Review: Start Menu Reviver gives Windows 8 a modern UI-style Start Menu

How you'll like Start Menu Reviver largely depends on what you want out of a Windows 8 Start Menu. If you want something that mimics the Windows 7 Start Menu exactly, you're better off with Stardock's Start8 or Iobit's Start Menu 8. If you want something that's more of a melding of Windows 8 and a start menu, Start Menu Reviver might be what you seek.

By default, Start Menu Reviver looks like an Ease of Access application for the sight-challenged, but you can reduce it to a normal size.

When you first install Start Menu Reviver, it defaults to its large size. It's handy for touchscreens, but on a monitor or laptop screen, it looks like an Ease of Access feature for the eyesight-challenged. You can select a size that is more in keeping with the aspect ratios employed throughout the desktop. Start Menu Reviver sits on the task bar approximately where you'd expect to find it, but a little to the right. As with other Start Menus for Windows 8, you can change the icon to suit your taste.

In a column on the left of Start Menu Reviver resides a list of common Windows programs (desktop and modern UI) such as Task Manager (modern UI version), Network (desktop), Run (desktop), and the user name (which actually takes you to User Account Control rather than the user folder the way that most Start menus do). To the right are My Computer, Internet Explorer (desktop), a link for the modern UI, and a bunch of other tiles representing both legacy and modern UI apps. You can freely arrange—and even resize—the tiles, just as with the Modern UI.

Start Menu Reviver's tiled UI fits well in the Win8 modern UI.

Start Menu Reviver has the usual search box at the bottom. However, this is where I first noticed that there's no tabbing between fields or sections as there is in a normal Start Menu. It can be considerably faster navigating when you can use both the mouse and the keyboard. Not everyone is touch-oriented yet.

Start Menu Reviver lacks the fine control over switching between the desktop and modern UI that the competition offers. You can have the Windows Key invoke Reviver rather than the modern UI, but that's about it. Start8 and Start Menu 8 both allow you to take the modern UI out of the mix entirely.

Start Menu Reviver is free, and it's nice that Windows 8 users have another choice when it comes to putting back the Start Menu that Microsoft so thoughtfully decided you no longer need. It's not my top choice, but not everyone works the same. Give it a spin along with the others and share your opinion.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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Review: Easily edit images and create collages using Fotor in Windows 8's Modern interface

Fotor Fotor is no Photoshop, but it's simple, fun, and works well for basic image editing.

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If Picasa has taught us anything, it's that not every image editor has to be Photoshop. Sometimes you just want a quick, fun way to enhance your photos, add some neat effects, and maybe create a collage or two. If that sounds like fun and you happen to be rocking a Windows 8 device, you should check out Fotor, a free photo editor that uses the Modern interface. It's fast, visual, and has virtually no learning curve.

Fotor makes it easy to add text overlays to images, but you can control the font size independently.

When you launch Fotor, it lets you open an existing photo to edit, or start working on a collage. It also comes with six sample photos arranged in an attractive grid, to get you started. The simplest way to get a feel for what Fotor is like is to click a sample photo. Do that, and you'll find yourself in the editing interface.

In editing mode, the image dominates most of the screen, and an editing toolbar lines the right side of the screen—opposite where you'd normally expect it, but in keeping with the Modern interface convention. The toolbar is subdivided into eight sections, six of which contain editing tools: Basic editing (color corrections), cropping, effects, borders, focus effects, and text tools. The other two sections let you open new files for editing, and save your work.

Fotor offers numerous effects, including crowd-pleasing Lomo looks

The color correction interface uses sliders, with live image updates: Just move the slider and see the change instantly. Cropping is similarly intuitive, with 11 preset aspect ratios, and a free-crop mode (to set your own aspect ratio). Just drag a frame across the image to set out your crop area, and click Confirm when you're happy with the composition.

Fotor's selective focus tool is the most nuanced one in the app, allowing for fine adjustments.

Image effects are divided into five categories, ranging from Classic to "Dark Corners" (i.e., vignette effects). While each category contains many different effects, individual effects cannot be adjusted in any way. Many of the image modifications are heavy-handed, and Fotor offers no way to tone down the amount of influence a given effect has. Also, you can't layer effects one on top of the other. You need to pick one effect for your image and stick with it. The Borders category is similar: There's a rich selection of borders, but you can't tweak anything, like the size of the margin or the color of a given border.

Fotor's collage mode makes it easy to pick a number of images for your collage.

