Reviewing Windows 8.1 Update 1 leaks and what their changes mean

The people of WZor have dedicated the week to bursting the future presentation of Windows 8.1 Update 1 Microsoft would have planned to announce the new update of its operating system in the coming months to coincide with its Build developer conference, to be held between April 2 and 4 in San Francisco. But at the rate that the leaks are happening, it may be that by then Redmond will not have much left to present.

Screenshots and miscellaneous information from the leaked builds have raised a stir because of the news they reveal.These seem to further deepen the integration between desktop environments and Modern UI, in a process that is not without controversy. If the changes in Windows 8.1, with the return of a kind of start button and the ability to start the computer to the desktop, were already seen by some as a concession by Microsoft; what lies ahead now could be seen as a reversal in their plans for the future of the system.

With Windows 8 Microsoft could have fallen into that pattern that seems to repeat with Windows: a reviled version is followed by another praised

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Microsoft has repeated a certain pattern more than once with the different versions of Windows: a radical change frowned upon by the market was followed by another that ended up convincing the majority. This is how the reviled Windows Vista was replaced by a praised Windows 7. That is why the rumor that Microsoft employees themselves refer to Windows 8 as the new Vista is not surprising.And that&39;s why one believes that Update 1 could be the first step for Windows 9 to be considered the new Windows 7 ."

Improving the home screen

The first leaked screenshots showed new details of the home screen. Among them, the presence of new buttons in the upper right corner stood out. Next to the user account there is now a search button and a shutdown button The latter had been sued several times and Redmond seems willing to incorporate it.

Microsoft had justified keeping the shutdown button hidden in the charm bar settings by ensuring that it required the same steps as with the start menu in previous versions. But the problem was not the number of steps. The problem is that the common user has no idea where to look when he is first faced with Windows 8.

Microsoft needed to recognize and fix the bug that was keeping the shutdown button hidden

The problem was to relativize the importance of user habits After years of use, access to the start menu has been internalized as a point starting point to turn off a computer. The charm bar and the configuration option do not have that undoubted advantage. Making the power off button now visible is not a concession, it is recognizing a defect and repairing it.

In that first batch of screenshots, a second change was also appreciated on the home screen: the appearance of contextual menus when clicking on tiles and applications with the right mouse button mouse Until now, this action displayed a lower bar of options forcing us to move to it. There is no problem when we use a touch screen, but with a mouse it becomes an unnecessary movement.The context menu seems a better solution at such times.

Merging environments

There is another set of modifications that have been seen in the leaked screenshots in recent days. In this case they have to do with the possibility, quite dubious, that the system stops starting by default on the start screen and with the approach between the Modern UI environments and the traditional desktopStarting with the ability to pin Windows Store apps to the taskbar alongside other desktop programs.

Many of the changes seem like approximations to the rumored future of Windows 9

This latest change, like others, is only understood in connection with rumors that in Windows 9 we will be able to run Modern UI applications directly on the desktop Otherwise it seems unnecessary to have these shortcuts, since the gap between one environment and the other would continue to be as present as it was up to now.

There are more screenshots pointing to that fusion of environments. They show modifications in Modern UI applications that seem aimed at allowing their future use from the desktop This incorporates a top bar in the style of traditional UI programs Windows, with a title and minimize and close buttons, as well as an additional button that gives access to a context menu from which to perform these actions or anchor the application to the side of the screen.

Despite all of the above, it still does not seem that it will be possible to run applications on the desktop. A user of the Russian pcportal forum raised doubts by posting the screenshot above in which you can see the taskbar superimposed on the Bing finance application, but it cannot be ruled out that it is an error present in the build to the who has had access.

Changes don't mean leaving Modern UI

Everything seems to indicate that Microsoft is preparing to re-adapt Windows 8 to our mice and so that we can use Modern UI applications as a more desktop program. Doubts come with the consequences of this: does it mean that Redmond is backing down and little by little leaving aside the home screen that they have defended so much? Probably not.

Perhaps that dreamed hybrid interface capable of being controlled by touch and by mouse and keyboard is not feasible

With Windows 8 Microsoft tried to build an interface for today's world where everything has gone touch. It did so by trying to make it possible to control it with the usual mouse and keyboard, looking for that ideal hybrid environment that would allow Windows to keep its powerful desktop with a new world of touch applications.The problem is that that ideal interface may not be feasible.

The solution may be to have adequate interfaces for each occasion. Maybe the key thing is to keep different environments and make switching between one to the other as smooth as possible Maybe the next Windows 8.1 update will do just that.

Via | WZor In Genbeta | Taking stock of Windows 8, the success of a misunderstood, Taking stock of Windows 8: the new Windows Vista from Microsoft