What’s old is new again. Nearly two decades ago, Microsoft introduced support for widgets (called gadgets) that displayed snippets of information in a sidebar for Windows Vista. It became an optional feature with Windows 7, and it was discontinued by the time Windows 8 arrived.
But Windows 11? It’s got widgets again, this time stuffed into a board that slides out from the side of the screen when you want it and disappears when you don’t. Now Microsoft has released a preview build of Windows 11 that builds on the existing widget functionality by allowing you to expand or collapse the size of the widget board, depending on whether you to fill your whole screen with widgets or just part of it.
Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25201 brings experimental support for expanding the size of the widgets board, an improved Game Pass widget, and File Explorer search results that are shown as you type. https://t.co/lYprAkji4x pic.twitter.com/UstpNJr7PK
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) September 14, 2022
At this point Microsoft says it’s “trying out some changes” to the widget view, so it’s unclear whether this feature will eventually graduate to stable builds of Windows 11. So far it’s only available to some members of the Windows Insider Preview program running Windows 11 dev builds.
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.
Zoom, which is best known for its video conferencing solutions, is seeing increasing competition from Microsoft and Google who are playing catch up in that space. So Zoom may plan to compete on their turf with email and calendar services. https://t.co/zyhTssfCq0
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) September 14, 2022
The upcoming Anbernic RG353V handheld game console has similar specs to the RG353P, but controllers are below the 3.5 inch 640 x 480 screen rather than to the sides. Expect RK3566 processor, 2GB of RAM and Android and Linux support.https://t.co/eMDr5F1iJL
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) September 14, 2022
Benchmark #leaks continue to show @AMDRyzen #Zen4 and @intel #RaptorLake chips performing neck and neck ahead of #launchhttps://t.co/CwXXuBmN2L
— HotHardware (@HotHardware) September 14, 2022
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More useless widgets. Bring back swipe in from the left for app management. This three-fingered nonsense tablets is plain silly!