A step in the right direction
Windows 10 has been a pretty huge success for Microsoft with over 350 million active devices worldwide. When Microsoft introduced Windows 10, the company promised to deliver seamless updates for free. Back in 2015, Microsoft already released a new update for Windows 10 which is known as the November Update. The November Update wasn’t really that significant, but it added some refinements to the OS to make it slightly better.
Today, the company is releasing the first major upgrade for Windows 10: the Anniversary Update. The Anniversary Update (Version 1607) is the first part of the “Redstone” release. Next year, we will get another update for Windows 10, which is expected to focus mostly on Windows 10 Mobile. For now, let’s talk about the Anniversary Update, which is being rolled out to devices starting today for PCs and Mobile. With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft has added several new features to Windows 10, reimagined some features, and fixed a lot of bugs (and added some, too). From the Start Menu to the Developer Mode, Microsoft has improved a lot of features in the OS with the Anniversary Update. There are a ton of small improvements in this major update which makes it a really great upgrade for existing Windows 10 users. Windows 10 is taking a step forward with the Anniversary Update — and yes, it’s in the right direction. There are a lot of new exciting additions to look forward to in the Anniversary Update — so let’s take a closer look at all of the major new features in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
VIDEO HANDS-ON VIDEO START SCREEN With the initial release of Windows 10, Microsoft brought back Start Menu from Windows 7. In the November Update from last year, Microsoft slightly improved the Start Menu. And with the Anniversary Update, Microsoft is adding a bunch of new improvements to the Start Menu, for both desktops and tablet devices. When you open up the Start Menu on your Windows 10 PC, the first thing you will probably notice is the lack of the All Apps button. That’s right, Microsoft is removing the All Apps list from the Start Menu – instead, Microsoft is merging the Recently Added, Most Used, and the All Apps lists in one single list. In the Start Menu, you will firstly see the Recently Added apps, following that will be the Most Used list, and then you will find all of your apps. This is a very nice replacement for the All Apps list, and it essentially makes it a lot easier to get to the All Apps list. Just like the original Windows 10 Start Menu, you can still hide apps from the Most Used list, and you can also clear the Recently Added list which can be very handy at times. Furthermore, the Recently Added section now shows three apps, instead of just one which is a pretty neat improvement.
ALL APPS, MOST USED, AND RECENTLY ADDED ARE NOW IN ONE SINGLE LIST Microsoft has also moved around a few things in the Start Menu with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. For example, there’s a new sidebar just near the Apps list where you can find the Power button, Settings button, and your Profile. It’s slightly easier to access these buttons thanks to the new sidebar in the Anniversary Update. Just like the previous Start Menu, you can add your own folders to the Start Menu – for example, if you want to quickly access your Downloads folder, you can just add a button to the Start Menu from the Settings app.
This is what makes the new Start Menu a lot easier to use. Previously, when you added 3-4 buttons to your Start Menu, it was a mess – but now, it looks a lot cleaner since the buttons are just tiny icons on the side of the Start Menu. Microsoft has also added a hamburger menu for the sidebar, which lets you expand the sidebar to see what each of the icons are for – in case you weren’t sure.
The Live Tiles section of the Windows 10 Start Menu will look pretty much the same as the initial Start Menu of Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update. There is, however, a new type of tiles: Chaseable Live Tiles. These Live Tiles can be really useful – as it allows you to follow the content that is shown on the Live Tile. For example, when the MSPoweruser app on Windows 10 shows an article on the Live Tile, clicking on it will directly take you to that news – rather than opening the homepage of the app. This is a very nice addition to the Live Tiles in Windows 10 that are also available on Mobile devices – however, do keep in mind that this feature won’t be available for all apps straightaway, and developers will have to manually implement this feature into their Universal Windows Apps.
Microsoft has also changed the Start Screen for Tablet devices with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. There isn’t a lot of improvements in the Start Screen, but Microsoft made some minor improvements to make the Start Screen easier to use for Tablet Devices. For example, you’ll see that Microsoft has ditched the All Apps list for the Start Screen, too. When you open up the Start Screen in Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you will be greeted with the Live Tiles.
THE START SCREEN IS NOW A LOT EASIER TO USE ON TABLETS And when you open up the All Apps list from the sidebar, you’ll notice that it’s very similar to what we had back in Windows 8/8.1. The new UI makes it a lot easier to find and open apps on a tablet, which was one of the main issues in the Tablet Mode for Windows 10 back in 2015. The Start Screen in Windows 10 still has all of the other features that you’ll get in the Start Menu, so there isn’t a lot new here in the Tablet Mode for Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
Microsoft has fixed a lot of issues which I complained about in my original Windows 10 review with the latest update. The Apps list is much easier to navigate, the Tablet Mode has been much improved, and the sidebar makes accessing the shortcuts a lot easier. Microsoft will continue to evolve the Start Menu with future updates to Windows 10, but this is just the start — and it’s definitely a good one.
