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Windows 11 Pro Overview
Windows 11. The main part of this announcement was to introduce a significant user interface change codenamed Sun Valley. As we know, a significant part of the UX changes will be borrowed from the Windows 10X shell, and Windows 10X is not coming to the market. Now, as expected, the Windows 11 leaks begin.
Features of Windows 11 Pro
Windows 11 will get a completely new design. Microsoft clearly needs a good reason to reverse its previous claims and still ditch Windows 10 by introducing a new operating system number. And the brand 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 Windows 11 was under that name. The Sun Valley project flashed on the network for a long time – Microsoft regularly revealed details of the new interface style, insiders shared previously unknown information, and popular designers in their circles drew realistic concepts based on all this information.
Start and system elements will hover above the bottom bar. Start is the business card and face of every newer version of Windows. It is not surprising that in Windows 11 developers will transform it again, but not so much in a functional sense as in a visual sense – the Start window will float above the bottom bar. We have to admit that this small change makes the system look much fresher. Judging by information from the network, Microsoft will not radically change the “inside” of this menu – 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 “Start”. The action center will be combined with the control buttons together – similar has been used for a long time in some other operating systems. Almost all mentions of this new menu indicate that it will be insular – controls will be on one separate panel, notifications will be on another, and specific elements (like the player) on another separate panel.
The right angles will disappear, they will be replaced by rounding. True, insiders and designers of the concept do not agree on this issue – some are convinced that Microsoft will not change its tradition and will keep right angles, while others are convinced that in 2021 Microsoft will follow the fillet fashion. The latter fits the definition of “All-New Windows” better – hovering menus alone aren’t enough to make a new design truly new. Filets are expected to affect almost everything in the system, from context menus and system panels to all application windows. True, even on this issue, the opinions of concept designers differ – some draw edges in all possible interface elements, others combine them with right angles.
There will be a transparent background with a blur everywhere. On the web, they disagree about the island style of the window display, the design of the corners and the levitation effect of the menu, but almost everyone is unanimous about the transparency of the window. The vast majority of design leaks and renders show transparency and blur in all windows, be it at least the Start menu or Explorer. Moreover, these effects are found even in the canceled operating system Windows 10X, 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, as well as increasing the distance between elements – those areas of the interface with which the user interacts will certainly become larger, and page titles will be bold.
A new font that is already displayed. Windows 11 will most likely use the default responsive font Segoe UI Variable, which already appeared in Windows 10 Build 21376 for Insiders.