Windows 8 build 8165 Start Screen image leaks, hints at progress

By Tom Warren, on 6th Dec 11 1:13 pm with 42 Comments

A new leak of Microsoft’s internal pre-beta builds of Windows 8 shows off the Start Screen.

Microsoft appears to be preparing for a number of customization options within the Windows 8 Start Screen. Winunleaked posted a new image of build 8165, a winmain build compiled earlier this month. The image itself doesn’t show off anything new but Winunleaked claims the software giant has improved the way mouse control works in Windows 8. “Now the gesture is really great with a mouse,” states Canouna, a well known French leaker. He also added details on the MDL forums on how tiles on the Start Screen can be used in summary view:

Resize Windows 8 tiles

Microsoft’s pre-beta builds include a new touch gesture that allows users to close Metro style apps with a swipe, see video here. Microsoft is understood to be preparing other additional gestures and controls to make the Start Screen easy to use across mouse, touch and pen. Images of Microsoft’s improved Windows 8 Charms Bar were released on Saturday too. The images show off a translucent Charms Bar. Microsoft has enabled support for automatic updates to Internet Explorer 10. Windows 8 users can enable the feature from the about dialog box in Microsoft’s latest browser.

Microsoft is currently preparing a beta copy of Windows 8, to be made available in January. Little is known about the feature set of Microsoft’s Windows 8 beta. Recently leaked screenshots indicate that Microsoft will allow users to change the Start Screen color and the Start Screen background image in beta copies of Windows 8. Microsoft has previously detailed some other minor improvements to the Windows 8 beta. Users will be able to create, name and rearrange Start Screen groups as well as navigate with the Windows 8 Apps screen in a better way. Microsoft is planning to group applications to make it easier for users to identify them in Windows 8 beta. Windows Media Center will also return to Windows 8 beta alongside the typical Windows games, DVD creator and .NET 3.5.

Windows 8 build 8165

For more information on Windows 8 check out our dedicated section or the latest news below.

  • http://twitter.com/OldCongress Gamer

    Best thing after the developer preview.

  • Ich bin nicht ich

    -,- progress? ok.

  • Anonymous

    Nicer than the green. :D

    • http://twitter.com/alexh2o Alex H

      If you watch the close gesture in action, the window appears to transition to the middle in the first stage, then close as the middle stage is pulled down again. I wonder if they will implement a swipe from the top to open a multitasking cards view, like WP7, with side swipes to change apps, up swipe to maximise, down swipe to close. Similar to what your saying but all with just 1 finger..

  • Anonymous

    Has anyone see anything about the XBox Hub in Win 8 or actually see the Media Center implementation? I’d love to know if they are going to set it up for live tv the way they are on the XBox.

  • Llort SM

    From the screen shot, I only see 13 tiles, and none of them appear to be “live” tiles.
    In other words, they’re basically over-sized icons. 

    From a (my) aesthetic pov, it doesn’t look nice. Aside from the IE, Store and Settings, the other tiles look poorly designed: The icons are small, and left-aligned. All in all, I feel like space is being wasted. Tile size, empty spaces between tiles, header margin, etc

    • Anonymous

      that’s because they are desktop apps which aren’t live :p only metro apps have live tiles since desktop apps use the dead icon concept from the 80′s

    • Devon Garner

      I don’t understand. What do you want your desktop to do? Aside from the 5-6 icons on my desktop now there is just a background picture. Am I missing something?

    • Llort SM

      Yes you missed something.

      I was commenting purely on the design aesthetics of Win8 Metro. Whether a user has 5-6 icons or 20-30 icons is irrelevant. And even if we assume that most users will only have a handful of icons, that still should not be an excuse for poor designs (imo)

      In this context, I’ve stated why I think it’s a bad design.

    • Anonymous

      after reading both of your comments… i still don’t get what you are saying on why its a bad design. Seems kind of silly to me to critique a dev preview leak..knowing that icons shown are not final or near final. Then complaining about wasted space…but what’s it wasted on? what would you put in its place?
      You should probably take a look at the MSDN windows 8 blog. They go into a bit about the design and placement and size of things. Its pretty interesting. That is if you are serious and not just an astroturfing troll.

