Wikipedia app for Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets

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If you’ve paid any attention to the tech press, you may be aware that Microsoft is releasing Windows 8 — and its ARM-based tablet cousin Windows RT — today.
While Internet Explorer 10 works wonderfully with Wikipedia as a regular web site, we wanted to provide a nicely integrated Wikipedia experience for Windows 8/RT users as well, and are proud to announce that our official Wikipedia app is available for free download in the Windows Store.
Style
Wikipedia on Windows 8/RT uses common components from our Android and iOS apps, but fits in natively with Windows’ new styling. Wikipedia languages that provide RSS feeds of featured content display a tiled menu on the home screen:
hub-english
The article reading view uses a multiple-column layout, which fits the tablet screen better than our current apps do on Android and iPad tablets:
featured-en
This of course flips to scroll the other direction for right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew.
Search
The app integrates with Windows 8’s global search widget, which can be used both to search while in the application and to launch the app — select Wikipedia from the search providers when doing any search and you’ll pop over to us.
On a laptop or desktop device with a keyboard, you can simply start typing to begin a search, just like on Windows’ Start screen.
search-en

Sharing
Like our Android phone application, Windows 8 supports a pluggable “sharing” system. With just a swipe and a tap, you can send a link to the article you’re reading to email, social networks, or note-taking apps to save them for later.
You can also share selected text in other apps to Wikipedia — for instance to do a quick lookup on a subject while you were reading a web page.
Snap
While Windows 8’s style prefers full-screen applications, you can also “snap” an app to the side of the screen. Some apps — even some of Microsoft’s — show a logo in this situation, but Wikipedia flips automatically to a single-column view, much like you’d see on a mobile phone. This is a great way to use Wikipedia as a reference while working on something else.
Semantic Zoom
While you can quickly pan through an article by flicking across the screen, on large articles it’s nice to go straight to a particular section. Pinch-and-zoom out to display a section list, and select one to go back to reading mode.
Source
Like our Android and iOS apps, the Windows 8/RT app is open source, licensed under GPLv2. In fact, it shares common components such as our JavaScript localization library and is built from the same code repository.

If you’re an HTML/JavaScript developer and interested in poking at what Windows 8/RT’s HTML app environment can do, come lend us a hand!
And of course don’t forget to review us in the Windows Store. We read those comments and they help us fix bugs and prioritize new features.
Brion Vibber, Lead Software Architect

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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[…] you still need to know what you’re getting on the tablet. So, let’s summarize just what can Wikipedia on Windows 8 or Windows RT do for […]

Age rating 16+? Really though? Okay, I suppose I can understand that decision. But I don’t like it. Did the WMF try appealing?

I don’t like this new version of windows.

Looks really nice. Specially the search fuctionality is really good. I will now install it on my Surface 🙂

Hello,
there is no Wikipedia app in the german AppStore for Windows 8 RT. Is the app only published in the US Store or will the app also published in the german store?
Thanks a lot and kind regards,
Torben

According to the dashboard I’ve got, the app should be visible in the German store as well, though it may not be marked as being localized in German. Please give it a try and see if you can find it…