Sharing pictures on Facebook, Pinterest. Google+, etc. are regular pastimes, unless you use Windows 8 which limits who can see your favorite posts.
Social media sharing in Windows 8
Windows 8 sharing of pictures or posts is a difficult task, especially when using Windows 8 Apps.
This breaks the rules for social engagement that users find interesting and businesses have adopted as a strategic strategy. There is a suggestion this is part of a new “web intents” function.
Microsoft has changed the rules from using a web page applet like Shareaholic or Discus to their internal operating function – the Charms Bar Share.
In the process Microsoft succeeded in breaking something that had developed into a simple user function – to Like or Tweet posts, pictures and videos we find on the web.
This is how social media sharing looked before Windows 8, click a button and approve.
The result is a broken system that reduces sharing to Twitter and Facebook while ignoring Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and other popular social media sharing sites.
What happened to the simple “click and approve” method of social media sharing?
This is the problem with letting Microsoft control sharing through the operating system since it allows them to approve sites that you can join.
Apple had the same attitude towards sharing when the iPad was released. Over the years, the iPad has gotten better at the one-click share. With Windows 8, most sharing takes two-five keystrokes or swipes.
Sharing in Windows 8 Desktop
Windows 8 Modern embeds the social media sites login name and passwords in the operating system. In Windows 7 or Windows 8 Desktop, this information is stored as a cookie in apps Shareaholic, or on an external site by Discus.
See the related story – How Windows 8 Broke the Facebook Like Button And How to Fix It
Is Windows 8 better? It may be more secure but the process for getting set up is not intuitive or well explained.
Since Desktop apps can’t share data with Windows 8 apps, trying to share from a Desktop browser like IE 10 or Chrome with the Charm Bar Share method will not work. Only Microsoft can explain the logic of that decision.
Web Intents
Richi Jennings, who covers blogs for Computerworld, suggested the Windows Charm Share was part of a new feature called “web intents”.
“It’s the UX for the “Web intents” system. Android does it, WebOS arguably refined it, and iOS has it in a limited form,” he commented on How Windows 8 Broke the Facebook Like Button And How to Fix It.
Web Intents is a new way to share things on the internet without actually coding the share functions. It builds a framework for sharing without coding that mimics a user’s intent to share. Only experimental at this time, web intents is an application program interface (API) in the browser that senses your intent to share, post, subscribe or otherwise interact with a web site semi-automatically. Web intents might remove the need for Like buttons and Tweet icons, just like cut and paste is standard part of the user experience.
Google Chrome implemented web intents in Chrome up to version 23 to gather data for development, then removed it. There is no indication that Microsoft is supporting Web Intents in Windows 8. I still believe they released unfinished code in Windows 8. It will be cool when web intents is both in the standard browsers and implement on web sites. Both site and browser have to support the API.
Windows 8 not popular so price drops
Windows 8 is an unfinished operating system. Adoption by customers is now running slower than the hated Vista operating system. Microsoft responded today by dropping the price for a Windows 8 and Office 2013 bundle for OEM manufacturers to $30, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In the UK, Windows 8 Pro can be purchased for less than half price, a sign of desperation.
Up to $400 off a touch Windows 8 computer when an old one is traded in
Someone, probably Microsoft, is subsidizing the trade in of non touch tablets, notebooks and netbooks at Staples to the maximum of $400.
I admire the marketing effort; however, it shows Windows 8 is failing. There is very little positive buzz about Windows 8 as people find the user interface confusing. Lowering the price won’t help.
Microsoft is rumored to have a 8.5 update in the works for August 2013, code-named Windows Blue, but that is only a rumor.
Considering the avalanche of negative press, Microsoft should consider fessing up to Windows 8 problems and tell consumers when they will get fixed.
Don’t wait for that to happen.
bam!
I don’t think you quite understand the purpose of the Share charm – it simply allows sharing information between any two apps. It’s not really a “social sharing” function, though it can be used for that, as it can also be used for other things, such as sharing text to a note-taking app to add it to your notes, or sharing a link to a “save for later” app to read later, or even sharing a picture to a puzzle game to make a puzzle out of that picture.
Which sharing functions are available and what they do simply depends on the apps you have installed on your system. Any app can implement Share charm capability and then it will appear in the share sidebar, and the app developer can have it do whatever it likes with the information that gets shared to it. So Tumblr, Pinterest etc. can appear as share targets if someone writes Tumblr, Pinterest etc. apps which support that feature, and in fact there are some apps like that in the store already (e.g., Tumbukun or Charming Pinterest). It’s really up to the apps, not the system (even People, though it’s preinstalled by default, is really just another app which can’t do anything other apps can’t do).
Stephen Pate
That’s not what the documentation for Windows 8 says but maybe. In any event, it does not work. Otherwise the browsing experience is fairly decent.