    • http://twitter.com/TroyGates TroyGates

      Don’t forget they are using pre-window 8 apps with pre-windows 8 icons. Once apps are updated, I’m sure most will have a live tile or an updated icon that looks more pleasing on the start page.

    • Anonymous

      I agree. While empty space is good to make a design appear less bloated and to let it “breath” a bit, but why didn’t they put a shut down button on the Start screen? It’s beyond me that you have to activate the Settings of Start screen from the Charms menu to shut down the PC with mouse…

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeffrey-Syang/507688178 Jeffrey Syang

      there are easier ways. On the desktop, if all your programs are minimized or not running, alt+f4 opens a dialogue box where you can select options. you could also log off first from the start screen and then select shut down at the login screen. Another method works anywhere and is the easiest. just press ctrl+alt+del and on the bottom right there is the shut down/sleep/other stuff button. 

    • Anonymous

      I know all this. There are always multiple ways to do simple tasks. But it’s not that the Start screen would look cluttered with a single white 32×32 pixel icon in the upper right corner. The small old Start menu had that button and even more.

      They changed so much just for the sake of change. I’m not sure if the average customer will like that. Reminds me how difficult it was for millions of users to get to know Vista.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeffrey-Syang/507688178 Jeffrey Syang

      @tN0:disqus wait…iono if you know about this, but if you click on your pic on the top right in the metro start menu, there is a drop down menu. Although they don’t offer the shut down and hibernate options as of right now (pretty sure they will include it later), I’m getting the idea that you are talking about this kind functionality right at the start menu.

      Granted the jump from xp to vista is a big one, I would actually say that xp to 7 is bigger as 7 is practically an optimized vista with a completely overhauled taskbar. I do however hope that they will make use of the scrlk key. Instead of keeping it as scrolllock, they should use it as a screenlock so that when it is pressed, the metro interface is turned off and people will stay “screenlocked” on the desktop with the old start menu. This way there is no need for a registry hack AND metro-haters will be happy.

    • Anonymous

      The shutdown button is on the lockscreen

    • Guest

      Why would anyone take your commentary seriously when you alias is “MS Troll” spelled backwards? Are you really so fkn dense that you think nobody can see through your “cleverness”? And which idiot alias(es) were you using before?

    • Llort SM

      Why would anyone take my commentary seriously? Because I stated my opinion, and provided reasons to back them up.

      To dismiss an entire opinion purely because of an alias? Now why should anyone take YOUR commentary seriously? 

  • http://www.mainstreetchatham.com/ JimmyFal

    What will they do with Program groups I wonder. Like for example when you install an HP printer there are like 6 or 7 icons in the current program group for help, accessories, websites and all that crap that gets tightly put away in a program group. I notice that stuff was scattered all over the start screen in the Preview.

    • Mr Lefleur

      very true. maybe we’ll be able to hide them or they’ll be hidden by default.

    • Anonymous

      or maybe program developers will finally put all that stuff into a single program. Is there any legitimate reason to create separate shortcuts instead of single shortcut to a program that can launch all that stuff you mentioned?

    • http://twitter.com/Georgesab George Sabourin

      Exactly. With the Immersive applications, it wouldn’t be a program anyway. As you’d easily uninstall via the right-click or through the Windows Store. 

    • Seth_p

      Honestly, I don’t see how Microsoft would be able to address this. The design philosophy governs no folders, although grouping is okay. When you group unncessary files including help, uninstallers, readme, etc – it becomes very cluttered!

      @ymcpa:disqus is right, but only in regards to Metro apps since they’re tightly bundled and governed by the App store. Metro apps understand the Win8 ecosystem as the legacy apps don’t know how to communicate. There are several package managers (installers) and custom installers (usually wrapped) that will not [and] cannot communicate with Win8.

      If Microsoft created a shim to hide certain files, for example grep files named Readme or *.txt and Uninstall - you’re saying Microsoft knows how every developer wrote their installer, which is not true of course.

      Perhaps Microsoft will come up with a nifty UX that’ll allow legacy apps to be grouped in a different visual way… [crossing fingers]

      I’m a little more curious if legacy apps will eventually be phased out?… or is it even possible for such applications like Photoshop to run into Metro? Does the design language of Photoshop align with Win8? If they don’t phase out, then these package managers need additional instructions of how to manage Windows 8 and long live the Desktop.

