Earlier today we were sharing with you the links to the full documentation in Windows 8.1 regarding the new UX and UI guidelines. Now, it is time to see which features have been updated and which are new. Most of the changes are made so that developers can have a swifter app submission process and also to meet the requirements of the new operating system. So, here are nine new and updated features: SPONSORED

Resizable windows

Tile updates

Search updates

Share updates

Charms work on every screen

Integrate with people and events

Speech synthesis

Alarm app support on the lock screen

Updates to work-item scheduling

What do you think as a developer, are these changes good or bad? Note The snapped view in Windows 8 had a width of 320 pixels. The default minimum width of 500 pixels is larger than the Windows 8 snapped view. If your app works well at smaller sizes and you want to encourage users to keep your app on the screen, you can change the minimum width to 320 pixels. Users can have more than two apps on the screen at the same time. So your app might appear between two other apps and not adjacent to either the left or right edge of the screen. A single app can open more than one window at the same time. An app can launch another app. When this happens, the two apps typically split the screen evenly if there’s enough space. But you can change this so that the launched app is wider or narrower than the original app, or so that it even replaces the original app on the screen. To change the default behavior, use the DesiredRemainingView property. In Windows 8.1, the app search experience is controlled completely by your apps. The search box integrates with the Search contract to power the experience and enable deep customization, so your apps offer experiences that are crafted to user needs. The search box supports app-supplied search suggestions and results, app-specific search history, and full support for touch, keyboard, and mouse interactions. Design your app so that it works with the charms regardless of the size of the app. In particular, the width of the Settings flyout must be less than or equal to the current width of your app. Windows 8.1 includes a number of speech-synthesis engines, known as voices. Each voice has a friendly name, such as Microsoft David (en-US, male), Microsoft Zira (en-US, female), and Microsoft Hazel (en-UK, female), that can be specified in your app and also selected from the Language control panel by a user. The speech-synthesis capabilities supported by Windows 8.1 enable: Setting the speech synthesizer to a specific gender, voice, and language. Generating speech output from a plain text string using the default characteristics and properties of the current voice. Generating speech output from a string containing Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) to customize voice characteristics, pronunciation, volume, pitch, rate or speed, emphasis, and so on. Reading and writing audio data generated by the speech-synthesis engine to and from a random-access stream. SendMessage (Highest priority) CoreDispatcherPriority.High CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal (Includes window messages and Component Object Model (COM) calls) Any device-input messages CoreDispatcherPriority.Low CoreDispatcherPriority.Idle (Lowest priority, used for background tasks)

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