Cover uses thumbnails to show as tiles in its library views, as well as subtle backgrounds with a black overlay behind these tiles, to make your library as beautiful as possible. Today I'll explain how that works and how you can customize Cover's behavior.

By default, once you add comic books to your library, Cover will start generating thumbnails. For most comic book formats, generating a thumbnail implies opening the whole file, and decompressing part of it to extract the first page. So to avoid being a resource hog, it will only generate necessary thumbnails (which are: Only the books currently shown, or the first book of each shelf currently shown).

There's one big limitation: Cover can't display thumbnails for cloud storage files, unless it downloads the complete file first. That would be very long and consume a lot of bandwidth, so as a design choice, Cover won't try to generate thumbnails if the files are stored in the cloud. There is a solution - keep reading :)

The first book in each shelf will be used as the thumbnail for this shelf. However, a random book will be used automatically as the background for the shelf.

Customizing the thumbnail and background

You can change this behavior! Just right click on any item, then click "Set as background". That will indicate Cover to use this book as thumbnail and background.

If you want to rollback on this, just click on the "..." and select "Unset background". That will revert to Cover automatic behavior explained above.

The folder.jpg trick

If you'd rather have another image used as thumbnail, Cover now supports the folder.jpg trick. Just like Windows does (or used to do as it seems deprecated in W11), just drop a file named folder.jpg (or folder.jpeg, case-insensitive) in a folder and Cover will automatically use that as thumbnail. It will still pick and show a random book as background though.

Good news is, it will work with cloud storage as well! You can finally have thumbnails with your cloud storage libraries.

Please note, folder.jpg won't be used if you specified a custom item to use as background as described above. It will only be used when the shelf background is set to automatic.

Re-generate a thumbnail

If you start messing with the thumbnails (for example you update the first page of a book, or you edit the folder.jpg file directly), you'll need to tell Cover that a thumbnail has changed because for performance reasons, it will not check this everytime for every item, when you display the library.

This is pretty easy: Select the items you want to update, and click "Regenerate thumbnails".

Last June, during our app improvement journey, we added a red menu bar. That was the first step of the UWP redesign. Indeed, when Jérôme asked me to improve the design and add the store button (only for French users) I was naturally led to the future of Windows: UWP. I worked since then to adapt Cover for UWP.

On all platforms, we always want to follow the design language guidelines and add a little bit of us...

" Rules were meant to be broken

I tried it here too!

With Windows 10 and UWP, Microsoft kept their flat modern UI design and introduced a lot of novelty. We read design guidelines and studied all latest apps from Microsoft and best developers' apps to identify what matters, which are the good solutions and what's less interesting. We want to be part of the 10 best apps on Windows 10.

On Windows side it's difficult because Microsoft is not always consistent. One example is the hamburger menu... It's difficult to find two apps from Microsoft using the same menu bar and menu button:

Depending on the team who implements the hamburger menu it's always different, even if it's two teams from Microsoft. It's always flat and modern UI but often with different sizes, positions and behaviors.

So, we tried to choose the best and leave the rest.

For example, Weather app for the hamburger menu (same team as News, or sports apps), Poki app for pop-up and especially in-app pop-up, Windows for the Cortana search bar and Groove for the reading state...

I would like to describe three big changes of Windows and our interpretation:

From horizontal to vertical scroll

In Windows 10, Microsoft made another big change, they went from horizontal scrolling to vertical scrolling. Horizontal scrolling was not a bad thing for us, especially for the Currently Reading part. Because all comics covers are portraits it's easier to make a highlighted slice in the UI in horizontal scroll than in vertical scroll.

So, for the currently reading we were blocked if we wanted to keep the visual weight of currently reading with a beautiful grid.

We decided to extract currently reading from the library screen and make a special section for it (as now we got a big menu ;-))

Scaling party!

In Windows 8.1 the set of supported scale factors was different for different kinds of content. Classic desktop applications scaled to 100%, 125%, 150%, 200% and 250%; Store apps scaled to 100%, 140% and 180%. As a result, when running different apps side by side in productivity scenarios, content could have inconsistent sizes in different apps. In addition, on very dense displays, the scaling systems "capped out" at different points, making some apps too small on them.

