Microsoft is now rolling out two brand new preview builds for Insiders in the Fast ring on PC and Mobile that include a number of new bug fixes and enhancements, as well as a couple of additional new features. Today's builds are 16257 for PC and 15237 for Mobile!
What's new for PC?
- Eye Control (beta): This experience requires a compatible eye tracker, like the Tobii Eye Tracker 4C, which unlocks access to the Windows operating system to be able to do the tasks one could previously accomplish with a physical mouse and keyboard. We are starting by supporting the EN-US keyboard layout, and we are looking to expand to more keyboard layouts in the future. We are excited to release this experience as a beta and would love your feedback!
- Eye Control launchpad – When you turn on Eye Control, the launchpad will appear on the screen. This allows you to access the mouse, keyboard, text-to-speech, and to reposition the UI to the opposite side of the screen.
- Eye Control interaction model – To interact with the UI for Eye Control, simply look at the UI with your eyes until the button activates. A visual affordance will appear around the UI that you are looking at.
- