Algolia Search is now in Beta for Microsoft Windows 8 Desktops and Tablets – The Algolia Blog

You may have been expecting Windows Phone 8 as our next platform of choice, but we preferred to go Windows 8 first! With more than 40M sold in a month, let’s say it’s a slightly more interesting market for now.

Windows 8: Our First Move to the Desktop

Yes, desktop apps are not as dead as many people think, especially now that both Mac OSX and Windows come with their app stores. Sure, Windows is now running on tablets – and we also support them – but it will take time before they surpass desktops.

What’s more, the new Windows 8 Metro Modern UI includes a charm bar with search and autocompletion as the number one feature. Microsoft actually provides an interface to ease application integration in the charm search bar… but no library to help you implement it. No problem, here comes Algolia Search for Windows 8!

Awesome Features for Your Apps

The core technology is exactly the same as the one in our iOS and Android versions. That means you’ll get exactly the same exceptional performance… well probably even better depending of the hardware you’re running on. You’ll also get instant visual feedback, typo-tolerance and multiple attributes support! See all the features on our website.

Easy to Integrate in your Language of Choice

Check out the dedicated tutorials! The Algolia Search library has been designed to work directly on the platform. That means you can use it in whatever language you prefer, be it JS or one of the .Net choices (C#, VB, C++). The tutorials are available in both JS and in C#.

Moreover it is fully compatible with Microsoft Search Contracts. It just became child’s play to integrate Search in your Windows app!

Hey Microsoft, There are a Couple of Features You Could Improve

Windows 8 is clearly a step in the right direction, but we encountered some problems we didn’t expect!

First is the multi-arch support. While it’s just straightforward with iOS or Android (out of the JNI part…), using a native lib forces the developer to chose an architecture on Windows! Fortunately, Visual Studio Package Generator handles that correctly and proposes you to select all architectures for your final export. But well… we’d have preferred it plain and simple.

Our second deception is a bit more problematic as it prevents one of our very nice features: typo-tolerant highlighting during autocompletion. It starts with best of intentions from Microsoft. To remove the burden of implementing highlight for autocompletion on developers, Windows 8 handles it directly. The only problem is that it cannot be replaced by our own 🙁 So you can obtain hits even if your query contains typos, but hits containing text different from the query won’t be highlighted.

We hope to be able to change this behaviour in the future. In the meantime, we’re impatient to get your feedback on this beta! Register for your Windows 8 version of Algolia Search now!