Windows 10 Build 10565 Improves Edge, UI, Context Menus, and Icons

Microsoft has released its newest build of Windows 10 (10565) bringing with it a plethora of new features, including improvements to its new Edge browser and Cortana personal assistant, new icons and title bars, and a revised context menu.

Here is the full changelist released by Microsoft:

Skype messaging, calling and video experience: As we’ve announced previously, Skype messaging, calling and video capabilities will come integrated into Windows 10 through the Messaging, Phone and Skype video universal Windows apps. These Windows applications enable quick and easy, free calling and messaging to other Skype users across phones, over 3G/4G and Wi-Fi tablets and to PCs Wi-Fi. With this build, you can preview the integrated capabilities on your PC while an upcoming Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview build will have these integrated capabilities for you to preview soon on mobile devices. Try things like Quick Reply from Action Center where incoming notifications will come in with the option to reply inline without opening the application. This is an early preview and you can expect some bugs, and more features to come as we deliver monthly updates.

Tab Preview in Microsoft Edge: In Microsoft Edge, you can now hover over your open tabs and get a preview of what’s on those websites. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Syncing Favorites and Reading list items in Microsoft Edge: In this build, you’ll see a first look at the new syncing feature in Microsoft Edge that lets you sync your Favorites and Reading list items. We are still working on refining it, but definitely check it out and let us know what you think.

Cortana improvements: Cortana is able to intelligently understand your inked notes – setting reminders based on locations, times and numbers that she can understand from your digital annotations.

We are also rolling out new features in Cortana to help you keep track of your leisure time, including movie and event reminders. Cortana will keep track of your bookings for movies and ticketed events through your email confirmations. Two hours prior to the event start time, you’ll get helpful information to be sure you know where to go and get there on time, including an option to book and track an Uber ride directly from Cortana.

More vibrant title bars: Thanks to feedback from Windows Insiders, with this build you can now enjoy your title bars with a full color intensity that matches the rest of your theme. Title bars will now appear darker. You can adjust the color by going to Settings > Personalization > Colors. Colored title bars will appear only if “Show color on Start, Taskbar, Action Center, and Title bars” is enabled.

Improved context menus on Start:You will notice we have made some adjustments and improvements to the context menus on Start including new icons for tile adjustments.

New icons:We know Windows Insiders love new icons – this build has another batch of new icons for devices (check out Device Manager). Registry Editor finally gets a new icon!

Device activation improvements: We have received a lot of feedback from Insiders on making it easier to activate Windows 10 on devices that take advantage of the free upgrade offer to genuine Windows by using existing Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 product keys. If you install this build of the Windows 10 Insider Preview on a PC and it doesn’t automatically activate, you can enter the product key from Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 used to activate the prior Windows version on the same device to activate Windows 10 by going to Settings > Update & security > Activation and selecting Change Product Key. If you do a clean install of Windows 10 by booting off the media, you can also enter the product key from prior Windows versions on qualifying devices during setup. Refer to the Insider Hub for more information on these activation improvements including requirements.

Managing your default printer: We are introducing a new mode that makes your default printer the last printer you used. This change helps ensure the best printer is preselected in inbox print dialogs. You can manage this behavior in Settings > Devices > Printer & Scanners to change this to the previous way Windows handled default printers. The ability to set a default printer by network location has been removed.

Here are some things we have fixed:

• You should no longer see a warning message in the Settings app > Update & Security > Windows Update regarding changed ring settings for preview builds unless you actually change your ring settings.
• Background audio playback works again when apps like Groove are minimized.
• We fixed the issue where clicking on the system icons in the notification area quickly results in Windows Shell blocking the launch of fly-outs like Audio, Networking, etc.
• After Build 10525, we heard a lot of feedback that some context menus were too big for mouse. We’ve made adjustments to many of the context menus to make them smaller for using them with a mouse.
• You can now pin contacts to the Start menu from the People app.
• Certain apps won’t appear twice anymore when pinned to the taskbar.
• Hiding desktop icons via context menu on the desktop now works.
• Windows Store apps should now be updating automatically.

Known issues:

• The search box does not work if you are in a locale where Cortana is not available. We are currently investigating workarounds.
• The Xbox app for Windows 10 will consume gigabytes of memory on your PC if you have any Win32 games (non -Windows Store games) installed on your PC that have been identified as games or added by you in the Xbox app. Closing the Xbox app will release your PC’s memory.
• WebM and VP9 have been temporarily removed from the flight builds. We continue to develop a VP9 implementation that we intend to ship in Windows. Expect VP9 to return soon in a future release.
• Small form-factor devices, like the Dell Venue 8 Pro, that boot with rotation or virtual mode screen size set larger than the physical screen size will experience a bluescreen on upgrade and will roll back to the previous build.

Thank you Windows Blog for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia.