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

I agree that this is a really backward step, and I hope that Microsoft actually listen to us and reintroduce this functionality.

The Photo "HUB" which effectively this should become was a really useful and usable feature that showed just how easy the new world of services, cloud (as well as networks) can be. Yes, you need to allow 3rd parties to plug into this to enable it to be extended to support their services, you need to allow the "library" to be extended to support specific devices and locations and you need to allow users to switch off those feeds that they don't want shown together, but making it harder to se my SkyDrive and network shared photos is a really backward move.

So Microsoft, like you listened to the community and got a UK English preview out, please reconsider this removal of functionality.

And as this is "just" an app, there is no reason that this can't then continue to improve between releases of Windows anyway!

It just worked.

And it still continuously works for me whenever I add another location to my Pictures Library.  I've even tried adding a network location to my Pictures Library (via creating a local folder, adding it to the Pictures Library, deleting the folder, and then creating a symlink from that folder to the network location) and while it shows up in the Photos App (and even separates it into a different group of tiles), clicking on any of the folders/files in the Photos App that are stored in a network location instantly cause the Photos App to crash.

I don't know what I did differently than everyone else, but at least this much of the Photos App's functionality is intact for me.

You don't need to use a symlink to add a non-indexed network location to a library.

You can edit the .ms-library file with notepad and add it that way.

I have and it has worked with Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 to have my Linux Server File Shares in my libraries.

At the moment my pictures library has only the network location and when I open the Photos app, it does display the contents of the network location while saying "This PC" at the top but like you when clicking on a file the Photos App crashes.

Before reading this 19 page thread, I had no idea this happened to the photo app as I don't use it because I have Windows 8.1 on a laptop and mostly use the desktop (I have been thinking of getting a tablet though).

Edit:

I added the local Pictures folder back to the photos library and the Photos app displays the contents of both folders (local and network) and crashes when I click on an item from either folder.

Edit 2:

I removed the network location from the library and just left the local folder for testing and the Photos app did not crash.

It seems just having a network location in the Pictures library with cause the Photos app to crash when selecting something.

Smetimes, they are things I don't understand in software engineering Microsoft strategy.

I mean, we had a globally functionnal and enjoyale photos app with Windows 8 (even though there were some issues with some network locations like WHS V1, had to install skydrive on a windows 7 virtual machine to share the servers files, doh !).

Here, they give us more than a crippled experience. A useless app missing the windows 8/WP8 philosophy. All they had to do was to offer the ability to add every single windows compatible network shares (Old Windows, samba, etc...).

I own several hundred gigs of personnal data, I won't upload them to skydrive when I could just strem them from my personnal server.

Ok M$, I see the point, you crippled Windows Home Server to force people renting skydrive space.

Sweet.

But I'm not getting into this. I want to be in control of my data. Where it is, how it is backed up. Who sees it (Hello prism !)

The photos app needs to support network shares. Full stop.

Will Photos App RTM return connections to other services such as Facebook, Fickr, Skydrive...

Photos located on Skydrive use to cycle on Live Tiles and be available upon app launch.

Being a photographer one of the primary reasons to move from apple to windows 8 platform was the photo app.  Also the ability to use all of the other windows apps with my networked and online photos.  This was a HUGE selling point and has sold many others on Windows 8 as well.  At this point I am seriously concerned about the decision making at Microsoft, and my decision to give them a second chance.  Please resolve this issue, I was really beginning to enjoy Windows 8.