Windows 8.1 apps: New additions and crucial updates - kadlecladdelf
While umpteen of Windows 8.1's better changes direction on the interface, ultimately it totally comes down to the apps.
After all, the modern-style side of Windows 8 is supposed to be all about getting come out of the closet of the way and letting you enjoy those big-screen, touch-friendly applications. In Windows 8.1 Preview, Microsoft has done a lot of work on its existing applications, and information technology's also come up with just about new apps to help fulfill the gaps in the Windows Store catalog.
We've already provided an overview of these apps in our hands on with Windows 8.1, but now let's take a nigher flavor at what's new and what's different:
Alarm
Jared Newman The new Alarm app is a cooperative add-on if you want to keep a Windows 8 tablet by your bedside, simply in its up-to-date state IT seems a bit sparse, not unlike the first generation of Windows 8 apps.
All the basic things you'd expect from an alarm app are uninjured, including a timekeeper and a stopwatch, and the power to set an alarm to repeat any given day of the week. The port is slick, and the circular dial for mount times is cute. IT'd be nice to ensure some to a greater extent advanced functions, such as volume fade-in, fire up to music, and a dimmer for exploitation the app every bit a nighttime time.
Jared Newman Calculator
In Windows 8.1, Microsoft has gone above and on the far side the basic desktop calculator with this new modern-style app. The basic math functions are still on that point, merely users hindquarters also switch to a scientific calculator. With the unit of measurement converter, users throne count volume, length, angle, temperature, Energy, domain, speed, clock, power, and data.
Jared Newman Although IT isn't the most exotic app more or less, this mightiness represent the one mod-style function that desktop users might fall in love with. It's especially reusable when snapped face-by-side with the desktop, allowing you to calculate without messing about with individual window sizes.
Sound Recorder
Jared Newman Just like the screen background Sound Recorder app, the new modern-style edition is dead-simple. Just hit the microphone button and bulge recording. You can bring dow down an audio file out, rename it, and delete it, but that's it.
Camera
Jared Newman If you enjoy taking photos with tablets, you'll find dozens of useful new features in the Windows 8.1 camera app. The interface is today a trifle to a lesser extent disorienting, with quick-television camera and picture-capture buttons on the right side of the screen. The app menu includes a "camera roll" button, exposure settings, and the timekeeper. Camera options, including video stabilization and aspect ratio, experience been moved to the Settings section along the trance taproo.
Jared Newman Once you've taken a photo, the app provides some new editing options. To boot to cropping a photo, you can now spread ou it or go into a complete editing mode, where you'll find options for red-eye, lighting, color, and pore. You can likewise localise a pic as your lock screen, open IT in some other app, or start a slideshow. This app doesn't offer draftsmanship, cut-and-paste, or the precise cropping and resizing options you get from MS Paint, merely it looks like a fine option for basic photo editing on touch-based PCs.
Food & Potable
Although plenty of food-related Windows apps exist already, Microsoft has gone before and made one of its personal. It's dazzling, offering recipes, tips, and articles about food, wine, and cocktails, each gathered past Bing. Users give notice select from the app's list of recipes or create their own—either by typing it in or attractive a picture of a paper recipe—and then add those recipes to a collection. The app besides lets you create shopping lists and repast plans, which can be shared out with other apps through the enchant bar.
Jared Cardinal Newman Less useful, at least in my experience, was the "hands-free" mode that's supposed to Army of the Righteou you sneak direct recipes victimisation your PC's webcam. Getting the app to answer to hand gestures was unreliable, so it power just be easier to swipe with your elbows.
Health and Good condition
Microsoft's new Wellness and Fitness app is a sprawling platform, packed with features for staying healthy. The main page provides links to good shape exercises, news articles, nutricion tips and learned profession news. There's besides a link to a form tracker, standardized to the ace we've seen from Google.
The real action begins with the app's collective in diet, health and exercise trackers. These trackers have potential, but proper now they're far too small-scale in what they can execute. The dieting tracker lets you record what you've eaten, but its database of items is absent. (For illustration, it has information on some Underpass salads and sandwiches, but not others.) The exercise tracker International Relations and Security Network't able to synchronise with popular seaworthiness services like Fitbit and Runkeeper, and entering all that information manually seems like a fuss. The health tracker is fine if you have weight, cholesterol, blood pressure and vaccination details on hand, but it's basically just a record-keeping app. For now, the Health and Fitness app is outflank for providing general news and health tips, not for keeping data on your own wellness.
Reading List
Patc information technology's no replacement for lawful "read it later" apps like Pocket, Reading List at the least offers a simple way to bring through articles for later o. There's not such to do in the app itself, at to the lowest degree non until you've saved improving around things to read by using the Share charm in other apps, much as Internet Explorer OR News.
Jared Newman Keep out in mind that this app behaves a bit differently from other readers. Instead of suck up the text into the app itself, Reading List actually sends you back to the original source. The downside to this approach is that the app doesn't operate as an offline proofreader. It's strictly a way to save articles for afterwards.
