Microsoft this week announced that upcoming previews of Windows 10 would include new features designed to boost productivity on a personal computer.
Dubbed "Timeline" and "Sets," the former previously trumpeted months ago, the latter a revelation, the pair will, promised Microsoft's top Windows executive, "help make the most of time, one of our most precious resources."
Sets was the more interesting of the two, and not only because it is brand new. Instead, it was Sets' potential that struck a nerve. PCWorld's Mark Hachman, one of the handful of reporters and bloggers briefed before the announcement, said that Microsoft, "plans to overhaul Windows 10" with a single-frame-with-multiple-tabs interface that resembles one of today's browsers.
While the overhaul Hachman envisioned won't take place overnight - or perhaps ever - the two additions to Windows 10, Sets in particular, are among the most significant with the most promise for affecting change in how the OS assists business.
We dug into Timeline and Sets, came up with the things users want clarified, then answered those questions.
What is Sets?
At the simplest level, Sets is a user interface (UI) that relies on tabs within an encompassing frame to organize and define multiple applications.
In other words, just as a browser window contains several tabs, each defining a different website or web app, a Sets "window" groups several applications - say Edge, Word and Mail - so that each is accessed through a tab. To change the active application, users click a tab rather than navigate to the desktop and click on its window.
Apple added tabs to its Finder file manager back in 2013 with OS X Mavericks; Windows 10 Insider participants have voted the same idea up to the fourth spot in the program's wish list. But neither operating system has taken the next, arguably major, step of making tabs a critical component of the UI and UX (user experience).
When will Microsoft start testing Sets?
"In the coming weeks," according to the company. If the holidays were not looming on the calendar, we'd say before the end of 2017, what with Microsoft's coming weeks phrasing.
What will be Microsoft's first step toward Sets?
Timeline, the feature the company first touted in May during its Build conference. Timeline is slated to hit Windows Insider with the next preview, said Dona Sarker, the public face of the program, in a Nov. 28 post to a company blog. Sarker did not hint at a date, but the previous was a week before, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect a successor this week.
[to be continued...]
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The writer Gregg Keizer is senior reporter at COMPUTERWORLD
