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Windows Store Weekly: Things to do, things to watch, and the dawn of the desktop app

Neowin · · Hot! with 1 comment

Windows Store Weekly is a weekly round-up of what's been going on in the world of Windows apps, from the most prominent and anticipated, to the bolted and patched, and the fresh and promising, while also scooping up leaks.

With Build 2016 now more than a week behind us, the Windows Store has had a less busy week, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to talk about. As usual, our roundup will get you up to speed with everything that has been going on in the world of Windows apps, which includes both good and bad news this week.

Updated and bolted

If you're a Windows Insider running one of the builds from the Redstone 1 branch (such as build 14316, which was released a few days ago), you have access to a newer version of the Windows Maps app that has been improved to compensate for the discontinued HERE apps, and has yet to reach the general public.

This week, the Maps app has received yet another significant update, which bumps the version number to 5.1603.980.0, and is available to Insiders in the Slow and Fast rings. The update includes several tweaks to the user experience, as well as a couple of useful additions, such as access to more indoor maps for airports:

  • Ability to manually save your location when GPS isn’t available, which can now be used by Windows and other apps and services that you allow
  • Reliability, accessibility, and performance improvements
  • New airport venue maps. You’ll see a purple layout on places that have it and tapping on it will show you the indoor map for that airport. You can also switch between multiple floors.
  • Fixed remaining issues with voice instructions, all languages supported should now be speaking instructions
  • Fixed several bugs that were leaving guided directions in weird states (arrows disappeared or it stopped tracking your location)
  • Fixed issue with StreetSide becoming unresponsive when you were dragging the mouse outside the app window.

The Movies & TV app also received an update this week, but this one is for all Windows 10 users to enjoy. The update is not as big as last week, but it does include improvements to playback performance (fewer chances of seeing distorted video or skipped frames), as well as to the media download process, which should be more reliable now.

For those of you who don't know, Sway is Microsoft's "PowerPoint for storytelling", which allows you to create content-rich, interactive presentations, without the need to leave the app in order to look for the ingredients. This week, Sway has received a new update that makes the app more stable, and brings support for two new features that allow you to keep your favorite Sways at your fingertips, as well as making it easier for you to look for photos to use in your presentations:

Picture Zoom — You can now touch your screen to zoom in and navigate through groups of photos on touch-enabled devices.

  • Jump List — Right-click the Sway app in the Windows taskbar to quickly access recent Sways. You can also pin your favorites so they always show up in the Jump List.

As always, there have been plenty of ‘placebo updates’ this week in the form of bug fixes and stability improvements for several apps, including:

New arrivals

Four years have passed since its first release, and Nextgen Reader has now been updated to version 3.0. The app is now part of the UWP family, even though support for Windows 10 Mobile is still in the works. Those of you who use the Windows 8.x app can rest assured that support will not be dropped for that version, but you'll have to pay $3.99 (or $2.99 for a limited time) in order to use the Windows 10 app.

If you're wondering why it's worth paying again for Nextgen Reader on Windows 10, here's what's new and what was improved:

  • Improved scaling and rendering of text.
  • Enhanced Grid View UI (tap the three dots and select grid view).
  • New: Feed management - add, edit, move or delete feeds.
  • New: Search feeds by title, URL or #topic.
  • New: List style with story thumbnails.
  • New: Support full-screen mode (press F11 key or tap the app logo in left corner).
  • Transparent live tiles with unread count up to 9999.
  • Updated context menu's with icons.
  • Enable/disable swiping in reading pane.

In addition to this, the developers are planning to add Continuum support in a future update.

If you've updated to the latest Windows Insider build (14316), you may have noticed that there's now a Skype UWP app installed by default along with the usual Microsoft apps. This app is pretty bare bones at the moment, but Microsoft plans to add enough features to it so that it may eventually become the default Skype experience in Windows 10. Here's the official list of features for this version:

  • Sign in with your Microsoft Account and link a Skype ID
  • Show and change your availability
  • See a list of your existing Skype contacts
  • Initiate a chat with anyone in your contact list
  • See that the other person is typing
  • Logout
  • Make one-to-one voice and video calls and send messages
  • Personalize your experience with emoticons and Mojis
  • Send photos
  • See notifications for incoming calls and messages outside of the app
  • Participate in existing group chats

The new Skype UWP app is only available on PC for now, with Windows 10 Mobile support planned for a future preview build.

