Microsoft To Revamp Windows 10 UI With Project Neon

Microsoft’s purported plans to revamp for the user interface (UI) of Windows 10, otherwise known as Project Neon, have been leaked.

The alleged screenshots for the Windows 10 UI upgrade comes courtesy of MSPowerUser, and it shows Redmond’s intentions for a clean looking front-end, that focuses heavily on “animations, simplicity, and consistency.”

The UI revamp will bring back Windows 7’s Aero Glass, but mixes it up with animations more associated with Windows Phone 7 and 8, and will bring a new component called ‘Acrylic’ to the windows 10 design, it is claimed.

Project Neon

This slightly blurs the the background, sidebar or the navigation of the app. These are known as “Side-Nav Acrylic”, “Background Acrylic” and “In-App Acrylic” respectively.

Another aspect to Project Neon is the focus on 3D and HoloLens interaction and some of the user interface animations have been described “stupendously smooth.” Whether this will still be the case when the update is rolled out to end users, remains to be seen.

Microsoft has also tweaked the design of the taskbar, but it is not certain this tweak will survive to commercial rollout.

The UI update is scheduled to arrive on people’s screen during the Redstone 3 update. The Redstone 2 update (otherwise known as the Creators Update) is slated for April this year, so expect the redesign to arrive later in the year.

Update Issues

Microsoft has had a tricky time with its operating system updating process in recent times. The free ‘Anniversary Update’ it delivered in August last year did cause some problems.

Soon after the update was delivered, reports started flooding in on the Microsoft support website that the update had caused people’s webcams to stop working properly.

Redmond also found itself in hot water over its questionable tactics to try and ‘encourage’ users to migrate to Windows 10 from older versions of Windows.

In December, a Microsoft executive acknowledged that the company’s aggressive campaign to get users to shift to Windows 10 went “too far”.

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