ACTION CENTER Windows 10 brought a new notification center, which Microsoft likes to call the Action Center. This is where you get all the notifications from Windows 10 apps and even the classic Win32 apps. Just like most of the other features in the Anniversary Update, Microsoft is adding a couple of new features and improvements to the Action Center to make the feature useful on the desktop. When you open up the Action Center in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you will notice that Microsoft has slightly improved the user interface of the Action Center and it now looks a lot better. But of course, looks can’t be everything – the Action Center needs to be useful. We use the Action Center on our phones everyday or even every hour, but on the desktop, that’s mostly not the case. However, Microsoft has added a nice a couple of refinements to the OS with the new update which makes it more useful on the desktop./
The first feature, which Microsoft calls Notification Syncing basically notifies you about the notifications from your smartphone on your Windows 10 PC. It’ll also let you know when your phone’s battery is low, or when you miss a call, which can be pretty useful at times. What’s impressive is the fact that this feature works with Android, as well as Microsoft’s own Windows 10 Mobile operating system. The feature doesn’t work with iOS yet, but it’s likely we might see it arrive in the near-future.
Notification Syncing is definitely a really nice addition in the Anniversary Update – when it works, that is. If you work on your Windows 10 PC with your smartphone on the desk, the feature could be a bit useless as your smartphone will be able to notify you before Windows 10 syncs it to show the notification on your PC. For example, when I enabled notification syncing on my Android phone (the OnePlus 3), the notifications took a while to show up on my PC. Furthermore, it didn’t even sync the notifications sometimes, which is quite disappointing to see. This is the same case for Windows 10 Mobile, but Notification Syncing will work slightly better if you have a Windows 10 Mobile in some cases. If you own a Windows 10 Mobile, Notification Syncing for Universal Windows Apps can be a bit annoying — for example, if you have Tweetium installed on your phone and PC, you’ll get double notifications which is really annoying. But the again, these are configureable, so you can disable Notification Syncing for some apps if you like.
Notification Syncing can turn out to be useful when you get notifications for messages or notifications about a reply from your Twitter buddy, thanks to the actionable notifications in Windows 10. When you receive a notification from an app on your phone that supports actionable notifications on Windows 10 Mobile (or Quick Replies on Android), it will also work on your Windows 10 PC. This means you’ll be able to reply to a message or interact with an actionable notification right from your Windows 10 PC thanks to Notification Syncing. Just like the actual syncing feature, this can be slightly unreliable.
Alongside Notification Syncing, Microsoft is adding Universal Dismiss to Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update. As the name reveals, this will simply sync the dismissal of notifications between your Windows 10 PC and Mobile. Unlike Notification Syncing, this feature won’t work with all the apps – developers will have to implement this feature using the APIs in Windows 10, which I’ve heard are quite easy to implement. We didn’t get a chance to use any apps that support Universal Dismissal, but developers should be releasing their apps that come with Anniversary Update features such as Chaseable Tiles and Universal Dismiss sometime very soon.
RICH NOTIFICATIONS MAKE THE ACTION CENTER A LOT MORE USEFUL Microsoft made a lot of small improvements to the Action Center in Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update which makes the experience a lot better. For example, you can now hide a group of notification just by hovering over the group, and hitting the middle button of your mouse. Furthermore, there is a new type of notifications which includes “hero images.” These notifications can be a bit annoying in some scenarios, especially for the toast notifications, but they look really beautiful in the actual Action Center. Microsoft is also letting developers show rich notifications in the Anniversary Update, which provide a lot more functionality right from the Action Center.
Furthermore, the update also brings the ability to rearrange the Quick Actions in the Action Center which can be pretty useful. Additionally, the update also adds a new Priority feature for the Action Center – basically, it allows you to prioritize the notifications for some apps. If that wasn’t enough, you can also now control how many notifications an app can show at a time which is also a very nice little addition.
YOU STILL CAN’T CONFIGURE THE POSITION FOR TOAST NOTIFICATIONS IN WINDOWS 10 CORTANA The Anniversary Update also brings a couple of improvements for Cortana, the personal assistant in Windows 10. It is worth noting that Notification Syncing is powered by Cortana on Windows 10, and you can control the settings for Notification Syncing right from Cortana. Cortana didn’t really pick up a lot of new features in the Anniversary Update, but it got some nice improvements which make the personal assistant slightly more personal. First of all, if you weren’t able to use Cortana on your Windows 10 PC previously because of your region, you will be glad to know that Cortana is now supported in Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil) and French (Canada).
In the Anniversary Update, Cortana can now be accessed from the Lock Screen. This is very useful on tablets, especially when you don’t want to unlock your device to get a quick info from Cortana. Cortana on the lockscreen works just like you would expect, you just need to say “Hey Cortana,” and Cortana will pop-up. From there, you can do everything that’s possible on the desktop with Cortana. For example, you can say things like “show me the photos from last week” or “send an email.” Of course, you don’t want others to be able to get information from your emails or calendar using Cortana on the lockscreen – thankfully though, there’s an option to prevent Cortana from accessing details from your email, calendar and Power BI which is enabled by default (high-five for that, Microsoft!).
