While Windows Store yet may not be a great place to hunt some really productive apps, it definitely is a breeding place to some really cool apps to kill your time. We had come up with a list of five incredible Metro Twitter clients a while ago. If you are not a big fan of Twitter however, we have got a very promising Reddit app covered for you.
Meet Metro Reddit /r/etro
First off, the home screen of the app lists all the front page and all your subscribed reddits. This is quite well done in panoramic style of navigation to give you a quick glance of top posts in your various subscribed sub reddits.
/r/etro takes full advantage of the Modern UI language. This is especially evident in the two pane interface which is certainly one of the best seen uses in Modern UI apps.
/r/etro takes full advantage of the Modern UI language. This is especially evident in the two pane interface which is certainly one of the best seen uses in Modern UI apps.
Upon opening the posts, you will be greeted by a nice two paned interface which shows the number of up-votes for each post in the left pane along with the topic title and thumbnail. The right pane lets you check out the topic as well as the comments. Now the cool part is if the post links to a web page, it is opened within the app. This definitely saves you time.
The comments section really stands out and deserves particular mention. All the comments and the replies are neatly sorted in threads which many apps typically fail to do well. Clicking on a comment lets you up vote, down vote or reply to a comment.
Host of Small, Likeable Features Which Makes The App Very Appealing
A particularly cool feature which I liked is the fact that /r/etro lets you pin sub reddits to your start screen. This is definitely handy for all reddit fans who want to directly check out a particular sub reddit. If you want to go to any sub reddit which is not listed on the start screen you can just type name of the sub reddit in the app bar to visit it as well. Also the app lets you save your favourites in the sub-reddits, which is quite neat. If you find a post offensive you can hide it as well. Oh and if you press and hold ALT, you are greeted by a host of keyboard shortcuts too, which is going to be a delight for all the hardcore keyboard geeks amongst us.
If you dig the settings section, you will find a couple of gems as well. First of there is Virtual-invisiban mode, which lets you comment and up vote or down vote posts but it wont send Reddit any information about you. Something on the lines of “Do Not Track” for Reddit, which is rarely seen in Reddit apps even on Android. And yeah there is even a switch to make NSFW sub reddits visible if you do not mind adult content on Reddit. Definitely these are not earth shattering features, but the very same features pile up to create an overall fabulous reddit experience and the developers deserve to commended for this.
So can you say it is the “gr8st reddit app eva dood!!!” ..not yet
Well for starters the app is missing a truck load of key features I would expect in a Windows app. The app can not share anything from the app, which is one of the most basic features you would expect. You can share to reddit from other apps though. Also, you can not search for content from within the app, again something which is expected. These are minor issues though, but what concerns me more is the automatic crashing of the app. However, the developer acknowledges the fact that the app is developing rapidly, and perhaps needs time to mature.
Verdict
/r/etro is a solid Reddit app for Windows 8, which actually makes perfect use of the full screen estate to its advantage and delivers a very satisfying Reddit experience. Sure, you can not post to reddit through the app yet and it surely lacks the polish you would expect , but it definitely is in a league of its own and there is a barely any doubt of it being a very popular client for Windows 8 very soon. Must try for Windows 8 user.
Download: /r/etro for Windows 8
