Showing posts with label Build 9374. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Build 9374. Show all posts

Monday, 22 April 2013

Windows 8.1 Pro Preview build 9374 makes it easier to customize apps on your Start Screen


With the recent leak of Windows 8.1 Pro Preview build 9374, we got to play with the upcoming update to Windows 8. The leaked build featured a few new features that were not seen in other leaked builds. One of the new features is the dimming of app tiles when you customize the Start Screen.
As you can see from the screenshot above, users will see all apps dimmed when they press the customize button on the Start Screen. In the past, users would simply see a checkmark on the app they right-clicked on. Microsoft has evolved this feature to make it a little bit easier to do all your Start Screen customizing.

In this leaked build, as soon as you right-click on the Start Screen, you can select a button called "Customize" from the app bar. Once you select this button, the entire Start Screen will dim, allowing users to easily select which app they want to customize. A selected app will no longer be dimmed, which is great because you can easily differentiate what app you are working on and what apps are dimmed.

You can also easily edit the name group of your app tiles, as well as adjust the tile sizes to your desired specs (either large, standard, wide, or small).
This feature is present in the leaked build of 9374 and hopefully it makes it to the final build. Microsoft is known to add features in certain builds and then remove them in subsequent builds. Do you like this feature?

You can check out a video walk through of the leaked build. In this build, we get our first glimpse of Kiosk mode too!

Source: winbeta.org

Windows 8.1 may make it easier to customize the Start screen

The latest Windows 8.1 build dims the Start screen to focus on a single app tile and offers a wider array of tile sizes, says blog site WinBeta.


Windows 8.1 will add new features to help you customize the Start screen -- at least it allegedly will, based on tidbits from the latest build.

The Windows 8.1 Pro Preview build 9374 recently leaked dims the entire Start screen when you click or tap on the Customize button, according to WinBeta. Selecting a specific app tile then turns its light back on, allowing you to modify that specific tile. The goal is to focus the attention just on the tile or tiles that you're tweaking.

Based on the new build, Windows 8.1 will also offer a wider variety of tile sizes: large, standard, wide, or small. Windows 8 currently limits tile sizes to either square or rectangular. Finally, WinBeta says that the latest build lets you more easily edit named groups of your app tiles, though it didn't specify exactly how the new editing process works.

Yet another improvement uncovered by WinBeta is a smaller search pane. Triggering the Search charm in Windows 8 opens a full-screen search page, obscuring and interrupting your current app or screen. The new build shows a much thinner search pane that leaves most of the space for your current screen.

The Windows 8.1 builds so far show that Microsoft is adding small but useful tweaks here and there. Collectively, those tweaks are designed to make the update to Windows 8 more customizable and more user friendly.

Source: cnet.com