New Lumia owner,operational questions

[invisik]

Hi!

I'm enjoying my 900 for the most part.

1. When pressing and holding the back arrow button to see what programs are open, how so you close. A program from that screen?

2. After browsing for a while and then wanting to close. Internet. Explorer pressing the back arrow takes me back through all the web pages I visited and then the browser finally. Closes. How can I just close it?

3. WiFi, if connecting to a hotspot with. A login page will it automatically take me to the login page to get internet Access or do i have to open IE manually?

4. When typing on a web page field, how can you hide the keyboard without submitting the page?

Thanks still getting the hang of touch screen typing (long time blackberry user)

-m

 

[mkr10001]

Hi!

I'm enjoying my 900 for the most part.

1. When pressing and holding the back arrow button to see what programs are open, how so you close. A program from that screen?

2. After browsing for a while and then wanting to close. Internet. Explorer pressing the back arrow takes me back through all the web pages I visited and then the browser finally. Closes. How can I just close it?

3. WiFi, if connecting to a hotspot with. A login page will it automatically take me to the login page to get internet Access or do i have to open IE manually?

4. When typing on a web page field, how can you hide the keyboard without submitting the page?

Thanks still getting the hang of touch screen typing (long time blackberry user)

-m

1. You don't. It just stays there until you open the next 5 apps and it gets pushed off the end of the list so to speak.
2. Just use the start button, again, you can't close apps manually. (I guess the only way is to continually press back until it won't go anywhere but the start screen.

3. don't know...try it? lol

4. back button

 

[will_solo]

1. The way I do it is I will select the app and then hit the back arrow to close the app (it will take you back to the home screen, and the app is closed.)
2. Again, the way I do it is I will hit the "..." and then click tabs. I will then close the tab and then hit the back arrow to go to the home screen.
3. I haven't tried connecting to a hotspot yet.
4. Hit the back arrow and the keyboard will hide itself.

Hope this helps some.

 

[inteller]

the OS manages the multitasking. apps with background agents will continue to do whatever it is they do (live tile, notifications, etc) even if the app isn't in that list.

 

[invisik]

Thanks all. A more elegant way to close apps would be nice (no doubt this has been mentioned before). For IE, closing the tab first and then exiting it would probably be faster, I'll try that one.

-m

 

[SolunaKitty]

4. You can also tap outside of the field, as long as it isn't a button.

 

[invisik]

Hi! for #4, I've found in just about all cases you can't tap outside of the field to get the keyboard to go away. I end up scrolling around a page in a little teeny tiny box until I can submit the form.

Hitting the Back button sometimes works, but sometimes backs you out of the screen completely--it's not consistent.

I'll keep trying those ideas. Thanks.

 

[HeyCori]

Hi! for #4, I've found in just about all cases you can't tap outside of the field to get the keyboard to go away. I end up scrolling around a page in a little teeny tiny box until I can submit the form.

Hitting the Back button sometimes works, but sometimes backs you out of the screen completely--it's not consistent.

I'll keep trying those ideas. Thanks.

Hitting the back button to get rid of the keyboard has always worked for me.

 

[SolunaKitty]

Tapping outside the field has always worked for me also =/ Whether it's for setting a destination, or to view more messages. Hm.

 

[anon(5339784)]

Hi!

I'm enjoying my 900 for the most part.

1. When pressing and holding the back arrow button to see what programs are open, how so you close. A program from that screen?

2. After browsing for a while and then wanting to close. Internet. Explorer pressing the back arrow takes me back through all the web pages I visited and then the browser finally. Closes. How can I just close it?

Thanks all. A more elegant way to close apps would be nice (no doubt this has been mentioned before). For IE, closing the tab first and then exiting it would probably be faster, I'll try that one.

-m

I can't understand how so many people can reply to him, and absolutely nobody (except one overlooked answer) gets the idea to maybe tell him the most important thing about his questions: That they are absoluetely useless and based on a misconception.

And this is something I see ALL over the internet, it seems as if nobody on Windows Phone has gotten the memo about how Multitasking works on Windows Phone (it is also being wrongly reported throughout the web, in reviews and youtube videos, which is ridiculous). There is not one clear and simple source which makes things clear for the users where it is in short explained so that everyone can understand it and which pops out when you google for it.

@invisk

-You technically can't "close" (as in stop the execution of) any of the Apps you see in the multitasking view. (Explanation follows below)
-You don't actually do "close" any of the Apps you see in the multitasking view just because you make it disappear from the view (it gets moved out or you hit the back button while in the App).
-You absolutely don't need to "close" (make disappear) any of the Apps you see in the Multitasking view.

And the same goes for the tabs in the Internet Explorer.

