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April showers bring updates from the Redmond towers! Reviewing the Windows 10 April update

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Introduction

With another year, comes another update. Having re-written this section of the review multiple times now feels just the same as the world felt when the April update slipped it’s April 10th release schedule date. Oh, that faithful Patch Tuesday, now come and gone. Nobody really knew what caused the update to slip a full 20 days, but it was most likely for the right reasons. Twice when installing the so called released build, 17133, my humble Lenovo Ultrabook machine randomly rebooted the update from the beginning – prompting me to retry each time. Something didn’t feel quite right.

Then we got word that the so-called shipped version received an update. This was supposed to patch some random bluescreen issues and was applied to all the insiders running that version. This was pulled a few days later, with An official explanation from Microsoft that they are rolling this security update into an entirely new build. This became 17134, the version you, dear reader, may actually be running on as you read this. From the first few weeks of experience being out and about, the update has hit many computers – with my regular complaints of corrupted Outlook datafiles trickling in, and those sighing of relief from the passage of time their update took to complete successfully. Hopefully you are one of those latter people, rather than of the former camp. By far, the update was supposed to negate what it almost caused: An unknown, countless array of user errors as they receive a faulty version of Windows on their shiny new computer which ends up bluescreening in the middle of first boot. Oh boy. I think we can safely say, disaster averted! Now only one remains: That text to speech says the update’s name as the April 10th Windows update? Only they know what could have been.

So what’s new in this update?

I ask myself this question every day and each time we get a new Windows release. Many blogs and websites will try and downplay this update. They will say that it’s minor, that not much is to be seen – almost downgrading it to a mere service pack. What tragedy, right? Yet you may be aware that for the accessibility community, specifically those relying on Ease of Access features Microsoft built in to Windows, this update is more significant.

As you may see from this screenshot, much of the accessibility settings have been re-designed. This interface is found on all major platforms, including Android and Apple, where categorical navigation defines the disabilities for which preferences are available. You may choose from Vision, Hearing, and interaction. These three categories broadly define the areas in which Windows has Ease of Access features. For screen reader users, this is laid out in a tree view within the Settings list, allowing you to navigate and pick an option from one of the groups.

That’s just one aspect to Windows 10’s shiny new polish. Nearby sharing will allow you to share media content with X-BOX 1 consoles or nearby Windows 10 computers running the same update. Timeline is also new, bringing handoff capabilities between devices synced across the cloud in a history view. Imagine looking at the exact document you opened last night at 7 PM on the kitchen computer or browsing the same photo album on your laptop as you watched with the family. These all bring more coherence to the platform as it matures to be something people recognize and grow to enjoy using.

Meanwhile, if you focus on work, Focus Assist might be the right feature to remove clutter from apps such as Skype. This is an improved incarnation of the “quiet hours” feature, introduced in a prior update. Toggling it on will ensure that notifications cannot become a distraction, and people pinned to your taskbar can still reach you or be reached. Other changes round out this update, but these cannot be sorted into any category, as they sprinkle across a huge subset of features. Lucky for us, though, we can start simple and move forth from there to cover some of the deeper changes.

New in your everyday experience

Here I would like to highlight some features you may notice right away as you use Windows. These are ones you would come to through the natural use of the Windows interface, including the taskbar, start menu, action center, system tray, and the task switcher.

New to your start screen

Action center gets into action

We’ve exhausted the action center, finally. Let’s give it a little break.

What’s new with the Taskbar and everything else that’s basic?

Settings keeps expanding

With this update, I believe we are seeing the last of some settings control panel applets. These have been around ever since the Windows 98 days, with some not getting touched and love in years. With the new Settings app, Microsoft has a chance to bring over an improved interface for finding settings that are designed for the modern age, full of fancy options like HDR graphics. Of course, this brings a logical list of grouped settings, something which is far more vaguely defined in the original “category” view of the Control panel. So, what has changed? On the surface, nothing. Settings will contain your 13 familiar items from the Fall Creator’s update. Dig deeper, further down into the parts of Windows, and you’ll find quite a goldmine of hidden gems.

What’s new with Ease of Access?

Normally, I have relegated the Ease of Access to come near the end of my review. I find this to be bias against users of these tools and figured a change of pace would be nice. Let’s dive into some of the changes to all of the available Ease of Access Settings.

Braille display improvements come in the form of greater reliability, now using a newer 5.5 version of BRLTTY and 3.5 of LibLouis used in this update. When I tried testing typing on my Vario Ultra, key feedback was quick and Narrator did not struggle to keep up with text input. However, the Braille would initially completely stop in mid-typing, something which solved itself after a reboot and reinstall of the Braille components. You can remove them by going into settings> apps and features, then choosing “manage optional features.”