This chart shows the complexity and limits of the 8.1 scaling systems:

For Windows 10, they unified all scaling to a single set of scale factors for both UWP and classic applications on both the Desktop and Mobile:

In Windows 8.1 all scaling topped out at 180% or 250%. For Windows 10 they knew that devices like 13.3" 4K laptops and 5.2" and 5.7" QHD phones would require even higher scale factors. And thanks to the new unified scaling model of Windows 10 which goes up to 450%, we will also have to support future displays like 4K 6" phones and 23" 8K desktop monitors.

Ok, cool! But as a designer involved in making the best quality app for Windows, is it really mandatory to produce all images in 11 different size now? As I'm not suicidal, I had to find a better solution.

We knew the solution will be on the vector side, but from the beginning of XAML, Jérôme and I retry every 6 months to find a good way to include vectors images directly in the code and that was never perfect.

Big news! It's a little bit far-fetched and not perfect like specifics png for every scaling, but it works!

I design on photoshop (inspired by this article) at scale 100 (1366 pts x 768 pts for desktop and 360 pts x 480 pts for mobile), then I export pixels perfect svg, finally I open all of them in illustrator with a little script which export to xaml (thanks to this plugin).

In terms of design it's nearly perfect. Perfect at scales 100, 200, 300, 400 (because they are all multiples of 100); OK at scales 450, 350, 250, 225 (because high dpi screens are nicer for non pixel perfect icons) and not bad at 175, 150 or 125 (125 is really the worst because we can see that it's not pixel perfect, but screens with these densities tend to disappear).

In terms of size it's a big victory! We had 5,8MB of png and now all xaml icons take just 55KB of disk space.

Hamburger menu

It seems pretty clear for us that Microsoft push this type of navigation, they use it in all their apps, we weren't fan of this (https://deep.design/the-hamburger-menu/) but we decided to implement it because on desktop we can keep all icons of the menu visible, because it is used all over in Windows (so users should know it), because it's recommended in Microsoft guidelines and because we want an evolutive menu (I had to add a button for settings, store, etc.).

With this navigation, we choose to animate the panel over the content and over the title bar, it's a mix between Groove and Weather apps.

We also choose 320 pts width size and full screen on phone.

There is a lot more to say, next time I could write about continuum design exploration, the full screen in all different modes, or fonts guidelines...

You can download the app on the Windows Store if it's not already done.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more tips and tricks about Cover.

Good reading!

We are really excited to announce Cover 3.

Cover now fully embraces Windows 10. We've rethought the UI from the ground up to provide you the best possible reading experience on all your Windows 10 devices (Desktop/Tablet and Phone).

We've kept all the features that made Cover so great for all of you. You won't feel lost when using this new version. We've used the Universal Windows Platform design language to better reorganize options, and the way you can access them.

Thanks to the new development platform, your experience should be the same on all your Windows 10 devices and it should allow us to give you the same features on all the platform at the same time.

Here is a quick reminder of some of the features available:

• Management in shelves

• Add folders or open standalone files

• Access OneDrive or Dropbox file (and keep them synced)

• Large file type support: CBZ/ZIP, CBR/RAR, 7Z/CBZ, EPUB, PDF, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, WEBP

• Reading status synchronization between devices (For paid users)

Cover 3 is a free upgrade for existing users, so if you've already purchased Cover and upgrade to the new version, you won't have to pay a dime.

You just have to get the update on the Windows Store.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more tips and tricks about Cover.

Good reading!

Perhaps the most important feature of a good, popular comic book reader, is the ability to open all kinds of comic book types. When you have to switch between apps because a file is not compatible, often means you just uninstall these apps.

Cover supports the most widely used formats: CBR, CBZ, CBT, CB7, PDF, EPUB, and image folder; today i'd like to elaborate on what are each format and what tools we use to open and read them. Maybe some of you don't already know all of this!

First, you have to know that all of these formats are just containers for a collection of images.

There are three main image formats used in digital comic books:

• JPEG: The industry standard, used in an overwhelming majority of comic books. Lossy compression with good quality and small file size.

• PNG: Very uncommon in comic books. Lossless compression but file size is bigger especially in high resolutions or high number of colors (so, not so good for a comic book page).

• WEBP: A pretty recent format with a new algorithm from Google that outputs a file 30% to 70% smaller, for roughly the same visual quality.

