Ok people help me out here. I saw this  news this morning shared by my buddy at WinObs.com. See, I have been in debate with my eldest son who has decided to go the Android route because all his friends were sporting Galaxy S4, and has become bewitched by the gimmicks in S4. So he migrated from Windows Phone to Android leading to me blocking him from my private network and putting him and his S4 on the Guest Network node at my home. So I wanted to use this post as an argument to justify my need to kick him off my Private Network where he will now be missing access to our extensive Media Library. I just don’t want Trojans running rampant on my Enterprise Class private network. Yes, I have Microsoft’s ISA Server (or TMG as its now known) managing my network at home. I am a professional, I work from home mostly. Can’t afford to infect my Company network via my home network.

So there I was attempting to share this story, then I noticed that Share Option at the top. I swear, I am an avid over-sharer, I live in the Share Charm, I haven’t seen that option to directly share a Screenshot of a page before today! Yes, I know if focus is on a docked App, and you want to share, Windows 8.1 automatically takes a Snapshot of the docked screen. I was aware of that right from day one, but sharing a screenshot of the main screen is new. Is this a new addition? Maybe via an update to IE11? Or have I been blind all this time on Windows 8.1 Preview? That’ll be a shame as I thought I knew every nooks and crannies of Windows 8.1 Preview by now.

So, I thought maybe this is only an IE thing, so I fired up other programs to see how they share, see for yourselves:

I am currently investigating that “Link to App in the Store” option to see exactly what it does. That is a story for another day. I am just surprised at this discovery. Is this a thing in 8.1 Preview from day one or is this recent? If MS just sneaked this in, is this in preparation for the GA on October 18th? Anyway you look at this, MS is just blazing the way on the future of the Metro UX. This is a welcomed addition. Now if only you are allowed to crop those screenshot before being shared. Hope they’ll add this sometime in the future.

Anyone also noticed this? Try this out yourselves, let me know what you think.

Peace, out!