One major change which came with an update to 17134 is the ability to change the Braille system driver being used with your device. Only when a display is plugged in, a combo-box appears with the label “change your Braille Display Driver”, wherein the highlighted option is”(Narrator) LibUSB-1.0: Baum [VarioUltra 40 (40 cells)]” (or the name of your device, of course.) When you change it to USB composite device, the display will interface with NVDA and other readers using the standard USB driver. This is very seamless and in my mind removes a painpoint with Braille, specifically in how it is configured.

Our second attempt at a typing test produced this hand-crafted text:

This is once again being constructed upon a braille display using grade 2 US braille. This I am attempting on my second time, after discovering that my original observations on this were not entirely complete. A after reboot and reinstallation of all braille dependencies, things are working a lot better. I find the translator to handle non UEB typing more gracefully than other platforms, such as Apple’s IOS. I will not correct this section so that you may see how accurate typing is on this display if no keystrokes are missed.
Like with most screen readers using LibLouis as their engine for braille translation a few things have to be kept in mind. If writing a correction, whilst you type and it containing only one letter change, you must also place the letter sign dots 5 and 6 before the corrected letter. Also, if you are using hardware keyboards, the “Microsoft Candidate UI” window will always pop up on your display. A workaround for seeing what you have written is to just place thevery cursor at the end of your display line. This will refocus the text being typed.
Braille is a dream to use with narrator. This is not only because typing is more reliable, but also because you can now send system commands to Windows and simulate even key combinations. Space with r and t will cycle you through the task and app switchers respectively. If you have more than two programs open and working with, the task switcccer is recommended, as the sandard aqt tab only cycles through two open programs.

You can see there that the Grade 2 US translation was not perfect, but far better than the one I’ve used elsewhere. Contractions like O’clock, which some translations throw away, do show up in Narrator. Stay tuned for a more in-depth Braille article to come soon.

What’s new with Edge?

There are over 43 new features which are making it to Edge this round. Very impressive, and all of them you will notice at some point or another during your experience. Some are there to improve discovering new things, like the renaming of “extensions” to “add more features to Edge.” and automatic detection of addresses as you type. Here’s just a few others:

And that’s just the beginning of all that change in Edge.

Is Cortana more personal?

With a new feature called show me, you bet! Oh wait, that’s an app you can get from the Windows store. Still, if you don’t know how to access or use a setting, I recommend you check this out in the Store as it may help you understand what those settings all do.

If you live in either United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Canada, India, Spain, China, The United States, Mexico, France, Italy, Japan, or Brazil, you’re in luck! The Notebook will be available for you. Items such as to-do lists and shopping lists are all now under one “lists” section. Activities allow you to resume timeline events right from Cortana, so you can pull up a specific item.

Browse the web with Edge, and she will find related items and group them into so-called “Cortana collections.” These will show up in your notebook, and you can organize them into lists. Best of all, in theory she should know if you don’t like a product or don’t want that suggestion based on how you customize this.

And what did Microsoft do will all that extra space not put into showing your notifications? They use it to show you tips and questions you can ask to get started with the assistant. This should give anyone not familiar with these new creatures a shot at accepting them with all their quirks.

Other random changes

Every review has this section, at least of those I have written. The one where we throw the rest of the features into one big bucket. So, here’s your bucket for the spring.

  • The Emoji panel can stay expanded. As you may or may not recall, pressing Windows and the slash key invoked this new emoji screen. Now you can just keep hammering away and spam your friend with all those lovely cakes and animals.
  • When you hold down the power button, Windows knows. It knows, and in its panic, it will start to collect diagnostic data.
  • Bluetooth devices supporting instant connections will work with Windows, provided there’s compatibility enabled on the device for this. This is similar to how Apple’s Air Pods pair in that they use NFC-type technology to alert the device of being nearby.
  • The settings About page lets you copy your computer name to the clipboard.
  • The typing settings include more touch keyboards as well as for customizing the emoji panel.
  • You can change the font used to display hand-written text in within the pen and touch settings page.
  • Windows updates will keep the computer unable to go to standby if it’s plugged in and inactive. It does this for at 2 hours most, so if the update is huge and you’re on dial-up, don’t worry, your computer will still go to sleep.
  • An entirely redesigned touch keyboard, written with the fluent-design language. Shape-writing is now supported. You can draw a caret and insert spaces between letters if you are a pen user.
  • Conclusions

    This is not a minor update. I always say this, even though only 6 or so months pass between my writing of each piece on the Windows saga. Each time, I somehow manage to rocket passed 5000 words. Why is this? It’s clear to me that there’s never a shortage of features, because even now there could be 10 more I could list off for you. Seriously, never under-estimate the power of an update. We see far more unification and a creation of Windows to being more than just the thing that runs on your computer. It could be seamless, cross-linked, allowing you to always interact with a Windows device and have the same experiences. This probably is the ultimate goal, and although we are far from this future’s fruition, we are not far behind, either.

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