These images are stored in a folder or in a single file:

• Folder: This is just a folder like you'd see in Windows Explorer. It's the fastest to open and read, but it's less convenient and slower to transfer because of the potentially large number of files that it contains.

• CBZ: Stands for Comic Book Zip, it means all the images have been compressed in an archive using the ZIP compression algorithm. JPEG being already compressed, another compression offers virtually no improvement on file size but it's used to package all images in a single file.

• CBR/CBT/CB7: The same as CBZ, except the compression algorithm is different, it can be RAR, TAR (doesn't compress, just stores) or 7-ZIP. Each have their strengths and weaknesses that can influence heavily on performance or memory consumption when opening files. Thankfully in Cover we didn't have to implement extractors for all these file formats, we just used a great library: SharpCompress.

• PDF: This well-known format embeds inside itself all the images it references. So if you look closely in the file bytes, you can find the bytes of each image it contains. PDF is a very powerful document renderer (the specification is several thousands pages), but for comic book readers we just need to render images, so the basic tools provided by Windows are sufficient for Cover to display them properly.

• EPUB: Initially designed to represent textual e-books, it can handle images as well. It is free and open-source and it's basically a zip containing structured information on how to display a book. Formatting is HTML that can reference resource images. In Cover, since we only wanted to handle images in epub files (we don't have controls to change font size, line height,..), we just implemented our own basic reader that extracts the images and considers each image is a page.

I hope you'll have learned something by reading this. Feel free to open your comic book archives using a tool such as 7-ZIP to check out how they work or extract some pages to make a nice desktop background. You can also create your own comic books very easily.

Finally, if you'd like to free up some serious space on your device, you should consider recompressing part of your comic books to WEBP. Don't worry, Cover will still be able to open them ;)

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more tips and tricks about Cover.

Good reading!

It took us much more time than expected.

We're excited to announce Steed 1.2. A big update to our File Transfer client.

Most of our work on this version was making sure it worked well on High DPI display. At 200% the user interface is now more beautiful than ever. We also spent a lot of time ensuring it worked smoothly with multiple monitors having different DPI settings.

We've also improve the breadcrumb navigation, you can know click in it to unveil a text field, so you can type in the desired path, and it even autocomplete what your are typing, and the best part, is that it also work on FTP, SFTP, Azure and S3.

When we first released Steed, we were really fond of our "Tiles" to list your different connections, but we know that with a lots of entries it can get hard to use, so, from now on you can also switch to list mode to display your connections.

Moreover, you now have the ability to browse your local network and use computers on your network to transfer files. So you can for example easily access your NAS from within Steed and download file to it.

We really want more and more user to enjoy using Steed, and the best way to do that, is to support their language, that's why Steed is now localized into German! Thank you Matthias Baldi for your great work.

Last but not least, Steed now supports OS notifications (from Windows 8 and up), so you can leave it running in the background and get an notification when your transfers are done, pretty great, isn't it?

As usual, with any updates, we took care of fixing bugs and crashes

You can get the update from within Steed, via the in-app updater, or you can download it from our website.

For almost a year, Cover has been supporting reading comic books from OneDrive or Dropbox. If you're new to the app or if you still haven't looked into this feature, here's some explanation. I'll take OneDrive for reference, but the very same applies to Dropbox as well.

Begin by adding a OneDrive folder to the app:

If it's the first time you do this, you'll be asked to authorize access to your OneDrive (for Dropbox, the same thing happens except you're redirected to your browser then back to the app once validated):

You're then redirected to a picker showing you the files and folders of your OneDrive. Select the root folder that contains your comic books (if there are more than one, repeat these steps), and tap OK.

After a brief loading, Cover shows you your comic books, except they are grayed out and there is a cloud icon on top of it. They also don't have a thumbnail, because to be able to display a thumbnail, we would have to download the comic books, and that would defeat the purpose of cloud storage wouldn't it ?

To be able to read these comics, you have to download them. To do that, just tap on them, or select them and tap the "Available offline" button in the appbar. The number on top of the comic book indicates the download progress percent. Once completed, the thumbnail will be generated and you'll be able to open the book.

Now if you want to remove the local copy of your comic books to free up space, just select those and tap the "Online only" button. The book will be removed locally, but will of course remain on OneDrive, and the thumbnail is also kept for a classier library.
If you're downloading a lot of files, the "Downloads" screen will help you keep track.

