Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 10525

Today Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 10525.  Anyone running Windows 10 can opt into getting preview builds by signing up for the insider program and enabling preview builds in Windows Update.

You can read more about the new build and how to get it at Microsoft’s blog
http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/08/18/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-10525/

This build fixes two of the issues I complained about in my previous blog post.

Preview

Active Window Title Bars will now be colored based (somewhat) on your selected accent color if the “Show color on Start, taskbar, and action center” option is enabled.

As you can see in the preview image above the title bar color will be a much brighter variant of your accent color.  I’m personally not a fan of how bright it is, but it’s a step in the right direction.  I’ll write Microsoft some feedback about it and maybe they’ll change it to look a little nicer.

 

Borders2

The other issue they fixed is that Inactive Window Borders are no longer transparent.

Nice.

 

Microsoft is going to be updating windows much more frequently than they have in the past.  So many small issues like this will likely get ironed out over the next couple of months.

Unless you’re like me and like being on the cutting edge and can tolerate these growing pains I’d recommend waiting a little while to move to Windows 10.  Anyone currently running Windows 7 or 8 can upgrade for free anytime until the end of July 2016, so take your time.

Biggest gripes with Windows 10 so far

White Title Bars for desktop applications
Boo1There’s a hack to have them use your accent color
Yay

But it’s not perfect
Boo2


Although the border of windows appear to be 1 pixel thick they seem to actually be as thick as they were in Windows 7/8 so you can still grab them, but they’re invisible.

I have a nifty utility that lets you snap a windows to the edge of another window or the edge of the desktop.  Because of the invisible borders windows that are snapped to each other have a small space between them.


The window border turns mostly transparent when the window is out of focus.
I often use the Aero Snap feature to have two windows side by side and now one of them will have a 1 pixel line of my desktop background showing through around it and it bothers me so much.

AeroSnap
Left side: window in focus with accent colored window border.
Right side: unfocused window with no or mostly transparent border showing obnoxious checkerboard desktop background I made to highlight the issue.Zoom


No Windows Media Center.
I have a TV tuner card and watch/record over the air TV, and Windows Media Center is by far my favorite application for doing that. All of the alternatives I have tried don’t work nearly as well and are poorly documented and difficult to set up.