The web version of Google's Play Store has received a much needed upgrade in terms of both its look and functionality. This morning, when I was fumbling around on Google and ended up on Play Store, this sweet surprise welcomed me. The new look of the Play Store will surely be appreciated by many Android fans, as the new update makes browsing through the various aspects of any app easier.
Here are the few changes that I noticed there:
Here are the few changes that I noticed there:
- Roboto font rules over the entire Play Store. Roboto is the same font family that is used in many other places including the later versions of Android.
- The screenshots as well as the reviews fill up the screen when you click on the Arrow button to see more of them.
- The new Play Store design uses Asynchronous Javascript and XML (aka AJAX) which makes it possible to reload only those parts of the page that have changed, thus speeding the entire process.
- All the tabs like What's New, Description, Permissions etc. are now merged up. Description and What's New section appear on the same page while to view the permissions required you have to hit the Install button once, which will provide you with the option to select which device you want to install the app to and a list of all permissions sorted under some relevant groups.
- This update mainly focuses on looks as of now. Many filtering options that used to be present in comments section and when you searched for an application are now gone.
- When you search for an app, you will get only 48 results. There is no option to view more results- no more results loading screen, no next page option, nothing. This seems weird and confirms our belief that this update isn't final and though the look will be the same in near future, Google will have to bring some features back.
- The previous maximum number of downloads Play Store used to show was 100,000,000+ i.e. above 100 million downloads. All apps with more than that number of downloads were present in the same bracket. Apparently, there doesn't seem to be any upper limit with apps like Facebook showing 100,000,000-500,000,000 downloads. The only app that I could find in the above 500 million and below 1 billion category is the Gmail app.
- The My Apps option now brings all the apps you have ever installed on all your Android devices you have ever linked to your Google account. While we love to see what all apps we have installed till date, these should be sortable by devices and whether we currently have them installed on any deice or not. Otherwise, I hardly see any use of this list except for the fact that you can count how many apps you have ever installed on your device.
For those of you who are feeling too lazy to hit the Play Store or aren't currently on your desktop, enjoy the screenshots below.