Todoist is another new member of the UWP family, with its official release announced a few days ago on the Todoist blog. For those of you who are not familiar with Todoist, it is a popular task manager that can help you organize better, or as the developers put it: "do more, stress less".

The important thing to note about Todoist is that its developers have actually done a proper job of adding unique features to the Windows 10 version:

  • 3rd-panel view allows you to view your comments and task lists at the same time so you always have context for your conversations.
  • Customizable Live Tiles keep you focused and organized with a quick overview of the number of tasks you have left for today and your next upcoming task.
  • Jump List integration lets you pin your most important task views to the Start Menu or Taskbar for easy access throughout the workday.

To show their commitment to the Windows 10 platform, the developers of Todoist have also provided a list of planned features that you can expect in future updates:

  • Todoist Karma – We’ll be adding Todoist’s popular productivity tracker soon, complete with beautiful charts to visualize and improve your productivity week over week.
  • Cortana integration – We plan to integrate even more deeply with all of the unique features Windows 10 has to offer, starting with the ability to dictate your tasks via Cortana.
  • Filters and task history – We’re completely rebuilding the way we handle completed task history and filters to make them consistent across all of Todoist’s platforms. That’s why you won’t see these features in the Windows 10 app quite yet. We’ll add task history and filters to Todoist for Windows 10 the moment they’re ready.

If you want to get a taste of new features before everyone else, you can install the preview version of Todoist, which is updated pretty often. Also, if you're interested in winning a Surface Pro 4 (128GB/4GB) with Todoist, you can find more details on how to participate here (note that the giveaway ends on April 19 12:00 PM PT).

Fresh and promising

A fresh app that caught our eye in the Windows Store this week is PlayCast. Made by the same developers that created TubeCast (a popular third-party YouTube client), this app is well worth a look. It's not the most stable app, and it costs $3.99, but it receives updates pretty regularly, and has a slew of features that should satisfy many people's needs.

As the name suggests, you can use the app to cast pictures, videos, and songs to a variety of devices, such as DLNA Smart TVs, Google's Chromecast and Chromecast Audio, and Apple TV. PlayCast is also a UWP app, and offers support for background casting, so that you can do other things on your phone or tablet while you're streaming.

If you're looking to test it before you decide on a purchase, there is a seven-day trial available, as well as a one-day bonus for each update so that you can follow the development until you consider it worth your money.

Things to come

The Desktop App Converter (a.k.a. Project Centennial) is finally available for developers in preview form, after first being revealed at BUILD 2016. This marks an important milestone for the Windows Store, as this is a tool that Microsoft hopes will convince developers to port their 16 million "classic" Win32 apps to UWP.

A common criticism with the Windows Store has been that it doesn't have any "serious" apps, or anything that is as full-featured as Win32 desktop applications. It's certainly true that many Windows 8.x apps were pretty limited, but Project Centennial can be used to port a desktop app to UWP without sacrificing functionality, and also allows developers to add features that any UWP app can have, such as Cortana integration, Live Tiles, or a XAML user interface – among other things.

If Microsoft can convince developers to port their Win32 apps to UWP, that argument about "no serious apps in the Windows Store" will no longer make sense. Furthermore, the converted Win32 apps will install in one-click, auto-update using Windows Store infrastructure and delta updates, and uninstalling them will not leave anything behind.

Things not to come

Although Reddit has released an official app for Android and iOS this week, there are no plans for a Windows app. This is to be expected given the dire market share of Microsoft's mobile platform, but fortunately there are several great third-party clients available in the Windows Store, such as Readit and Baconit.

We'd like to know: Do you think Project Centennial can make the Windows Store more attractive? What Win32 apps would you like to see converted to UWP? Be sure to let us know in the comments.

This isn't everything that happened in the world of tech this week, so if you're looking for the big picture, our 7 Days feature will paint it for you. There is also plenty of discussion brewing in the forums on a wide range of topics, so head over there and join the buzz.

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