As you know, the next public preview build of Windows 10 with the number 9926 did not receive a new name of its own, although many assumed that it would be a Consumer Preview. Meanwhile, it was presented with a certain fanfare, which is reflected in previous publications on our website, and undoubtedly deserves a separate review, even though it remains crude and incomplete.

Illustration of release after Windows 10

But first, it should be noted that the development process of Windows 10 is continuous, is determined by the modern concept of “quick” releases and, apparently, will be extended to the final version of the OS. An illustration of this is the release after Windows 10 Technical Preview (9841) of two more public assemblies with numbers 9860 and 9878, each of which brought its own changes.

The first was distributed through Windows Update but it was in it that the mechanism for updating assemblies was improved. Looking ahead a bit, this is what it looks like today:

As you can see, there are fast and slow channels, in the last of them the assemblies arrive after some running-in. So far, we are talking about preliminary versions, but it is possible that in some form this mechanism will remain in the final one – enterprises rarely chase after IT innovations, so “quick” releases are unlikely to be received with enthusiasm. Or there will be some kind of containment in Windows Update.

Windows 10

Windows 10 – smartphones , tablets and PCs.

In the same assembly, the notification center was launched for the first time, and also new sections of the Data Sense and Battery Saver system settings appeared, similar to those in Windows Phone – as promised, Microsoft is building an end-to-end Windows 10 platform that should look and behave as much as possible on smartphones , tablets and PCs.

Build 9878 was already distributed through the mentioned channels – at first through the fast one, after a while through the slow one. It now supports MKV, three-finger gestures on touchpads, Snap Assist on multiple monitors, as well as the ability to remove the Search and Task View buttons from the taskbar and some other little things.

Two novelties, however, are quite significant. First, there are floating dialog boxes in Metro apps. Now additional requests and messages.

The change is completely logical, since the tape across the entire screen in desktop mode certainly looks nonsense. One could argue: are Metro apps really needed on the desktop? Apparently, they may and will be needed – details below.

Second, the OneDrive client has changed dramatically. Full synchronization of storage, as in Windows 8.1, with the ability to store not only files, but also special shortcuts (with an explicit indication of local and online availability), was again replaced by selective, in which the synchronized files are completely copied, and the shortcuts disappeared as such:

Microsoft Growing popularly online

Microsoft explains this change by the fact that with the current pace of development and growing popularity of online storage, even some shortcuts can take up an unacceptable amount of space (especially on budget devices with small drives, the size of which can be as little as 16 GB ), so let the user choose what it needs it locally and what it doesn’t.

This decision looks controversial, although Microsoft has tried to mitigate the effect somewhat at the expense of other features. Perhaps it would be worth keeping both principles, and the choice between them would be made by the user or even automatically, depending on the size of the local storage. However, it is worth getting to know OneDrive in more detail, so let’s move on to Build 9926 itself.

Consumer gizmos

Home users in general are an important audience for Microsoft, and even more so in the context of promoting Windows to tablets. It is with this aspect that the expectations of the Consumer Preview were connected. However, Build 9926 gives us some insight.

Formally, Xbox is a regular Metro application, but it will be bundled for the OS, like Mail and others. In addition, a whole ecosystem develops behind the application itself, in fact, a separate social network. You can read more in our special material .

Windows 10 developers

Not much can be said about the application itself. At the first launch, the developers warn that it is in a phase of active development and will be regularly updated. At the moment, here you can make friends, share achievements in games and write messages.

Perhaps the most interesting part of it so far is the opportunity to watch the search for the right design of Metro-applications, equally suitable for window and full-screen modes. So, for example, the Xbox has a separate Settings button (in the lower left corner), and the settings themselves are displayed in the main window.

At the same time, the standard call to Settings is carried out through the control menu, which is hidden under the button in the left corner of the title bar (there used to be three dots, now there are three dashes, which are sometimes called “sandwich”). The settings are visualized in a special panel, which now fits into the application window, and was previously drawn from the right edge of the screen.

Moreover, this is accompanied by rather strange visual effects: the panel jumps out from behind the nearest (that is, not necessarily the right) edge of the screen and disappears, respectively, in the opposite direction. Sometimes, when a group of parameters is selected, the main panel is replaced in the same way with a “nested” one.

If you exclude special effects, then a uniform placement of settings in a standard place within the application window seems to be the right decision. However, as you can see, the creative search continues at Microsoft. In addition to the Xbox, the current build also has a new type of applications.

By win11

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