These features work exactly the same on OneDrive and Dropbox, and on Windows desktop as well as phone. Let us know if the feature fits the way you use the app!

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more tips and tricks about Cover.

Good reading!

Cover 2.6 is out and it integrates a feature that has been asked about a million times: Syncing Cover so you can read seamlessly across your devices. Let me explain how it works.

First, go to the app settings and enable it. Right now, the feature is in Beta and it is only available for paid users (either 250 or unlimited):

From now on, when you suspend the app, the status of your books (read, unread, page number) will be transfered to your Windows account using Roaming settings. Windows sync that automatically when you lock the screen. When you log in to another device, Cover will read from this Roaming data and apply the statuses to its local library. We try to identify the same files even if the paths are not the same, because it's likely you'll have a different copy of the files on two or more devices.

Although our testings were satisfying, we're trying to know if this is enough to provide a good experience. That's why the feature is only in beta, we hope you'll give us some feedback about it. There are quite severe limitations to the feature, due to how Roaming works:

• The Roaming data is limited to 100KB per app, so we can only store statuses for so many books (around 1500), after that we keep only the most recent ones;

• You have to suspend the app to push the status to the Roaming, and you have to resume the app to read from the Roaming. Most likely, you'll use it such as: Read on your phone during the day, go home and read from your tablet at night;

• The sync is not instantaneous or realtime. Windows will sync the Roaming data for all apps when you lock/unlock your device, or from time to time. So don't expect to have Cover opened on both devices and see your changes reflect "socket-style", it won't work. Also, Windows might prevent temporarly the sync if it thinks you're "excessing" the Roaming usage. So if you suspend the app several times in a row, some statuses might not be synced (they will be synced the next time though, after Windows has removed its "lock").

If it seems like that the statuses don't sync, before contacting us, check the following:
- You have a proper internet access on both devices;
- You're logged in using the same Microsoft account on both devices;
- The sync setting is enable in both devices;
- The files on both devices are the same (not path, but name and size);
- Wait a few minutes to be sure Roaming is not temporarly prevented;
- ensure device A is locked, read on device B, lock device B, unlock device A, check that statuses are synced.

Let us know how that works for you, and if we should improve it. We have several ideas but we're really looking forward to reading from you first!

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more tips and tricks about Cover.

Good reading!

Kids love smartphones—but what if your child accidentally erases your phone or emails everyone in your address book while playing? Even more important, what if you lose your comic books library in the process? No such worries with Kid's Corner, a place on your phone where your child can play with the games, apps, music, and videos you add there, but can't get to the rest of your stuff. Namely, your digital comic book collections.

Since the early versions of the system, Kid's Corner has been a unique and exclusive feature of Windows Phone. At last, Cover is now kids friendly. Here is how the parental control works.

First, you have to enable Kid's Corner on your device if not already done. You can find the full procedure here, but here are the main few steps:
- In the Settings, go to Kid's Corner, then tap next;
- Allow Cover to the list of apps;
- You can set a password to prevent your kids to access your "session";
- Tap finish to accept the settings.

The way it works, is that kids now have a special "session" on the phone that you can access from the lock screen, by swiping left. Your session is the same it used to be, however by accessing the Kid's Corner session, you'll only be able to start the apps/videos/music/... you selected.

Now that you have allowed Cover to the Kid's Corner, you'll want to choose which comic books they have access to. This is a "opt-in" process so your kids never have access to anything you don't want them to. Right now, if you start Cover in the Kid's Corner, it will be completely empty.

Open your session, start Cover, then select the comic books and click "show in Kid's Corner":

Now if you go to the Kid's Corner session and start Cover, you'll be able to see the comic books you authorized, and only them:

There are some other stuff that are hidden in the app when it is started in Kid's Corner session:
- Kids can't add or remove content from the app or browse through your phone, SD card or cloud folders.
- Kids can't access the in-app purchases.

We hope this will encourage you to have your kids read comic books! They are a great educative medium and encourage children imagination. It's our first implementation of the feature, so if you think it can be improved, please let us know!

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more tips and tricks about Cover.

Good reading!

