I've always been an avid Windows fan, and my response to the leaked Windows 11 build (actively running it on my Surface Pro 7 at the moment) was consistent with this. For those of you who may not have seen the new screenshots, Windows 11 has the redesigned Start Menu and some other UI elements from Windows 10X, the ill-fated Windows 10 variant focused on UWP apps, dual-screen/tablet/hybrid devices. I was very excited to see a better hybrid-centric UI with less clutter and a very GNOME 40-like environment. I've actually been running GNOME 40 on my Surface Laptop 1st Gen and have enjoyed the UI, as it was like a much less buggy, more compatible version of Windows 10X, albeit less polished, less touch-friendly, and less intelligently designed in some places. My experiences with GNOME 40 and Windows 10X have prepared me well for judging Windows 11 in its many successes...and failures.
Look and Feel
Windows 11 is largely the same OS--there isn't really a major change like Win7 --> 8 or 8 --> 10. Windows 11 feels a lot more like "what Windows 10 was meant to become" than "what replaces Windows 10." The UI of Windows 10 has gradually evolved through iconography and shell UI framework updates as its lifespan has ebbed on. The original Windows 10 UI was very clean, with sharp corners and monochromatic icons, but this look was a bit boring and left users wishing for a bit of a nicer look. When Microsoft unveiled their Fluent Design System, this vision began to be realized with its first UI enhancements, in the form of AcrylicBrush for a modern Aero Glass and Reveal highlighting for a bit of a more sophisticated look. I personally never liked Reveal much, and it's been phased out in Windows 11 as far as I can tell. Acrylic, on the other hand, is beautiful and has been adopted across the interface. With a much "thinner" level of Acrylic on the new Start Menu and some flyouts, the whole interface feels more modern, yet calls back to Windows 7's Aero Glass with its artistic translucency. Windows 11 shows the culmination of the slow changes that 10 accrued over its lifespan, including WinUI 2.x + 3 and the latest versions of Microsoft.UI.Xaml, which contain rounded-corner elements and new controls such as TabView that take these Fluent principles into account. This resulted in an incredibly inconsistent experience, with icons from several decades, corners with and without rounding, and different types of composition brushes, all within the same apps. Windows 11 has fixed much of this, removing most pre-Windows 7 icons (though reserving some 7-era ones for some reason), making the newer UI frameworks the default, and rounding all the corners.
Speaking of rounded corners, windows now all have rounded corners. This is similar to what Win7 did, but more exaggerated, and let me just say it looks amazing. Windows pop out at the user, and everything looks bubblier and more modern, closer to the Fluent Design vision. I knew they'd do this when the Surface Laptop Go came out last year--the device has rounded corners on the screen itself. Since this is a first-party device, it was clear it was designed with the future of Windows in mind, as the sharp-edged, inconsistent Win10 at the time looked a little silly on it. Now, while I've been praising this design unification, it does make the exceptions stand out. Aside from the remaining Win7 icons, File Explorer has received ZERO updates, Control Panel is still present with broken UI, some panels have different brushes seemingly for no reason (I'll get into this later), and some sharp Win10 and Win8 elements remain. Namely, the volume/now playing dialog continues to be black with generic transparency, with Win8 "Metro" UI, and some flyouts have received no updates (again, I'll get into this later). I was also hoping for updates to the standard loading control and boot animation, similar to what was seen in Windows 10X, but no such luck. Context menus have been slightly modified, but not extensively, and they look even more inconsistent than before, with different flyout designs for the Taskbar, Desktop, and app icons on the Taskbar.
Start
The most startling change in Windows 11 is of course the redesigned Start Menu. With the disappearance of Live Tiles and increased border room for each app icon, it feels a lot like the grid style available in Stardock's Start10 utility, or system flyouts in GNOME 40. This feels great for tablet use and isn't particularly intrusive on desktop. It also adds a Recommended section with recent documents spanning many apps--I very much appreciate this and will certainly make use of it in the future. It does, however, cause me to miss the short-lived Sets tests with tab collections that synced across devices. The Sets tab collection feature is just one precedent for Win11 Start Menu changes--poor performance in the Windows 10 Start Menu, dislike of Live Tiles, a move away from Windows 8/8.1 "Metro" styling, and the evolution of the slowly appearing Fluent Design System have all indicated the need for a new Start Menu...the only question is if this is the one people wanted. The new Start Menu is large, non-hierarchal (similar to Win10, not fixing one of the main complaints about its Start Menu), and very touch-focused. While I personally like it, one could imagine a better iteration, with a more Windows 7-style menu (or at least an option for one), but with this AcrylicBrush translucent background and more spacing. Additionally, while I do appreciate that Live Tiles were not a great part of the Start Menu, recent UI updates had improved the look and feel of them to the point where I actually appreciated their presence. Personally, I feel the ideal move would have been to round the tile corners and throw them on the Desktop as an optional feature, similar to Sidebar/Gadgets in Windows Vista and 7. Instead, they expanded upon the poorly-conceived News and Interests bar with the new Widgets section. While you might expect this section to have Live Tile content for apps, it instead is purely a news feed. However, I think the most egregious oversight in the new Start menu is the inability to resize it. They could have easily allowed Start to be resized, much like in Windows 10, but possibly switching to a list view instead of a grid at certain widths. Preventing users from resizing the Start Menu prevents them from easing their transitions to Windows 11 and adapting the interface to their preferences.
