Leaked Screenshots Show New “Neon” Windows 10 Design

Since Windows 10 launched, Microsoft has been running their Windows ecosystem more as a service. This has meant continual updates for not just the usual security and bug fixes, but also feature and UI changes. According to the latest leaked screenshots from insiders, Microsoft is set to introduce a new “Neon” appearance to change the design language of Windows.

With Windows 8, Microsoft introduced their new design language, Metro. The new interface took up an emphasis on clean lines, simple geometric shapes and minimal bling. As a stark contrast with Windows 7 Aero, the new Metro interface was widely disparaged. Having learned a bit from the past Microsoft changed things up a bit with Windows 10 using MDL2 which is largely the same but with some tweaks to make it more pleasing to older users.

From the leaked screenshots, it looks like “Neon” is keeping to it’s Metro roots, again with some minor tweaks and updates. One new element is the increased use of transparency in the UI called acrylic. We saw hints of this with Aero in Windows 7 and even in Windows 10 but the new feature takes it expands it to a much wider scope. There is also the new Conscious UI which changes the look of the acrylic based on what is happening in the background and Connected Animations to give a great sense of movement by providing more animations.

Love or hate Neon, it is still a bit away int he future. It is set to arrive in time for Redstone 3 which comes after Redstone 2 aka the Creators Update. It will be interesting to see how much Neon will change by launch and how widely adopted it will become. After all, not only will Microsoft have to update their first party apps but third party applications may need updates to bring themselves into compliance.