Microsoft Creates Enhanced Windows Store To Complement Windows 8 Release Preview

Microsoft has been taking all the user feedback that it has received for the Windows Store on Windows 8 and made significant usability improvements to it, as well as adding many apps and locales. It’s improved things like app navigation, app management and replacing Contracts with Share Contract, a more sophisticated version which allows you to share info about apps with friends and family right from any app listing page. They’ve made an important addition too: the availability of traditional desktop applications at the Windows Store. Customers will be able to search for them or find them within categories, just as they do listings for Metro style apps. These are just listings the desktop apps themselves are distributed by the developer or by a reseller, as they have been all along. The listing pages provide a link, supplied by the developer, to the distribution location. Servicing of desktop apps remains between the developer and the customer and is not handled via the Store.

The Windows 8 Release Preview together with the enhanced Windows Store are now much more refined and functional than before, so for those that have been put off Windows 8 and the new Metro interface, perhaps now is a good time to give it a try? The trial is free after all.