Taskbar
Windows 11 shifts the default taskbar alignment to center. After decades of left alignment, this is a bit different, and I personally think it's not bad. I prefer it on the left for desktop use, but luckily that is still an option. I think I'll keep it centered on my SP7 for now...though the Start button not being in the center irritates me somewhat. The Taskbar also sports new icons for Start, Search, Task View, and the new Widgets view, all of which fit the new Fluent Design iconography standards, and an updated Search flyout. However, we begin to get into the inconsistencies and problems with the System Tray. The icons in the Tray have not received any update, but that isn't much of a problem as they don't really need one. However, the flyouts these icons correspond to have not received updates either. Quite possibly my favorite Windows 10X feature was the updated Action Center, which replaced most of the System Tray flyouts with a Chrome OS-style mini menu. Win11 Action Center has received a refresh and it looks quite nice, as is the case with Windows Ink Workspace. The Wi-Fi flyout has been updated and the new control styles look great, but the AcrylicBrush background of the flyout is different from the Action Center and Taskbar brushes. It doesn't look bad, but it looks inconsistent, which is a common theme we find throughout modern Windows history, 11 being no exception. The Connect flyout has a similar AcrylicBrush mismatch, which again just feels inconsistent. The volume and battery flyouts have received no updates at all, not even including rounded corners.
File Explorer + Control Panel
For some reason, Microsoft can't seem to move past the ancient and barely updated File Explorer and Control Panel. Explorer might have received new icons, but the interface still generally looks old and doesn't fit the modern aesthetic. For some reason, the ribbon and input bars have not received the curvature treatment, which again adds to inconsistency and detracts from any feeling of modernity. Additionally, despite being a heavily upvoted Feedback Hub post, they have failed to add tabs to File Explorer, putting it behind most decent Linux DE file managers. Control Panel is even worse--Dark mode is broken, icons are inconsistent, and the whole thing should be obsolete. There is a Settings app, yet this still exists. Microsoft actually added to Control Panel with the Windows Tools menu, visible in many Windows 10 Dev Channel Insider builds. Dark mode is even further broken here, resulting in quite possibly the worst piece of modern interface design ever. I was very disappointed to find this was still the case in Windows 11, which seems more and more like another minor Windows 10 feature upgrade with a rebrand than a bona fide new Windows version.
Touch Navigation
Windows 11 has ditched Windows 10's Tablet Mode, which while helpful for tablet use, made the experience of especially hybrid devices very janky. Switching to tablet style usage has no real changes in the interface--though touch support has been vastly improved for window navigation and other interface elements to make up for it. Now, dragging a window with a finger results in a visual change to the window, shrinking it within an AcrylicBrush frame for emphasis and visual feedback. The new Start Menu is of course better for touch navigation, with more icon padding and a more touch-friendly All Apps list. Swipe gestures have been reworked as well--swiping left from the right edge still brings up Action Center, but the opposite now brings up Widgets view for some reason...but to be fair, the new three- or four-finger swipe up for Task View makes more sense. It's also the same as GNOME 40's equivalent touchpad/touchscreen gesture for Activities View (their equivalent to Task View). The only changes I'd make in the general touch interface would be a universal back button at the bottom left and shifting the window shrinkage during dragging to the bottom of the Acrylic frame so the window is more visible while dragging. All in all, the interface is like a more touch-friendly GNOME 40, which is certainly a welcome design.
Conclusion
Windows 11 kills Windows 10 in many ways with its interface design and feature set, but it certainly has its downfalls. The main downfall is the same problem that has been plaguing Windows for years--inconsistency. Inconsistent controls, brushes, app designs, icons, etc. hold 11 back from perfection. Personally, I think 11 has more benefits than downfalls, especially as 10 had far more of an inconsistency problem--it just feels wrong to me to market a "new version of Windows" that features an incomplete and inconsistent UI upgrade, and doesn't even address the biggest concerns among Insiders (File Explorer updating, Control Panel consolidation OR upgrading in place of Settings, and other inbox app updating that seems to not be a priority). This feels a lot more like a marketing gimmick than a full phat Windows version upgrade, though I do think this is a decent step in the right direction. I'm hoping they include some of these fixes etc. in the final release--this is only a leaked dev build after all, and it hasn't even gone through Insider flighting yet.
I hadn't realized they had leaked the whole build, rather than just screenshots. Whoa. Nice breakdown of the features and UI.
this is awesome thomas makin