Cover 2.5 adds two features and fixes a few issues:

First, we are now implementing the Kid's Corner feature of Windows Phone. More on that in the next blog post, but to sum it up, you can specify which books are available in Kid's Corner.

There is now a nice "circly" progress bar in the bottom left corner of the reader, so that you know where you are without having to pop the controls out.

The smart rename feature has been improved further, to show you only the relevant parts of your comic book names. Reading performance has been improved, and we now smooth pages in when they are loaded. Finally, not that you necessarly care about it, but we removed all Windows 8.0 related stuff (since we dropped support at Win10 release) to reduce the package size.

It's available now on the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store as a universal app.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more news and info about Cover.

Good reading!

Cover encourages you to read a lot, and you might be coming to a point where you have many comic books. Since you (probably) don't want to clutter your tablet or laptop with all that, you might want to host all of your files on a network share or a NAS, and read remotely from it on all your devices. Guess what? Cover can help you do just that!

First, move and organize all your comic books somewhere on your local network, using Windows Explorer. Once everything is properly organized, start Cover, and add a network folder to the library:

From now on, Cover is "linked" to your network folder. It won't copy the comic book files on your device, you'll be streaming them directly from your remote PC. Of course, this means the storage must be available for you to read. We have a tiny visual helper in Cover to help you know wether the folder is available or not: If it's not, the comic book thumbnails will be "grayed out":

And the "manage library" screen will mention it:

In that case, you can't read anything. That's a pretty big issue. Cover has a solution for that too. Before you leave your house, mark the comic book and folders you want to read as "available offline". After a few seconds, they will be copied on the internal storage of your laptop or tablet, so you can read them on the go.

There is even a Smartview to help you see what you can read offline!

Don't forget to mark them as "Online only" once you're finished, so you free up some storage.

As an optimization, if you don't need the library to refresh very often or you prefer to do it manually (using the bottom app bar button on the main view), remember that you can disable the library "auto refresh" in the settings to improve app performance. This is especially important when your books are on the network.

One important thing to note is that when you're streaming comic books from network (as opposed to internal storage), refreshing the library will be slower, as well as generating thumbnails or opening comic books. If you have a fast network you might not even notice the difference, but over a slow Wifi, prepare yourself for a little more patience. Happily, you can still read a comic book while thumbnails are generating :)

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more tips and tricks about Cover.

Good reading!

We’re getting a lot of feedback lately from users that don’t like how Cover displays books as a flat folder, instead of a hierarchy of shelves and books. So let’s pretend you have these comic books and you want to have them all in Cover:

So you begin to add the folders the usual way:

And you add your folders until all of them are present in the app. So your "manage content" screen looks like this:

Wow, that was boring. Now let’s get to the pleasant part. Having all of these display nicely in folders, each having thumbnails and a proper background, and beginning to read them. This is how Cover main screen will look like:

Not so great, uh? But guess what?

Instead of adding all your comic books folders separately, you should have added the root "Comic Books" folder. So when you "add a folder" and Cover presents you with its folder picker, be sure to be in the root folder, and not a subfolder, and click "select folder". This is from Windows 10 "PC mode", but the same stands for a tablet or phone on Win8.1:

Not only is it faster, you’ll get all the Cover goodness from now on:

Now you have it right.

Remember, Cover works in a very simple way: It will map your filesystem folders and files structure. So if you want to reorganize how Cover displays your comic books, just use Windows Explorer to arrange your files, then switch back to Cover and it will sync automatically.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more tips and tricks about Cover.

Good reading!

When we started developing Cover, our main objective was to improve the comics reading experience on Windows tablet and phone. Since then we received a lot of positive feedbacks from all over the world, which is really rewarding.

Another one of our objectives was to provide a way for our user to discover and get new comics from within Cover. Here is our first try.

This new release of Cover comes with the first version of our Store. We made a partnership with BDZMag in order to provide Creative Common comics to our users. Since all comics provided by our partner are in French, we decided to make this first version of the Store only available to our French users, as a test.

This is just the first step, we really want to expand it, and make it available in more countries. It is, for now, only available for the Windows Store, a Windows Phone version is in the work. So do not hesitate to follow us, like us, or subscribe to our newsletter if you want updates.

As usual we made also a lot of bug fixes and improvements to the core application.

