As Microsoft's vision of one Windows comes closer to being a reality, our vision of a website covering all of this overlapping that technology is also nearing completion. One request we have had from a small percentage of users is a filtering system to weed out news not relative to your interests.
Truth is, the overwhelming majority of you do like reading everything from Xbox to Surface to Windows news, reviews and articles. Nevertheless, in our attempt to make everyone happy, we are pleased to be rolling out our front-page news filter today, both for the main website as well as the mobile version.
How it works – Main site
If on a PC or tablet and you are viewing WPCentral through www.wpcentral.com, you should now notice the filter at the top of the page, but below the header. Category choices are
- All News
- Phones
- Surface
- Windows
- Xbox
- MSFT (Microsoft) News
Simply choosing the category refreshes the page with the appropriate filter in place. Choosing All News resets the filter.
How it works – Mobile site
If you are on a smartphone and using m.wpcentral.com, the filter is there as well but due to space considerations with our header, it is selected for a bit differently. Instead, users will want to tap the hamburger button (top right corner, and as seen in the lead photo) and choose their categories this way. Once again, the same filters are available, even on mobile.
What about the app?
As mentioned a few times, we are in the process of writing a universal app for Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1. This app is a complete rewrite, unifying the Phone and Tablet UIs for our app. In addition to having much better performance due to it being a Windows Phone 8.1-only RT app, the new WPCentral app will also handle hyperlinks and other features, including the news filter introduced today.
Due to time and resources (cloning attempts of Jay Bennett have so far failed miserably), it is unlikely we will be backporting this to our existing app. Doing so would likely slow down development of our universal app. We currently do not have an estimate for its release, but we are in the alpha-build stage already.
Finally, regarding the filter choices, this is something we can and may refine as we go forward, depending on how the Microsoft landscape evolves.
As always, you can leave in our dedicated forum for the website found here!
Thanks and we hope you enjoy the latest feature!
