Windows 11 is Beautiful, Because Microsoft is Finally Sweating the Details

With its newest redesign of Windows, Microsoft wants to win back developers.

Owen Williams
Debugger

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Windows 11, courtesy Microsoft

For the last few years, Microsoft has been on a comeback. The company has captured the developer audience by acquiring GitHub and reviving it, as well as building the world’s most popular code editor, VS Code, and bringing Linux to Windows 10.

Despite that success capturing the developer market, however, Microsoft struggled to find traction that got them to embrace building great new native apps for Windows. While Windows 10 was a huge upgrade that got better every year, it was riddled with inconsistencies, visually left a lot to desire, and had a messy story for those that did want to build apps.

Windows 11, which will be released later this year, is poised to change that with a total visual overhaul to the operating system, and the way apps are built. It’s a vast redesign that heavily uses transparent, glassy elements, moves the start menu to the middle of the taskbar, moves away from the animated ‘live tiles,’ and introduces well-considered, new design patterns for the first time in years.

But, what’s striking about Windows 11 is that it’s extensive, reaching to the wider operating system as a whole — instead of…

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Owen Williams
Debugger

Fascinated by how code and design is shaping the world. I write about the why behind tech news. Design Manager in Tech. https://twitter.com/ow