Alongside Cortana on the lockscreen, the Windows 10 Anniversary Update also brings some tiny new improvements for the personal assistant. For example, it can now notify you whenever your device is running out of battery, you can find your phone using Cortana, and it can also allow you to share map directions between your devices. Cortana is also able to give you suggestions for reminders using data from your email, and it also integrates with Groove Music in the Anniversary Update. The Anniversary Update brings a ton of little improvements to Cortana, for example, there is a new user interface for Reminders and you can now attach images to Reminders. Additionally, Cortana can now set reminders without having a lot of information about the reminder. For example, if you set a reminder for “wash the clothes,” Cortana will set the reminder, but it won’t ask you for more information — if you want, you can easily set the time/place/person for that reminder.
Cortana continues to improve in Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update. Just like the Action Center, it has picked up some small improvements in the Anniversary Update that make it slightly better — but power users will continue to use Cortana just to search for apps or their files. Apart from them, a lot of power users probably won’t be speaking to a virtual assistant on their PC. The latest refinements to Cortana are definitely very nice, and they make Cortana feel like an actual personal assistant.
EDGE Let’s talk about Microsoft Edge, the crazy fast browser in Windows 10 which lacks some important features. When Microsoft first introduced Edge, the company promised to deliver support for extensions. The initial release of Windows 10 didn’t have extensions support, and it was supposed to arrive with the November Update – however, that didn’t happen either.
With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft is finally adding support for Extensions. Yes, finally. Edge Extensions are really the most important new feature in Edge for the Anniversary Update. Extensions on Edge work very similarly to how they work on Google Chrome. In fact, if you develop extensions for Chrome, you will easily be able to bring it to Microsoft Edge. Edge extensions can be distributed by the Windows Store, which is really great since it allows you to reach more than 350 million Windows 10 users, and be able to deliver updates seamlessly.
On the Windows Store, there are already a couple of extensions available for Edge – there’s AdBlock, AdBlock Plus, Save to Pocket, Reddit Enhancement Suite, Pin It Button, OneNote and Evernote Web Clipper, LastPass, Amazon Assistant, Translator, Office Online and lastly, Page Analyzer. All of these extensions work flawlessly, and they really make Edge a lot more useful. For example, you can use the Save To Pocket extension to save an article to your Pocket to read later, or use the LastPass extension to manage your extensions. And if you happen to end up on a site with a foreign language that you don’t understand, the Translator extension can come in really handy.
Extensions are useful and they are great to have on any browser. But the main problem could be Edge’s extensions APIs — which, when compared to Chrome, are lacking. For example, the “webRequest” API is still In Development, the “tabs” API is still In Development, and things like “cookies” and “downloads” APIs are also In Development or Under Consideration. This is something which might put prevent some developers from bringing their extensions to Edge, but hopefully, Microsoft address in the future. To be fair, Extensions on Edge are pretty powerful as they are now, you’ll get all the basic extensions like AdBlock or LastPass, and they just work.
Alongside Extensions, Microsoft has added a couple of other features to Edge with the Anniversary Update. The browser finally lets you “Paste and Go” a link, choose where downloaded files are Stored, make it clear your browsing data everytime you close the browser, set a default download location, and it also now supports swipe left/right to back/forward. These are just some of the new minor additions which Edge was missing back in the initial release of Windows 10. These are some very minor additions, but they make Edge an ease to use.
As for developers, the Anniversary Update brings some new goodies for EdgeHTML (the web engine for Microsoft Edge). The browser finally supports the Web Notification API, and there’s also support for the Fetch and Beacon APIs. With the Web Notifications API, a website can easily push a notification which will show up directly on the Windows 10 Action Center. This is a very nice addition, but unfortunately, it is pretty useless at the moment as Microsoft Edge still doesn’t support the ServiceWorker API. This means, websites can’t actually push notifications – thankfully though, Microsoft says it has started working on the ServiceWorker API, and it will hopefully arrive with the next update for Windows 10 (or as a Cumulative Update). The Anniversary Update also brings support for WOFF 2.0, which means Edge will be faster at loading fonts in some cases. In case you are wondering, Edge’s development tools still feel pretty clunky, and Microsoft hasn’t added a lot of new improvements to the F12 tools apart from the new accessibility tree view. I wasn’t a big fan of the F12 tools last year when I reviewed the initial release of Windows 10 – -and 1 year later, it’s still pretty much the same. This is something which I hope Microsoft will rebuild from the ground-up, rather than using the old Internet Explorer development tools.
EDGE STILL LACKS A LOT OF FEATURES source:mspoweruser 
