REVIEW WINDOWS 8 PRO Docking and Task Switching Docked App

Click to EnlargeIn Windows 8, you can dock one Windows 8 app next to another by dragging its window to the either side of the screen, though the docked app only uses a small portion of the screen real estate and can only be docked to the left or right and cannot be resized. The docked app disappears when you're on the Start screen.
To see a list of open Windows 8 apps and choose between them, you can launch the Switcher, a slim vertical bar that appears on the left side of the screen when you swipe in from the left and then back again on a touch screen or on a touchpad which has the appropriate drivers. If you are using a mouse or a touchpad that doesn't have special Windows 8 drivers, you must move the pointer to the upper left corner of the screen, wait half a second for an icon of your most recently used app to appear and then slide the pointer down to make the Switcher appear. Hitting Windows + Tab on the keyboard also works.
Click to EnlargeThe Switcher menu shows a list of thumbnails for your currently-open Windows 8 apps, but with several caveats. First, unlike the traditional taskbar, the Switcher does not show icons for the foreground application. Second, any docked application does not appear in Switcher.
The most serious problem with Switcher, however, is that it displays the entire Desktop as just a single thumbnail, no matter how many traditional desktop applications you have open. Fortunately, if you dock the desktop "app" to the right or left of a Windows 8 app, you can see thumbnails of open desktop programs displayed vertically.
Of course, you don't need Switcher to toggle between open tasks. If you have a tablet, you can swipe rapidly from the left to browse through open Windows 8 apps. You can also use the good old fashioned Alt + Tab keyboard shortcut to switch between all open apps, even desktop programs.