There aren’t many new major features in this build. With Windows 10 now expected to be made available to manufacturers in mid-July, Microsoft has only six weeks left to finalise everything that will be included. Because of this, the emphasis is now very much on bug fixing, performance optimising and feature refining.
One such refinement is the design of jump lists on the taskbar. First introduced in Windows 7, jump lists make it easy to access your most frequently used and most recent files and folders in your pinned apps.
A small but important new feature is the addition of a new keyboard shortcut to get to Cortana. Hitting Windows and C at any point will launch Cortana into speech recognition mode so that you can instantly start issuing commands to the digital assistant.
Icons across the operating system have been heavily refined based on Insider feedback. The new designs represent a blend of Windows 7, Windows 8 and Microsoft’s new wireframe design used on Windows 10 Mobile. The icons will continue to evolve according to Microsoft, but they certainly look a lot better than the last set.
The Continuum tablet mode has also seen some improvement. Back by popular demand, you can now swipe down from the top edge of the screen to open the app commands bar.
The rest of the changes to the build are mostly minor changes and improvements. The Start screen customisation options in settings are now operational, allowing you to tailor exactly what is displayed in your Start and letting you specify when to use the full-screen Start experience.
Check out Gabe Aul’s post on the Windows blog to see everything else that Microsoft has changed in build 10130. The Edge browser, still known as Spartan in this build, has seen some improvement, including the ability to pin panes to the browser window, and the virtual desktops feature has been finalised but otherwise this is mainly just refinements of existing features to give consumers the best possible Windows experience when they get their hands on it, potentially in just a few weeks.
