After looking at some more screenshots and videos of people using the leaked build, it does look like they’ve given some attention to the widget styles to try to better match WinUI2/3, so that’s much appreciated. If they could enforce Compact Mode from WinUI3 as the default for desktop with keyboard and mouse mode, I would be supremely happy. For the titlebar, I wouldn’t mind either plain white/black/acrylic/whatever, but I’d want it to stay consistent. No more surprise vertical menubars. I hope that’s going to be permanently labelled A Bad Idea(tm) going forward. The traditional File/Edit/View style menu bars house *multiple* vertical menubars in less space and they don’t require you to compromise your feature-rich application in an effort to emulate a mobile platform that doesn’t exist anymore.

And this is a leaked build, so I’ll definitely be staying tuned for further developments. The Settings app looks very much out of place in the old square design so I can’t wait to see how they’ve tackled that. I don’t want a return to Control Panel per se, but I do want a Settings app that doesn’t look like a mobile app (again, to mimic a mobile platform that doesn’t even exist anymore) and doesn’t take 6+ clicks to do what used to take 3+/- in Control Panel.

Gotta say they’ve done a great job at making Windows look beautiful again. Haven’t seen this in a decade. The people making the backgrounds, widget styles, animations, and icons all need raises.