    • Guest

      Legacy apps will take decades to fully phase out. MS understands that. W32 apps like Photoshop are not compatible with WinRT (Metro) apps. You could do a dumb port, but that would be pointless since they were written for a totally different environment.

    • Guest

      There was a lot of feedback on that specific point when they first showed off the Metro start menu. Frankly it’s pretty surprising and scary that MS didn’t anticipate that concern and solve it. Don’t know how they plan on doing it now, but clearly they’re going to have to have some form of automatic and intuitive grouping.

      I suggested at the time that they have a history section in the start menu similar to Zune. It doesn’t solve the problem directly. But it does mean that the frequently used apps or applets get surfaced, which makes it easier to find what you need. In the HP example, for example, if you usually went to one applet within the group, that would be surfaced onn your history group of tiles.

  • Seth_p

    “Hints progress”…? Yeah okay, Microsoft’s army just takes an entire vacation till a magic fairy comes by in January to release a Beta :-

  • Guest

    That’s all great for the tablet/touch interface. I’m curious about what’s available for the typical desktop.

    • http://davepermen.net davepermen

      the same, as it’s great for the typical desktop, just as well.

  • Anonymous

    I like the idea of ‘Groups’, like the above ProgZ Group….However, I think Microsoft should go one step further and allow HUBs under the groups to better organise and reduce clutter.

    e.g. Under the Programs group I would have a:

    (a) Microsoft Office Hub
    (b) Adobe Hub
    (c) ATI/Nvidia Hub
    (d) Realtek Hub
    (e) Canon/Epson Hub
    (f) Download Managers Hub (Utorrent/Grabit/RapidManager etc).

    They would be much better organised under HUBS (including custom Hubs), rather than a clutter of tiles.

    You could then have more groups with more Hubs (e.g. Entertainment Group – XBOX Live Hub/Windowsws Media Center/Zune Player/Windows Media Player/Powerdirector/etc).

    • Anonymous

      they are just folders. read this entry on why they aren’t doing that:
      http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-your-comments-on-the-start-screen.aspx

    • Anonymous

      Microsoft will themselves tell you that ‘HUBs’ are NOT folders :)

    • http://twitter.com/nn_hung Nguyen Ngoc Hung

      I dont think so. They just need to improve their closing Metro app gesture. Like closing a Metro app let you get back immediatedly to its Group, not the Start Screen. Since Windows is bigger than Windows Phone, and tiles can be resize, I believe Hubs and Tiles are one now. Adobe can have their bunch of apps in one tile, you know :)

    • Anonymous

      in other words, you are trying to recreate the current system where everything is under program files. The tiles should be your most used applications. You shouldn’t put every program you ever installed in the tile screen.  The other stuff should be accessed from an application list or from the search screen.

  • Anonymous

    can we just have a wallpaper for a background? this solid color BG stuff of win phone 7 is not good.

  • http://twitter.com/lambdaXpression Jonathan Marston

    Most Windows apps have 256×256 icons these days, why don’t they use those for traditional apps? The tiny icons look weird in a world of large tiles…

  • Anonymous

    As new & new leaks occur, the OS seems more confident…

  • Tuck

    I feel like program tiles should be smaller are delegated to their own row att he bottom of the screen. That way the live tiles can take up the main area.

    Also, tiles better be able to be whatever color we want them to be. Windows Phone 7′s main screen looks terrible because every tile has the same color.

    • Anonymous

      Actually, only the native tiles have the same color. 3rd party app tiles have a myriad of colors and/or images making things much more interesting.

      Not to mention, whether it looks “terrible” or not is certainly a matter of personal preference.

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  • Jed Hubic

    I’m not a fanboy of any tech/company, but lately I’ve been loving developing for Windows Phone and just MS tech in general, especially as a long time iOS dev, and I find it funny how people would praise Apple for “thinking different”, and would knock boring old Microsoft. Now those same people are in love with the stale iOS platform (still great though) and unchanging incremental Apple products, and knock Microsoft and hope they fail at doing something different and changing up the game a little bit. Some people should just admit their biases are based on everything EXCEPT the technology itself.

    Just a funny observation of the so called “tech savvy”.

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