Photos App in 8.1 loses most of its best features e.g. Facebook/Flickr support...

Question

EDIT: October 18 – This has been edited to reflect the Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 official RTM/GA release.

I've just installed the 8.1 Preview on a desktop. EDIT: 10/17/2013-this is also true for RTM. The Photos App has changed:

1. No longer includes the ability to show images from Facebook, Flickr, SkyDrive

 <10/18/2013deleted missing networked computers issue - for information on how to include content from supported Windows computers on a home network, see http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows8_1-pictures/add-network-folders-and-display-pictures-in-the/bf3252f8-9162-4129-8387-5367e24b5609 - note that many older versions of Windows are not supported and that there is no support for Linux based NAS devices>

2. Does have some new editing features

 3. Live Tile functionality has disappeared.

Edit:6/30

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1_pr-pictures/possible-fix-for-photos-app-live-time-not-showing/e0eb3bb4-3e9c-4016-aa27-4a011ccc94a3 is what a possible solution is to missing Live Tile issues.

Edit: 7/04

Tiles are working, but images change only 1x per day. This needs to be a shorter period.

--

Barb

Windows Entertainment and Connected Home MVP

My Blog - http://digitalmediaphile.com/

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http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/barbs-connected-world-blog/02f35769-52bf-461c-b1d5-06e54a58d298

Please mark as answered if this answers your question

Answer 1

1. No longer includes the ability to show images from Facebook, Flickr, SkyDrive
2. No longer allows images from other computers or the network -  am guessing that because there is now support for SkyDrive on RT and MS is heavily emphasizing that as the preferred storage location

If Skydrive as default location is enabled, then the photo app should show the photos on Skydrive... but mine does not (whether on my laptop or on my Surface). And that's VERY annoying. I'll assume this is a bug for now.

Answer 2

Wow!!!  Why would they remove the Facebook and Sky Drive integration from this app?   That really doesn't make sense.   I updated to the 8.1 preview on my Surface RT and really like the changes, but this is a bummer....    Otherwise, I love the update so far.

Answer 3

I hope they bring back the facebook image/flickr back. I really enjoyed having my images shuffle through my online accounts.

Answer 4

This is enough that I'm minutes away from reverting 2 machines that I was testing 8.1 out on back to 8 and cursing MS the hours they are about to waste me. 

What is the master plan here? How the heck are you supposed to use files not on the local machine with the built in apps? Nonsense.

Answer 5

2. No longer allows images from other computers or the network -  am guessing that because there is now support for SkyDrive on RT and MS is heavily emphasizing that as the preferred storage location (when you upgrade, one of the questions asked before you even get to the desktop is if you want to use SkyDrive as your default storage area - and that seems to be the default - and MS feels the network, NAS, Homegroup, and other computers are deprecated.

 

 

Just to throw it out there but Music and Video also appear to have issues with seeing network content that was all working fine before the preview was installed. Of course if you go through Windows Explorer everything works as expected...