23/18
Windows 11 Pro Overview
Windows 11. The main part of this announcement should be a presentation of a significant UI change codenamed Sun Valley. As we know, a significant portion of the UX changes will be carried over by the Windows 10X shell, and Windows 10X will not be launched. Now, as expected, the Windows 11 information leak begins.
Windows 11 Pro Features
Windows 11 will get a completely new design. Microsoft obviously needs a good reason to retract its previous claims and still abandon Windows 10 by introducing a new OS number. And a completely new design is great for that. The giant from Redmond has long been preparing a redesign for an update codenamed Sun Valley (“Sun Valley”) – apparently, it was under this designation that Windows 11 was released. The Sun Valley project flashed on the network for a long time – Microsoft regularly announced details of the new interface style, insiders shared the previously unknown information, and popular designers in their circles drew realistic concepts based on all this data.
Start and system elements will float above the bottom bar. Start is the business card and face of every new version of Windows. Not surprisingly, in Windows 11 the developers will redesign it again, but not so much in functional terms as in visual – the Start window will float above the bottom bar. We must admit that this small change makes the appearance of the system much fresher. According to information from the network, Microsoft is not going to radically change the “insides” of this menu – the innovations will affect only the design of the window itself. The control panel will also float, and its design will be exactly the same as that of the “Start”. The Action Center will be combined with the control buttons – a similar one has long been used in some other operating systems. Almost all mentions of this new menu indicate that it will be an island – the control buttons will be located on a separate panel, notifications on another, and certain elements (like a player) on another separate one.
Right angles will disappear and be replaced by curves. In truth, insiders and concept designers disagree on this point – some are confident that Microsoft will not change its traditions and keep right angles, while others are convinced that in 2021 Microsoft will follow the trend of curves. The latter fits better with the definition of “completely new Windows” – just floating menus are not enough for a new design to be considered truly new. Curves are expected to affect virtually everything in the system, from context menus and system panels to all application windows. However, even on this issue, the opinions of concept designers differ – some draw curves in all possible interface elements, others combine them with right angles.
A translucent background with blur will be present everywhere. There is disagreement on the web about the island style of window display, the design of the corners and the hover effect of the menu, but almost everyone agrees about the transparency of the windows. The vast majority of leaks and design renders show transparency and blur in all windows, be it at least the Start menu or Explorer. Moreover, these effects are even included in the assembly of the discontinued Windows 10X operating system, which Microsoft developed in parallel with the Sun Valley project for devices with two screens and weak gadgets. The so-called acrylic transparency implies the use of new effects when hovering over elements with the mouse, as well as a larger spacing between elements – the areas of the interface with which the user interacts will certainly become larger, and page titles will become thicker.
New font that has already been shown. Windows 11 will most likely use the standard responsive font Segoe UI Variable, which has already appeared in Windows 10 build 21376 for insiders.