WHY? Because:

You can't "close" them because they are ALREADY closed the second you leave them (whether it is via the Home button or because you go into an other App). They are NOT still open and hidden or keep running in the backround just because they are in the Multitasking view (actually it's an Fast-App-Switching view, but I will get to that later).
Once you leave an App (once it is not fullscreen on your Phone anymore) it is gone, closed, dead, you don't have to worry about it anymore, it does nothing that it couldn't do without being in the Multitasking view anyway (running limited Agents, which is OS wide and has nothing to do with the Multitasking/Fast-App-Switching view, the App "Card" being open in that view has NO EFFECT ON ANYTHING).
So you absoluetely DON'T have to go through the Multitasking view to "close" "open" Apps. They are not open but already closed, and you don't close them you just remove them from the Fast-App-Switching view for absoluetely no reason and with absolutely NO effect on anything. So except you are Monk (or have similar issues with tidyness of your Fast-App-Switching) you can just leave them there, no need to do anything. "Plus" (Plus is wrong since that is the whole point of the Multitasking/Fast-App-Switching/AppCard view) you get the benefit of fast opening (resuming) for Apps you already opened before instead of having to launch them completely "new" again, which takes a few seconds. (For example.... whatsapp, instead of launching the App which takes a few seconds, just hold the back button and select it from there if you already had it open before and it's still in the Multitasking/Fast-App-Switching view, so you jump straight to it).

Once you leave an App, it is being freezed, all execution of code is stopped and the App just remembers its state before it was left and stays in the memory (RAM), so that it can be restored to that same place once you switch back to it via either the back button or via the Fast-App-Switching/Multitasking/AppCard view by holding the back button.
And before you (and other panicking guys on here) now say (or break out in a state of) "So I DO need to "close" it (remove it from the view), because it is wasting my RAM!!!!! I NEED MY RAM!!!" - NO! You DON'T! This is not Windows 98/Windows XP/earlyAndroid/Symbian. You don't need to do anything, it is not wasting anything. This is a modern operating system (like the Windows 7 you all are hopefully using and not still hanging on to XP), and as such it has a very good way of handling memory/RAM on its own, without needing your brain.
When the Phone/OS/another App happens to need more memory/RAM than there is free/available because your freezed App is taking up some, it will simply flush the information from the freezed App from the memory/RAM and free up memory/RAM, all by itself, the same thing you would think to do it does all by itself. You will not notice any of that happening, it all happens in the background, and you will not get any "no memory" or "memory full" messages like on some other operating systems, you will not be not-able to to anything just because a freezed App is taking up memory/RAM, the App being in the Multitasking/Fast-App-Switching view has absolutely no effect on your experience. Once the OS needs more memory/RAM, it will free up more memory/RAM, at no cost to you. "But then I can't switch back to my App anymore and it forgets where it was!" - Yes you can, because it gets "thombstoned" and puts down the information of it state and remembers where it was before, and restores itself. It will just have to load a little longer instead of having instant-resume like when it is in Fast-App-Switching mode/view, so you'll just have a little longer loading time. But none of that is your problem because you don't have to worry about or take care of any of it, and you lose nothing as you initially wanted to completely terminate it for no reason and with no effect in the reality that is this Operating System. ;

Much shorter explanation of the basics, because I tend to write more:
Fast Switching and Page State in Mango | Jesse Liberty


Fast-App-Switching/Multitasking explained:
How to take advantage of fast app switching in Windows Phone 7 | TechRepublic

Full technical explanation of Fast-App-Switching
Execution Model Overview for Windows Phone

All of which is true here, is also true for Internet Explorer. You have absolutely no need to close all pages/tabs and leave (get out of) the App with it being empty. You can just hit the Home/Windows key and get out of it and that's that. You can of course also close tabs with sites you don't need anymore, but do it for that reason (to clean up your "history"/open sites/view when you return to internet explorer) and not because you think it is still open and running in the background or somehow clogging your phone for other operations, because it's not.

Look at it this way, do you delete all your text messages (SMS) when you leave the text-messaging "App"? No, they just stay there, the way it has always been, just as on every old Nokia. Do you delete all your contacts just because you leave the phonebook/contact list? No, you just let them be. The same goes for the Internet Explorer. You can just leave it, at absolutely no cost to you in anything (performance, data traffic, battery life etc).




About the "Background Agents" I mentioned above: Apps (Apps in general, this has NOTHING to do with the App being in the Multitasking/Fast-App-Switching view!!!) can have a Background Agent which runs in the Background from time to time (don't freak out yet) with a limited interval-time and running-time. They can, for example (just to give you an idea of what it is), do a small thing (like check for something, the date, or time etc) for a maximum of 15 (or 25?) seconds every maximum of thirty minutes, and to save battery life, when you have more than one they will wait for each other for up to ten minutes so they can run together instead of seperately, to save battery. Also, they are limited to 14 days if not refreshed, or something like that.
When you go to Settings and swipe to the right to Applications, there is a "Background Tasks" point where you can turn off some Applications' Background Agents that you don't want to have running.