One category that does offer fine-grained adjustments is the Tilt-Shift Mode, whereby you can apply selective focus effects to your image. Tilt-shift (a "miniature look") isn't the only option: You can also apply a center focus effect, where the subject appears sharp and surrounding detail is blurred out. Both center focus and tilt-shift effects offer many adjustments: You can change the tilt shift's angle, and change either mode's blur radius and virtual aperture size. Of all the tools Fotor offers, selective focus is the most nuanced.

Finally, you can also overlay your image with some text. The text tool offers a limited number of fonts (you can't pick from any font installed on your computer), and lets you pick one of several overlay templates, such as speech or thought bubbles. There is no way to control the font size independently of the template: You can only resize the text along with the speech bubble it's in.

In collage mode, it's easy to move images around, resize the different parts of the collage, or pick one several premade layouts.

All in all, Fotor does what it does quite well. It excels in being quick, and quick to master. Few features are cryptic, and none appear to rely on hidden toolbars you need to slide into view. If you want to edit images in the Modern user interface, Fotor is a great option.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Windows Store, where you can download the software to your system.

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Review: Skitch Touch makes it easy to annotate images in Windows 8's Modern interface

Evernote-owned free utility Skitch is a great way to annotate images and screenshots. It comes in both Windows and Mac OS X editions, and mobile versions for iOS and Android are available, too. And somewhere between the mobile and desktop versions comes Skitch Touch, the version built for Windows 8's Modern Interface. It has the same simple and pretty annotation tools as the other versions, but being a Modern app, offers less power and features than the traditional Windows version.

Like many other Modern apps, Skitch Touch seems to be designed for screen in the 11- to 13-inch range. On a 24-inch monitor, it ends up displaying vast expanses of white, unused space. As you launch it, Skitch Touch shows a beautiful Create New area on the left side of the screen, letting you create a pull in material to visually annotate from a camera (presumably a tablet's built-in camera, but this feature also works with a regular webcam connected to a computer), a map, a photo or screenshot you've previously taken, an image saved into the clipboard, or a blank canvas.

Skitch Touch makes it easy to start annotating a new image from a variety of sources.

Notably missing is the option to capture a new screenshot. You'll have to use a third-party tool for this, such as Screenshot Captor or ZScreen.

Once you have an image open for editing, annotating it is just as easy as on other Skitch versions. Part of what makes Skitch fun to use is that it doesn't overwhelm the user with numerous tools: There are just seven of them to master. You can draw arrows on your image, enter text, demarcate areas with rectangles, and squiggle with a marker. Other tools let you style your annotations (pick a color and stroke width), pixelate areas of the image, and crop the image. That's basically it—but really, that's all you need to get your point across when annotating an image.

When you're ready to share your work with others, click the Export button, and you can save the image as a JPG or PNG file. This isn't as convenient as being able to drag the image off the window to save it (a feature Skitch for Windows offers), but it works. To save your work as a Skitch document for editing later, click the checkmark on the top-right corner of the screen. Saving files for editing later is another area where Skitch Touch could do better: Unless you log into your Evernote account using Skitch, you only have access your most recently edited file. Once you log into Evernote from Skitch, the main part of the window shows previous files, and you can easily click through to edit them.

Skitch's simple annotation tools go well with the simple Modern visual aesthetic.

Skitch is a fundamentally simple tool, and it already offers mobile versions for iOS and Android, something that helps when designing a Modern app. It's also visual, which is a great quality for a Modern app to have. Thanks to these advantages, Skitch Touch offers a better Modern experience than most apps I've seen so far, and should work especially well on a touch-enabled tablet screen.

Note: The Download button on the Product Specs page takes you to the Windows Store, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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Review: ModernMix runs modern UI apps in windows

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Review: WinZip for Windows 8 is what you'd expect from a Modern app

Metro, or Modern, or whatever you'd like to call the new style of applications that debuted with Windows 8, is problematic. It's problematic because it's built for touch, but forces itself on your non-touch computer, too. And because of its expanse of white (or blank, for it's often in some intense shade of color) space and very low information density. And because it relies on hidden gestures you somehow have to guess would bring up toolbars you never knew were there to begin with.

To get you started, WinZip for Windows 8 asks you to "use the app bar" without hinting what that might be.

I could keep counting the ways, but the point is that it's very difficult to make a Modern app that actually feels "right" on a modern desktop computer. That's the context in which I tested WinZip for Windows 8, and it proves designing a decent Modern app is a serious challenge even for a software company as established as Corel, and for a brand as iconic as WinZip.

Once you find the app bar, WinZip for Windows 8 lets you add files from your local storage, or from a cloud file storage service.

