Microsoft has earlier showed Windows store during big events like the CES which is believed to be one of the biggest feature in Windows 8. Windows Store would be seen in action during February 2012 when Microsoft releases the beta version of Windows 8 to public. Yesterday the guys at Microsoft have written a detailed post on the
Windows Store for developers blog showing most of the features of Windows 8.
Wang writes in the post-
The fundamental building block of our Store design was to ensure that people could easily discover and quickly acquire apps. While this is a somewhat obvious goal for a catalog or marketplace, it’s actually pretty challenging when the size and diversity of the catalog grows as quickly as we expect to happen in the Windows Store.
Further he discusses all the major parts of the Store in detail like the landing page, editorial topic pages, data-generated lists, app listing pages, and the search, browse, install, and update experiences.
Wang stated in the post that the main emphasize was on content instead of the UI, so the so the store lending page shows the app instead of other things. All the new and exciting content would be featured on the Store landing page. Browsing between the apps has been made very easy with just a flick of a finger.
Searching in Windows Store has been made simpler and indeed searching is one of the most common way for the customer to discover apps. You can easily search by tapping the Search charm. You can search app either using categories or using the more general search query. Also the apps will appear immediately as soon as you begin typing in search box.
Installing and updating apps using Windows Store can’t be more simpler than this. Here is what Wang states-
Because we strongly believe in aiding app discovery, we’ve made a conscious decision that the customer shouldn’t be taken out of their context once they’ve started installing an app. We don’t believe you should have to stare at a progress bar and count every second as it goes by. Likewise, staying on the app listing page for the app you just acquired leaves you at a dead end with nothing to do. Instead, as soon as the installation starts, we take you back to the previous page you were looking at, so you can continue your shopping experience; in many cases, that’s the landing page, or a category page, or another list of great apps to try that you were previously looking at. Our lab research validated that people liked the continuity of getting one app and then going on to discover more.
Wang has also specified that you can install one app which you have purchased on upto total of 5 Windows PC and if you want to install on the 6th PC you have to uninstall from one of your devices. Further if you have made settings on one device, the settings would be preserved on other devices as well.
