Start Screen: A New User Experience for Modern Apps

In Windows 7 and previous Windows versions, applications were said to run “on” or “within” the Windows desktop since that is how they visually appeared, and because the desktop provided different user interfaces for managing and launching applications and performing other system‑level tasks.

In Windows 8, these activities are performed from the new Start screen. As you can see in Figure 3‑5, this screen is decidedly different from the old Windows desktop.

Figure 3‑5: The Start screen