When you first launch WinZip for Windows 8, it takes over your entire screen, of course. But it presents no buttons or menus: Only the cryptic line, "Use the app bar to start adding files/folders to a new Zip file or to Open an existing Zip file," and a vast, soothing expanse of color. That's great, if you happen to know what the "app bar" is. If you dontt, you may find yourself randomly clicking around until you happen to right-click anywhere on the screen. This is what you need to do to pop open a toolbar that's hidden at the bottom of the screen—and that's the toolbar you need to get anything done with WinZip for Windows 8. Hiding the toolbar like this is a standard Modern UI convention, and it's just as terrible on WinZip for Windows 8 as it is in other applications.

The file browser is simple to use, as long as you don't try removing a folder you've asked to add.

The toolbar has six buttons: Add Files, Add a Folder, New Zip, Open Zip, and all the way to the far right, ZipSend and ZipShare. You can add files and folders locally, but WinZip for Windows 8 can also plug into Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive, letting you pull files from those cloud services into your archive. Once you tell it where you want to look for files, a file browser fills the screen. Everything is enormous and touch-optimized, but the interface works. It's not without its Modern quirks, though: If you add a folder and regret it, you need to right-click the folder's name at the bottom of the screen to remove it. There's no indication that's what you're supposed to do (I just had to figure it out by trying), and I have no idea what you'd do if you had a touchscreen with no way to right-click anything. Such perplexing moments are par for the course in most Modern apps, though.

Opening a zip archive is easy in WinZip for Windows 8.

Once you add files and folders, WinZip crunches some numbers and shows the archive's vital statistics in the right sidebar. You can see its name, how many folders and files it contains, and how big it is. You can also opt to encrypt the files, and finally, you can save the file or send it to others using WinZip's ZipSend and ZipShare services. Feeling particularly savvy, I brought up the Windows 8 Charms bar and clicked Share, only to find out that I "don't have any apps that can share this content." So, instead of using the much-vaunted sharing built into Windows 8, you have to use WinZip's own solution.

The sidebar displays statistics and information about the currently open Zip file.

If you own a conventional desktop or laptop computer, there is absolutely no reason to use WinZip for Windows 8. It's not because Corel didn't create a good product – it's because Modern is basically unusable for any sort of real work, and archive management counts as "real work" in my book. I can hope WinZip for Windows 8 works better on a tablet with a touch interface, but as long as I have a plain old desktop, I remain grateful for the desktop version of WinZip.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the Windows 8 store, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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Review: ModernMix runs modern UI apps in windows

Windows 8 is transforming into the desktop OS users thought it would be when they first heard about it, but it's not Microsoft doing the work: It's Stardock. The company's Start8 start menu replacement is best-of-breed, and they've hit the nail on the head again with ModernMix, a $5 program (with 30-day free trial) that lets you open Windows 8 modern UI apps as windows on the classic desktop.

If you didn't know better, you'd think these Windows 8 modern UI apps were designed to run in windows.

ModernMix is super-easy to use. Head to the Modern UI, open a modern UI app, press the F10 key, and the app moves to a window on the classic desktop. You can also choose to make this the standard behavior for programs launched from the Modern UI so you don't even have the press the key.

Right-click the icon in the upper left-hand corner, and along with the usual move, size, close, etc. options you'll find the option to create a shortcut to the app on the classic desktop. When you subsequently launch the program using this icon, it behaves as a classic windowed application. When you access the same app from within the modern UI, it behaves as it normally would. Best of both worlds.

However, you can change this behavior as well, having the icons launch the program full-screen. There's also an overlay menu in the top right corner of windowed Modern UI apps that lets you full-screen or window the application.

ModernMix lets you choose between windowed, maximized, and fullscreen modes.

There's really nothing more to ModernMix, but it reduces the number of times you have to traverse the two halves of Windows 8 (modern and classic), which is well worth the $5. Being able to run SkyDrive, Maps, Camera, and especially Solitaire in a window on the classic desktop is addictive (as well as more efficient) for desktop users. Now if Stardock would just figure out a way to use the modern UI as the actual desktop, we'd have something to celebrate.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 with SRS Audio Runs Modern Combat 3 on Tablets

Qualcomm, like Nvidia with the Tegra 3, was demoing the power of its quad-core chip, the Snapdragon S4, at Mobile World Congress this week. And while the CPU manufacturer was quick to point out that four cores are not necessarily better than two, it did show how all those cores can enhance mobile gameplay in graphically intense titles, such as Modern Combat 3, as seen in the demo below.

The S4 was running the multiplayer on some reference design tablets, and Qualcomm had the action displayed on a big screen to showcase its chip’s graphics power. But it wasn’t just crisp visuals and fast frame rates; SRS audio technology built directly onto the S4 chip provides a sound boost that you can hopefully hear above the din of booth visitors in the background.

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