Utilisateurs français de Cover, vous allez pouvoir tester en avant-première notre boutique. Celle-ci contient une sélection de bandes dessinées en Creative Commons, mises en avant par BDZMag dans le cadre de l'opération Pirate ta BD !. N'hésitez pas à nous faire des retours !

Si vous êtes un auteur et souhaitez promouvoir votre bande dessinée, contactez nous.

Et surtout bonne lecture !

Last December we made Cover a universal app by releasing the Windows Phone version. Since then we’ve worked hard to add the much requested support of OneDrive and Dropbox into Cover.

With this new version you will be able to add folder from OneDrive or Dropbox and see your comics right into the app. We've made it easy for you to make comics available for offline reading. Just tap on one of them and it will be downloaded into the app so you can read them on the go.

We've also added support for Network file. If your comics are stored on your main computer or NAS, you will be able to download them into the app to read them later or while your are not near your server.

As usual we've also made lots of fixes in the app, which makes it more stable than ever. We hope you'll enjoy it as much as we do!

We are finally releasing it. Steed 1.1 is now available from our website or from the in app updater.

Steed 1.1 contains a bunch of new features and bug fixes. We've fixed some long existing crashes, we've also fixed a major issue with Amazon S3 when downloaded data could become corrupted.

The new major feature in 1.1 is the ability to "Open with" a file from the server. Meaning, you will be able to choose which app you want to use to edit the file, it will be downloaded by Steed, and uploaded to the server upon each save.

Take a look at this Vine we made to see it in action.

We've tested this feature with many applications, but obviously not all, so feel free to report us any issue with apps you use.

Unfortunately this feature is not available on Windows XP and Vista, you will need Windows 7 and higher to make use of it.

For those of you who might wonder what is happening with Steed, be reassured, we still have plan for it. The next update should focus on UI refinements including support for HiDPI screen.

As usual, you can get the update from within Steed, via the in-app updater, or you can download it from our website.

Also, we would like to remind you that this is the last version of Steed running on Windows XP and Vista.

Yes, yes, and yes.

This is it. After months of work, a great beta period, we are finally releasing the Windows Phone version of Cover.

We've put a lot of thinking, efforts and work in this version, to bring the best of the Windows 8 app to Windows Phone, and make it the best comics reading experience on your phone.

Like on Windows, you will find a Manga mode, 3 fitting mode (width, height and page), ability to pin comics to the start screen, an automatic page border detection, support for CBR/CBZ/EPUB and even support for PDF on phones (feature still experimental, since there is no official support from the OS).

We've also added new features for Windows Phone first. Like obviously, support for transparent tiles or Smart Naming, if all your comics in a folder starts with the same part, we hide it, so you just see the relevant parts.

You can get Cover for free on the Windows Phone Store, with in app purchases to unlock the full library. As a universal app, if you already unlocked Cover on your Windows 8 devices, the library will also be unlocked on your phone.

Thank you for your involvement with Cover localization! Today we are glad to announce that Cover is available in 3 new languages, Japanese (thanks to TAKASIMA Tadataka), Dutch (thanks to Tom Mertens) and Serbian (thanks to Саша Петровић).

We have more localization coming for Cover, if you'd like to help us, do not hesitate and contact us via Twitter, Facebook or email.

This new version also contains some improvements when reading PDF, and it remembers your position in folders while navigating in the library.

With Cover our goal was to make the best Windows 8 comics reader, there is still a lot to do, but, I think we are on the right path.

One of our most requested feature is now available in Cover on the Windows Store.

We have added a new reading mode, Two pages, first page is Cover .

This will greatly improve your reading experience, allowing double pages to always be displayed on the same screen.

We are also proud to announce that Cover is now available in 2 new languages, Spanish and Russian thanks to @dza20 and Gregory Demotchkine. If you want to help translate Cover in your language, contact us.

We also made lots of improvements to the app including better snapped views, better rendering of PDF files.

Cover is the best comics reader available on Windows 8, and we’d like to keep it that way, so if you have ideas or feedback, do not hesitate to contact us on Twitter, Facebook or by email!

Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014. It has been 12 years since Microsoft first released Windows XP, and we’ve seen the release of 4 new major version since then.

As of today, Windows XP is still a major OS, with more than 27% of the Operating System market share, therefore dropping support for it is a big decision.

