Apple launched iTunes 9 back in September with a revamp of how many online store pages were displayed, most notably by using Safari-like WebKit to render them. Over the weekend, one of the areas left neglected several months ago has started to get a refresh as well.

We speak, of course, of the ubiquitous App Store, home to more than 100,000 of your favorite device applications, games and utilities. Tapping into the same WebKit engine that brings Safari and Google Chrome to life, iTunes 9 began to show a refreshed look to most App Store detail pages over the weekend. You can see the difference in the before & after images below:





In general, the new look is a big improvement over the original one, relying less on text and more on app images to help sell the product. In fact, much of the app description is now collapsed by default, and potential buyers can see three screenshots at a glance instead of the traditional one that the old look gave you. Additional images can be viewed by using the slider at the bottom of the screenshots pane.

It remains to be seen how developers will react to the new look. As TechCrunch notes, “Now that the emphasis is clearly on the first few sentences of the description, developers should be more concise in describing their apps, since that’s all that’s shown by default,” writes MG Siegler. “If you click the ‘…More’ link, the area will expand to show all the text, but again, that’s not the default look anymore.”