News
Microsoft To Deliver Windows 8/RT App Updates on Tuesday
- By Scott Bekker
- 03/25/2013
Small-bore improvements for Windows 8/RT apps will be arriving this month, as early as Tuesday.
Microsoft indicated in a blog post on Monday that changes will be coming to the Mail, Calendar and People apps. The updated apps will be free for Windows 8/RT users. Users have to download them from the Microsoft Store to get the updated apps.
The Mail app will have an improvement for those who need to find older messages. It adds the ability to search the mail server for old messages. The current archiving approach just provided a two-week local cache of messages to search.
Other changes described by Microsoft for the new apps include:
- Users can flag e-mails and find the items in a new "Flagged" folder.
- Draft e-mails show up automatically at the top of the Inbox.
- It's possible to add, edit and delete hyperlinks when composing messages.
- Editing and deleting bulleted and numbered lists are supposed to be easier.
- Effort has been put into maintaining formatting for content posted into Mail from Word or other sources.
- Solid blocks of colors have been removed to make the Calendar app more readable.
- There's a new "work week" view in the Calendar.
- Appointment scheduling is getting more robust.
- The People app "What's New" feed can be filtered by a social network.
These changes aren't groundbreaking. However, it's good to see Microsoft attempting a faster cadence of improvements to the built-in apps that ship with Windows 8/RT.
If some rumors prove true, a separate wave of updates called "Windows Blue," may arrive this summer. Leaked screenshots are suggesting the sort of changes that Windows Blue might bring, although Microsoft has said nothing about it so far.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.