how do I disable full screen apps in windows 8

Windows Blue?

If there are open source apps to fix the problem, any problem, in 8.1 why doesn't MS provide the fix?

Oh, that's right, they will want you to upgrade to the next OS and maybe they include some of these bad design ideas just for that reason.

I migrated to 8.1 from XP pro against my will.

One of the first things I wanted to do was eliminate some of the Windows Features and do it the way I used to. Control Panel. Add remove programs, and then go to the window where I could go through and select or deselect all the apps and added functions I didn't want.

OK. so i was ready to discover that I'd have to learn new and unusual ways to do it. I wasn't prepared for the discovery that you can't do it because they won't let you.

This was called "personalising" or "customising", words now more frequently used but far less true today than before.

I use Mozilla Firefox. I don't want IE any. I don't want it using up memory. Or disc space.

There are a lot of other things I want to change.

I want Spider solitaire back and I don't want all these "Xbox games" (I think they can be deleted, when I get around to it) and the best thing so far about Charms is the name. The next borrowing from nuclear physics will be "Flavours" I'm sure. Then "wormholes".

I want the next generation OS to be an improvement, not a culture shock and certainly not filled with badly thought through ideas and not where they have tried to deliver a "one size  fits all" solution which has features necessary for small screen devices but which are entirely wrong for the newer bigger screened laptops.That's like expecting the one size fits all child's romper suit to fit an adult.

This is not the solution we should be given.

You should not need to rely on other software designers/providers to fix problems that should never have been created in the first place. Plus, of course, if others can fix the problem then so too should Microsoft without trying to sell you the next generation and without simply shrugging their shoulders and saying "live with it".

Microsoft should have at least given you an option to choose if you want your nice new pc with its big screen to be totally filled with something that contains just five lines of text and an annoying logo.

Microsoft say this is the "modern screen" designed that way and cannot be turned off.

"Cannot be turned off"? OK,include it and set the default so people will see it is there but never ever put in something so annoying it cannot be "personalised".

As if this wasn't bad enough, escaping from this full screen is very very difficult. I can't count the times I have hit the Esc key and nothing happens (does this key still have a function?).

It takes lots of aggressive mousework in the top right corner to finally get the right hand side commend bar open so I can select "Start" so I can then select desktop.

And what a wonderfully stupid idea when trying to follow an online tutorial in one resizable window when every time you want to flip back to take the next step you have the same problem all over again.

This is a very very bad idea.

The fact that they have this one totally wrong and got it all the way through to release is unbelieveable.

Do they not get these things tested by normal PC users?

The worst thing is I cannot conceive why anyone would want full screen on a modern laptop.

OK, someone suggests this is because it has to operate on small Ipads or whatever. Great. SO let the rest of the world using laptops or PCs go hang.

I didn't want windows 8.1, I was happy enough with XP Pro and if they simply stuck to fixing problems there or adding "user configured" personalisations, fine. But the culture shock of arriving from XP to 8.1 is too too much and I suspect there are a great many users who have managed to avoid each intervening "new and Improved" OS like me.

What one wants to find are improvements.

I suspect there are few people who religiously go from each new OS to the next in an orderly progression but most must leapfrog from what they had, when their computer dies, most likely, to whatever is forced on them by the PC manufacturers.

In the first day of owning my new laptop I have heard countless stories of people who found some way to revert to their old OS or to an earlier version.

Maybe MS ought to think about their clients.

This one, next time, is going to get MAC or whatever else is out there. I can get another Office suite compatible with windows for $14. I should have done that too.

Thanks! I'm using a pretty old machine with low res so I don't really have the capacity to do that, unfortunately. But it's good to know there is a way to get more apps on the screen at once. I am dying for Windows 9...