Here is a full technical explanation including the constraints (limits):
Background Agents Overview for Windows Phone

Here's an explanation of the Multitasking/Fast-App-Switching and the Background Agents in a slideshow:
Windows Phone Fast App Switching, Tombstoning and Multitasking


PS
It would be good if someone could make a sticky (here in the forum) and a post on the WPCentral Homepage about the basic principles/functionalities of Windows Phones to clear up all misconceptions which may exist because of our (human) outdated habits/practices/thinking which we have still engrained in our brains from operating with computer and phone operating systems in the last decade. Really, I see that "how can i "close" the Apps in the multittasking view" question everywhere, and even those who don't ask it still all think that they need to do it and are "closing" it by opening it and leaving it with the back button to "close" it.



Note to the programers: I am not a developer or programer guy, and I frankly don't give much for technical inaccuracies (whether I made a mistake about the seconds an Agent can run, a specific word or any of that), what I want to bring accross is the general point for the general user, the normal guy who uses this phone, and doesn't know whether he has to worry about any of that stuff and is looking for third-party taskkillers and crap like that.

Also, English is not my first language and I don't care enough to go through the text a fifth time to clear up the last typos and grammar errors in sentences. It is plenty understandable and explains things hopefully well enough for everyone to understand them, and that's all it needs to be.

 

[SolunaKitty]

@ramrac That's what I always thought it was Thank you for the technical explanation!

 

[mparker]

So except you are Monk (or have similar issues with tidyness of your Fast-App-Switching) you can just leave them there, no need to do anything.

If everybody were just like you then Mango's task switcher would be awesome for everybody. But for those of us who aren't you, Mango's task switcher could use some improvement.

I do know how the fast-app-switching works, but I always kept my task switcher list clean so I know exactly what I'm in the middle of when I pick the phone back up again. Also, when I'm bouncing between two different apps I don't want to have to swipe around like mad, I just want to go back and forth between the two apps.

I've been running ICS since my ur-Focus started flaking out, and do the same thing there, even though lCS also does a *very* good job of keeping suspended apps from consuming resources. But whereas Mango required me to jump through hoops to remove an app from the task switcher list, ICS allows me to remove it by long-clicking on its task card and picking "remove from list" from the context menu.

BTW approx 2.5% of the US population suffers from OCD, though the rate is somewhat higher among college-educated; but a higher percentage have some form of mild OCD-like behavioral characteristics.

 

[HeyCori]

BTW approx 2.5% of the US population suffers from OCD, though the rate is somewhat higher among college-educated; but a higher percentage have some form of mild OCD-like behavioral characteristics.

They should focus harder on being the 1%.


POLITICAL JOKE!!!!

 

[anon(5339784)]

If everybody were just like you then Mango's task switcher would be awesome for everybody. But for those of us who aren't you, Mango's task switcher could use some improvement.

I do know how the fast-app-switching works, but I always kept my task switcher list clean so I know exactly what I'm in the middle of when I pick the phone back up again. Also, when I'm bouncing between two different apps I don't want to have to swipe around like mad, I just want to go back and forth between the two apps.

You do realize that once you select an app that is further back, it gets moved to the front of the Fast App Switcher, and from there on it is exactly the same as if you only had your two Apps in it. There is absolutely no benefit in what you are doing, except that your inner itch to not have anything in that list gets scratched. Apart from that, you have exactly zero benefits. As said, you must be one of the guys that's like Monk.

 

[sting7k]

@ramrac, thanks for the info that's great. In summary; WP7 apps function just like iOS apps. Although it seems WP7 doesn't keep as many in suspended state or doesn't move ones used long ago to flash memory from RAM and instead just kills them to free up the system RAM to keep everything moving along.

 

[Bifurcated]

#3: you have to open IE manually.

 

[mparker]

You do realize that once you select an app that is further back, it gets moved to the front of the Fast App Switcher

It's not the same. There are all those other unused apps in the list that don't need to be there, and it irritates the p*ss out of me.

 

[Jrexxx]

Can someone explain to me how apps like Whatsapp function in the background? I mean they should be pushing data constantly, and not like checking every 15 mins or so...

 

[anon(5339784)]

They use Push. Just like Facebook, E-Mail etc...

 

[Big Supes]

Regarding #1:

Has anyone noticed on Nokia.com that, when taking the tour of the L900, it shows a different/new way of managing open apps? Each app has a little X in the corner to close independently...

I presume this is a Tango upgrade, and one that is most welcome my end.