Windows 10 Preview Reveals Mail and Calendar Upgrades

The launch of Windows 10 is set for later this summer, the official Windows blog reports. And excitement is building,

The latest technical build preview was recently revealed, giving more of a taste of what customers can expect from Windows 10. Here are some takeaways from this sneak-peek:

Windows Insider Program members will recognize this latest preview as build 10061. Members of Microsoft’s “Fast Ring,” customers who have signed up for Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program to receive builds of the latest Windows operating system early, already have access to the latest release. The rest of the Windows buying public will simply have to wait.

However, the Windows blog did give some information on the new features in this latest build.

The mail and calendar upgrades in the technical preview promise improved performance. The Windows blog claims the Mail app features a “familiar” three-pane email interface that can toggle quickly between your email and calendar.

Users will also be able to customize Swipe Gestures in the Mail app. This will allow you to swipe left or right to perform actions such as delete, flag, or mark email read or unread.

The Windows blog also notes that the Mail app uses Word to allow users more feature options for their emails. That includes being able to easily add bullets, insert tables and pictures, and add color to text in emails. Mail and Calendar both support Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, Gmail, IMAP, and POP among other popular accounts.

Other areas of Windows 10 got visual upgrades. The Start menu, taskbar, and action bar got a facelift with a new black theme and personalization options. The Start menu can now be resized to suit your needs and allow more room for tiles on the right side of the list of apps.

The taskbar can now also be resized thanks to a new tablet mode. The tablet mode causes the Start button, Cortana, items in the Notification area, and the Task View buttons to size up and space out to better suit a touchable screen.

Build 10061 has fixed some of the bugs found in the previous builds, such as not being able to index a new email in Outlook.

The latest build is far from ready to go. The Windows blog also provides a list of known issues that have come up in this latest version.

Some of them are rather amusing. Apparently there is a bug in Mail and Calendar that causes every letter you type to appear twice. “Which might be funny if it weren’t so irritating,” the Windows blog explains. A simple update to both these apps should fix this issue.

There have been a large number of improvements on Windows 10 since a briefing in January. Even with a list of bugs that still need to be worked out, there is hope the latest Windows version will be ready on time.

Image: Microsoft

3 Comments ▼

---