Steed will follow this trend, and drop Windows XP and Vista. Therefore, the next version (1.1) will contain new features that will only works on Windows 7 and above. However, there is a number of fixes that we wanted all of our users to get. So this version will be the last one available for Windows XP and Vista.

Any further update of Steed will be available for Windows 7 and higher.

We’ve been actively working on the next update to Cover, and today we are proud announce that Cover with Smart Views is available on the Windows Store. You will now be able to filter your comics by unread, currently reading or recently read.

An other requested feature made it to this update. Your comics are now sorted by title instead of being sorted by last added. And we though about those of you who liked it that way, you can use the Smart Views to see which comics have been recently added.

We would like again to thank you for the amazing feedback and support. We have more ideas and features planned for Cover, in the meantime, we’d love to ear what you’d like to see in Cover so we can make it even better. Contact us on Twitter, Facebook or by email!

Since the launch of Cover last November, you guys give us a lot of positive feedback. Thank you. We’ve been working hard to improve the next version, adding features, fixing bugs. So today we are very excited to launch a new version of Cover (version 1.1.187). We’d like to share with you some of the stuff you will find in it.

Live tiles

Cover is now more integrated into Windows 8 than ever. We’ve finally added support for Live tiles. Cover comes with 2 types of Live tiles, Library and Reader.

Library

This Live tile is triggered when you leave the app while being on the Library, it will give you an indication on what you have in your reading queue. Every tile size comes with an optimal set of information.

Reader

The Reader Live tile is triggered when you leave the app while reading a Comics, giving you information on the current reading status.

Pinning Comics

Along with Live tiles, comes the ability to pin Comics to your start screen. Hook your favourite comic books directly on windows 8 start screen, and you will be able to open them in Cover without having to look for them or using the search function.

More

We’ve also made the search more accessible on Windows 8.1 so you can access it easily from the library. You can manage your library by selecting books and folders and changing read status directly from the library.

Cover 1.1.187 contains all this new features, and is available as a free update on the Windows Store.

2 years. It’s been 2 years since we started with this idea. 2 years working on this, while having a full time job. Everything accelerated quickly a year ago, and went even faster since we created French Fry back in January. But it is here.

We worked hard, trying to make Steed easy to use, to integrate it into Windows as much as possible. We looked at every detail, and we tried to ensure everything we added or moved was done for a reason.

It has been a passionate work during this period, we had to make decision, to choose what feature to add, or remove, what should be our priority. And we argued, and argued, and argued. And finally, we made it.

So we can now proudly announce that Steed is available for sale.

Everybody does that, but it’s true, so we would like to thank everyone who supported us during this period. It wouldn’t have been the same without them.

Enjoy!

The French Fry Team

Hi everybody !

Since the launch of the first beta we got a lot of feedbacks and thanks to you this allowed us to improve Steed a lot.

You’ve contacted us via our Twitter account, our Facebook page, or by using our feedback form. But we thought there might be a better way to interact with you. A way that could allow everyone to keep in touch with us, a way that could allow you to keep in touch with the other Steed’s users.

That’s why today we are launching our new community forums.

You can use these forums to report bugs or errors that happens using Steed, you can ask for features, or discuss about Steed.

As usual we will continue to answer on Facebook, Twitter and by email.

The French Fry team

Hey everyone,

Today we’re proud to announce the release of the public beta of Steed, our first Windows application. We’ve been working hard for months to bring you the best experience we can, and we hope you will like it.

Steed is a client for browsing and transferring files and folders across multiple protocols : FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure. It is designed to provide consistency over multiple standalone clients, and improve user experience through a thoughtful design.

Using Steed during the beta is totally free, you may download it right away from the application page. You will need Windows XP SP3, Vista or 7. The latter provides the best user experience. Don’t forget to check the auto-update, as each version of the beta is limited in time (30 days) to ensure that you have the latest fixes and features.

To help you getting started, you will be able to import directly your bookmarks from other software (Filezilla, Cyberduck, FlashFXP, WinSCP) and use them with Steed. If you have to install it on several computers, synchronize them with your Dropbox or SkyDrive account.

Enjoy it, and please feel free to provide us some feedback on the support page or twitter, it will be very helpful to help improve the application until final release. And if there are some features you would like to see, don’t hesitate to share them with us !

The French Fry team