Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

Reading List

Meet one of the brightest spots in the Windows 8.1 upgrade list: Reading List.

If you’re familiar with the Reading List (in Apple’s Safari) or Instapaper (for phones and tablets), you get the idea: You find some article on the Web that you think you might like to read—later—so you capture it. Later, you can call it up to read at your leisure.

The Windows 8.1 Reading List app takes that concept one step ahead and one step back. The good news is that it can capture articles to read later from more than just Internet Explorer; you can find Save to Reading List commands in other apps, too, including TileWorld’s News, Sports, and Finance apps.

The bad news is that this Reading List does not save your material for reading later, when you’re offline (as Instapaper and Safari do). Instead, it just creates glorified bookmarks. You need an Internet connection to read any online articles you’ve flagged.

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OK, then. Suppose you’re in Internet Explorer, News, Sports, Finance, or another app that knows about Reading List. You’ve got a juicy article before you. To save it for later, follow the steps in Figure 4-38.

Figure 4-38. To add an article to Reading List, open the Charms bar and select Share (top). On the Share panel (middle), choose Reading List. Over time, you might be pleasantly surprised to see how many apps add the Reading List option to this panel. Bottom: Before you ...