Listing your existing Windows educational software in the Windows Store

In a nutshell, desktop apps are apps that run on the Windows desktop and don’t follow the Windows Store app style. Now that the Windows Store shows listings for desktop apps, customers can search for them, browse through descriptive information about them, and acquire them from the developer’s website using a link provided in the product description page in the Windows Store.

What do desktop apps look like in the Windows Store?

If you’ve seen Windows 8 app tiles in the Windows Store, you have an idea of how they look and how you can click one to access an app's product description page for more information. Desktop apps listed in the Windows Store are also accessible through tiles, but the tiles look a bit different. For one thing, you’ll notice that the app price isn't listed. We don't include the price because the Windows Store doesn’t handle the acquisition process for desktop apps. (In fact, desktop apps aren’t available for download from the Windows Store—they’re simply listings.) The tile also makes it clear that the app is a desktop app.

When customers click the tile for a desktop app, they see a product description page with information about the desktop app, very similar to the Metro style app description page. The main difference is that in order to acquire the desktop app, the customer clicks a link that takes them outside of the Windows Store—the developer is in charge of the (paid or free) acquisition experience.