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer 11 brings some really useful changes to Windows 8.1. Most helpful is the ability to open aweigh to ternary Web pages side-by-side in separate windows. To do this, you mustiness extended-compress or powerful-click a link or an open yellow journalism, and select the option for "new window." Opening multiple windows creates several instances of IE 11 in the Windows multitasking carte, so you pot puzzle over back to whatsoever open pages even if you drag them unsuccessful of snap view.
Jared Newman Other tweaks let in syncing between wholly Windows 8.1 devices, a "reopen closed tab" function, blessed passwords, and a inherent download watcher. And for those who can't stand the way modern-style IE hides tabs and the handle bar, IE 11 includes an option in the Settings menu to show them at all times in a collapsed view. Conglomerate, these fres features definitely help modern-stylus Internet Explorer serve as a competent permutation to the desktop browser.
Photos
Microsoft has changed the interface for the Photos app in Windows 8.1, bringing it closer to the file chooser that appears in other apps. Strangely, the power to view online photo sources such as SkyDrive, Facebook, and Flickr was missing in our tests. Merely this may exactly comprise a bug, as online sources were gettable done the file picker in other apps. American Samoa for editing, the Photos app mirrors the Camera app, with an edit mood that includes lighting tweaks, red-heart reduction and other options.
SkyDrive
In the end, SkyDrive's modern-style app functions more like its desktop twin in Windows 8.1. Users now accept the ability to cut, copy, paste, and rename files—seriously, you couldn't suffice whatsoever of those things before—and make files available for offline access. There's too an option, in the Settings menu, to make water all SkyDrive files available offline, which is attending if you're victimisation a laptop with plenty of storage space. Parenthesis from those meaty changes, the SkyDrive app's interface has been tweaked, with little icons that allow for more items happening the screen at once.
Jared Newman Euphony
Microsoft's Xbox Music app is acquiring a major visual overhaul in Windows 8.1. The new design is a loss from the horizontally-scrolling, modern-style apps we're used to, with a piloting column on the left root, and a vertically-scrolling list of artists on the right. IT's definitely an melioration, more conducive to quickly getting to your euphony.
The app also does a better lin of explaining itself. Small dialog boxes let you know when music's been stored locally or in the dapple, while buttons at the top of the screen offer clear options for sorting your collection. As before, Xbox Medicine lets users stream millions of on the loose songs on demand—risen to 10 hours per month—and listen to their local music collection all in a single app.
Jared Newman Maps, Newsworthiness, Sports, Weather, Finance and Travel
Most of these Bing-powered apps have already received better updates, and they are largely unchanged in Windows 8.1. Maps has or s minor decorative changes to the app carte. Sports, News, and Finance now have a research taproo that appears in the top-right niche of the window. These apps didn't need major changes, so it's alright that they're nigh alone for now.
The one exception is Travel, which has yet to receive the synoptic visual upgrade. The app puts certain features dormy-front, including hotel search and flight tracking, and IT fits more information on the screen. Actual features appear to exist unchanged in the new app.
Mail, Messaging, Citizenry, and Calendar
Microsoft made some big changes to these apps in March. While the company has promised further improvements in Windows 8.1, they're not part of the preview.
Windows Store
Jared Newman When it's clock time to venture beyond Microsoft's possess apps, the Windows Store is now much more tantalizing in Windows 8.1. The layout is wholly polar, with a single carrousel of faced apps on the left hand pull of the screen, followed by several rows of suggestions. These tiles are less crowded than they were in Windows, and they each include a short inscribed verbal description, so it's easier to browse without jumping back and forth between pages.
Microsoft has also tweaked the categorization on the main page. Scrolling through, you'll undergo personalized recommendations, trending apps, new releases, and top charts. Categories have been moved to the app menu, so you'll have to swipe up or right-click to see them.
Jared Paul Leonard Newman Individual app pages are getting a makeover in Windows 8.1 as symptomless. Instead of having to click triple tabs for app details and user reviews, everything is laid out on a single, scrollable page. That includes a new section of related apps and early apps by the same developer. Overall, the Windows Computer storage feels less distributed and easier to browse than information technology did in Windows 8.
A much better app experience
Loss through all the new apps and updates, you gain an admiration of just how broken the modern-style app situation was in Windows 8, and how much Microsoft had to do to fix information technology. Before, apps like Internet Explorer and SkyDrive were no match for their desktop counterparts, and key functions like a calculator and photo editor were wanting all. Windows 8.1 has lots of other changes, particularly for desktop diehards, but the improvements to the apps alone should supporte make Microsoft's platform a lot more hospitable for touchscreen PCs.
Updated 6/27/13 at 9:25 A.M. to include the Health and Fitness app.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/452637/windows-8-1-apps-new-additions-and-crucial-updates.html
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