A nice looking way to read your news in Windows 8

The Chicago Tribune Metro app is a is a new way to read your daily headlines within the Windows 8 Metro experience.

Chicago Tribune’s Metro app features an identical tiled design and integrates well into Metro. Every set of tiles shows a different section in the app, although you might see some run-over from one section to another in the right hand side of the app. Each section in the Chicago Tribune Metro app corresponds to a different topic in the newspaper, such as Sports, Top Headlines and more. There’s generally one larger, featured article in each section, with a picture to illustrate, and then smaller articles below.

Reading specific articles is as simple as clicking on the article title. Every article is formatted similarly, with a single image. The articles are easy to read and written in columns just like a regular newspaper. Articles scroll left to right if they’re longer.

Unfortunately, there are very few links in the Chicago Tribune Metro app, and multimedia is limited to photos. You also lose a bit of the social aspect of reading an online newspaper, since there are no comments. There’s not even a search tool in Chicago Tribune’s metro app, if you want to find something specifically. iOS newspaper apps like The Guardian have implemented their apps much more successfully.

The Chicago Tribune Metro app is off to a good start, but it needs to implement more multimedia and social features in order to really shine.