Pokki is a free

digital distribution Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of digital media content such as audio, video, e-books, video games, and other s ...

platform and

Windows Shell The Windows shell is the graphical user interface for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Its readily identifiable elements consist of the desktop, the taskbar, the Start menu, the task switcher and the AutoPlay feature. On some versions of W ...

extension Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate * Ext ...

SweetLabs SweetLabs is a software distribution company. Company overview Based in San Diego and Seattle, SweetLabs has raised $21.5 million in venture capital from Bessemer Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Intel Capital, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures ...

, Inc. that alters the start menu to a look and feel like the second generation start menu used before

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

. The extension also adds additional functionality to the start menu including search, favorites, and popular applications. Pokki has been identified as adware by Malwaretips and as "viruses and spyware" by Sophos AV. It may be installed under other names such as Host App Service or "App Explorer".

History

The program launched as a beta version in June 2011. Pokki's framework is built on

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hard ...

and allows developers to build desktop applications using standard web languages like

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

CSS3 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as Scalable Vector Graphics, SVG, MathML or XHTML). CS ...

, and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

. In April 2012, Pokki launched the Pokki Store, a marketplace and

app store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

for desktop apps for social networking services and social gaming apps. The Pokki Store allows users to browse, search, and download applications in various categories. Applications are submitted by developers through the Pokki Developer Center. In August 2012, Pokki exited beta, announced 1 million

monthly active users Active users is a measurement metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from visitors within a relevant range of time (daily, weekly and m ...

, and released the Pokki Menu, an app launcher for access, management, and discovery of its apps, and a notification center for real-time updates. In October 2012, Pokki for Windows 8 was released which included functionality to restore the Windows

start menu The Start menu is a graphical user interface element used in Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 and in other operating systems. It provides a central launching point for computer programs and performing other tasks in the Windows shell. It is name ...

which was replaced in

by the start screen. As of January 2013, it had about 1.5 million users.Yahoo! News, Jan. 16, 2013
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References

External links

* {{Software digital distribution platforms Software distribution platforms Windows-only software Windows-only freeware