With its brand new operating system right around the corner, Microsoft has been appropriately busy lately promoting and praising many of the new features it has bundled into Windows 8.1.
And one feature that has been in the spotlight very early on is the new Reading List tool.
This has actually been available ever since the Preview version went live, and now the company is once again talking about this helpful new addition, explaining that this provides users with an option to read content that they are interested in at a later time.
Talking about the feature in a new blog post, Microsoft said:
“If you don’t have time to read an article or if you find something interesting you want to read later, you can save the reading for later with just a swipe to the share charm. And it’s not just content from websites. You can bookmark content from your other apps as well. This way, you can have all the content that you care about in one gorgeous app.”
One of the absolute highlights of this tool is the inclusion of the synchronization feature that can be used to bookmark a link on a Windows 8 device, and then read it on a different one — say, a smartphone or a tablet:
“The Reading List is designed for the way you use your device. We believe your Windows device should reflect that right from the first moment you power it on. With a swipe to the share charm, the Reading Lists bookmarks content you care about from the sources you trust – all in one experience.”
As noted above, Reading List is easily accessible via the share charm, meaning that it can be used with Internet Explorer to save links that you want to read later.
This tool comes preinstalled on all Windows 8.1 devices from the word go. The operating system itself is set to be available as a free download for Windows 8 users via the Windows Store, a day before it launches worldwide on October 18.
It isn’t for me, I’m too old to put things off until later. Great for you young people I’ll bet.
If it had offline storage, then I can see myself using it. Until then, it’s a nice luxury to have, I guess, there are a few features that I like, but Microsoft really has to take it to the next level with future updates to the tool. For a version one, it’s quite neat.
From what I understand, it stores the content offline so that you can read later on anywhere you want.