Windows 11: Microsoft is testing a new look for the Start menu that recalls the great days of Windows 8

Microsoft continues to evolve the user experience on Windows 11. In a beta of the system, a new widget panel was added to the Start menu.

What if the ideas from Windows 8 finally found their place in Windows 11? The latest beta version of Microsoft’s OS seems to be testing features that are indeed reminiscent of the “tiles” of the hated successor to Windows 7. In the traditional Start menu of build 26212 of Windows 11, it is now possible to add widgets that deliver relevant information at a quick glance.

A feature still in beta

Reserved for users of the “Canary” version of the system (the most unstable branch of development), this new feature is not particularly highlighted by Microsoft, which has buried it within its customization options in the application. Settings. Once activated, these “companions» from the Start menu, as Microsoft calls them, allow for example to display the weather or stock prices in a panel welded to the Start menu.

For the moment, there are not many usable widgets for the simple reason that no app developer has yet been able to get their hands dirty and create pieces of code specific to this new functionality. But if the idea fiercely reminds you of a few things, that’s completely normal: it’s a feature more or less directly inspired by Windows 8.

The eternal return of widgets

The highly unpopular Microsoft OS had in fact attempted to impose its system of “Live Tiles”, or “Dynamic Tiles” in good French, shortcuts which were used both to launch certain programs and to offer relevant contextual information for the user. Thus the weather tile offered, directly within the Start menu, details on the temperature and sunshine in the locations predefined by the system.

Tiles did not have the success that Microsoft predicted and are therefore returning today in the more classic form of “widgets”, these small interactive tiles popularized in the 2000s. Microsoft has not forgotten to make a little nod to its unloved OS, since the description of the new feature in the settings mentions the “Live Tiles”, but which this time would be “adaptive cards brought back into fashion», the umpteenth name used by Microsoft to describe these good old widgets.

Source : Albacore – X via The Verge