There’s a new search box in the interface - this will disappoint purists who believe no Modern app should have an integrated search bar, but will help average users understand how to search for apps. It shows a list of recommended apps for you, popular apps, new releases, and the top paid and free apps, so it feels much more dynamic. The Windows Store is no longer a static list of categories. The Windows Store included with Windows 8 has a fairly terrible interface, and Microsoft has redesigned it for Windows 8.1. This sounds like a basic feature - and it is - but it was conspicuously absent from Windows 8. This means you can have two different Internet Explorer 11 sessions at once, snapping them so you can see two web pages side-by-side. Windows 8 limited you to a single copy of an app at once, while Windows 8.1 allows you to have multiple copies running. But, compared to the iPad’s nonexistent support for multiple apps on screen at once and Android only supporting special, rare floating apps for multitasking, Windows 8.1 offers a much more powerful tablet interface than its competitors. Sure, that isn’t particularly impressive when you compare it to what you can do on the desktop. With a large enough screen resolution, you can now snap up to four apps side-by-side. Every snapped app has a width of 500 pixels.

You can now snap apps in 50/50 view, using two apps’ full interfaces at once, completely side-by-side. Windows 8.1 makes the snap feature much more flexible. The app featured a slimmed down interface, so it was only really useful for chatting or looking at weather in a sidebar while you did something else. You could snap apps in 70/30 view, so one app could only take up 30% of your screen, no matter how large that screen was.

In Windows 8, the Snap feature was a toy.

Accessories on windows 8