First real look at the new Windows look and feel shows a very different taskbar


The taskbar is getting ever so monochrome—even as apps are looking more exciting.

At its developer day event yesterday, Microsoft spent a long time extolling the virtues of the Universal Windows Platform and the Windows 10 Creators Update to developers. But subtly, the company slipped in a screenshot that gives us a first look at Project Neon, the next iteration of the company's design language.

The picture shows a refreshed version of the Groove music app on a Windows desktop. The fundamentals of the app and its layout aren't changed, underscoring that Neon is very much an iteration of the current Metro/Microsoft Design Language (MDL). The window has shed its discrete title bar and one pixel border, with the application content now extending to the very edge of the window. The search text field no longer has a box around it, and the left hand pane has a hint of translucency to it.

This adds a little more visual interest. While Metro/MDL has long been assumed to require flat expanses of plain color, this isn't entirely true. High quality and especially photographic imagery are an encouraged part of Metro designs, but this was especially apparent in the early days. Many parts of Windows Phone 7 used "full bleed" (which is to say, edge-to-edge) pictures behind text and other UI elements, and even in Windows 8, some applications such as the Music app were photo-heavy. But this use of artwork is not universal, and in plenty of programs it can be difficult to do appropriately. The translucency in Neon will give developers better ways of demarcating parts of their user interface without requiring the adoption of photos and other artwork.

The other notable part of the Groove window is that it's just called "Groove." Currently, the app is named "Groove Music," a transitional title from the (old) Music to the (new) Groove branding. That transition appears to be coming to an end shortly.

More striking, the screenshot shows a very new look for the taskbar. Currently, Windows 10's icons are a mix of multicolored (such as Explorer, Edge, and Paint) and monochrome, such as the one for Store (a white shopping bag), Settings (a white cog), and Groove. It looks as if Neon is taking this idea further, with Edge and Explorer losing their colors, too. But in a change from the current icons, the color appears to be restored when the app is actually running. The taskbar's colors have also been flipped with the monochrome icons being black rather than white.


The picture doesn't include any notification area icons, but the collapsed Cortana bar suggests that this is a secondary monitor on a multimonitor system, rather than an indication that the notification area is going away.

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