Windows 10 Timeline And Innovative Sets UI Arrive In Latest Redstone 4 Build
Windows 10 fans have a new feature to look forward to that is currently being rolled out in the latest Windows 10 Redstone 4 (Insider Preview Build 17063). The new feature was previously promised, and Microsoft has delivered the Timeline feature, if a bit later than expected. This test build is available now to those on the Windows 10 Fast Ring insiders for PCs as of December 19.
Timeline is an extension of the Task View that is currently available on Windows 10. Timeline will show users what they have done in the past and show cards that allow the user to re-open these applications on Windows PC, iOS and Android devices. This Timeline feature was originally shown off and expected to land as part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, but that never happened.
One potential catch is that developers will have to update their apps to support Timeline, and Microsoft is asking all devs to do so. Testers of the Timeline feature will be able too see and resume their web surfing activity using Timeline in Edge and to resume what they were doing in Office apps. UWP versions of Maps, News, Money, Sports, and Weather also support the Timeline feature.
For users with multiple Windows 10 accounts (i.e. one for work, home and school) they can choose which accounts to show in the Timeline. The new Timeline feature is expected to make it to a normal shipping version of Windows 10 around April of 2018.
Another nice addition to this test build is for Edge. There is now support for Service Workers by default as Microsoft moves towards Progressive Web Apps that run on Windows 10 with Edge. This is viewed as a way to get more apps into the Microsoft Store and give Windows 10 users more to play and work with. Cortana is also able to suggest activities that more users might want to resume.
One other feature that will be active for some testers is sets, which we have previously talked about in detail. Sets allows you to group similar applications within a single windows, which are then accessible via a tabbed interface. In practice, it works similarly to modern tabbed internet browsers. Microsoft writes:
The concept behind Sets is to make sure that everything related to your task: relevant webpages, research documents, necessary files and applications, is connected and available to you in one click. Office (starting with Mail & Calendar and OneNote), Windows, and Edge become more integrated to create a seamless experience, so you can get back to what’s important and be productive, recapturing that moment, saving time – we believe that’s the true value of Sets. Starting with today’s build, Sets will be available to Insiders however because it is being introduced as a controlled study, not all Insiders will see Sets.
Other updates in the latest test build include Fluent design language for Settings, taskbar, Share UI, Clock, and Calendar along with updates for Widows Subsystem for Linux. Speaking of Linux, Windows 10 recently added a native OpenSSH client.
