used a moderately sentient smartphone or tablet, you already know about the notification center. Different devices do it differently, but the general idea is that the device watches and gathers notifications — little warning messages or status reports — that are sent to you. The smartphone or tablet gathers all the notifications and puts them in one place, where you can look at them and decide what to do from there.

      In Windows 7, notifications just kind of flew by, and there weren’t many of them. In Windows 8 and 8.1, you typically see many more notifications (I’m looking at you, Gmail running in Chrome), but they still fly by. There’s no way in Windows 8 or 8.1 to look at old notifications. After they’re off the screen — frequently for just a few seconds — that’s it. And when they pile up, they can pile up and up and up and up, taking over the right edge of your screen.

What Is the Action Center?

      Unfortunately, this new locus for machine notifications isn’t called a notification center, as it’s called in almost every operating system, in almost every language, on earth. That name’s taken. So we get a strange name for a common sight: It’s officially called the action center, although everyone I know slips from time to time and calls it the notification center.

This isn’t the Windows solution center (born in Windows 7, primarily for security stuff), nor is it the Windows 7 or Windows 8 action center (see Figure 3-1), which includes lots of system-related stuff, but no program notifications.

      FIGURE 3-1: The Windows 7/8/8.1 action center is not to be confused with the Windows 10 action center.

Instead, the Windows 10 action center is, well, a real notification center. Click the icon down in the lower right of the screen (and shown in the margin) and you can see the action in Figure 3-2.

      At the top, Windows 10 gathers some (but by no means all) of the various programs’ notifications. At the bottom, you have a bunch of links to various settings. These links are called quick actions and can be personalized from a list or predefined items.

      FIGURE 3-2: The Windows 10 notific… err, action center.

What, Exactly, Is a Notification?

      

Historically, Windows allowed all sorts of notifications: blinking taskbar tiles, balloon messages over the system time (in the lower-right corner), dire-looking icons in the system notification area (near the system time), or dialog boxes that appear out of nowhere, sometimes taking over your computer. Then came Windows 8, and the powers that be started looking down on programs that jilted and cavorted, whittled and wheezed. People who write the programs have gradually become more disciplined.

Except for Scottrade, Figure 3-3, which locks out the screen, but that’s another modal dialog story.

      These new, politically correct notifications — the things that can happen when Windows 10 or one of its programs wants your attention — fall into three broad categories:

       They can put rectangular notices, usually gray, in the upper-right edge of your screen, with a few lines of text. Typically, the notifications say things such as Tap or Choose what happens when you insert a USB drive, or Turn sharing on or off.FIGURE 3-3: Scottrade’s notifications, generated by its web app, lock up the system entirely. Those are not nice notifications.These notifications are called toaster notifications (or sometimes just toast), and they’re a core part of the new Universal face of Windows 10. It’s a fabulous name because they pop up, just like toast, but on their sides, and then they disappear.

       They can show toaster notifications on the lock screen. This is considered more dire than simply showing the notifications on tiled apps or the desktop. Why? Because the apps that create lock screen notifications may need to run, even when Windows 10 is sleeping. And that leads to battery drainage.

       They can play sounds. Don’t get me started.

Everyone has picked up on Windows 10’s notification system. Even websites can now send you notifications when new content is posted. When an app sends you a notification, it appears briefly in the bottom-right corner of the screen. In Figure 3-4, you can see a notification about an email I’ve received.

      FIGURE СКАЧАТЬ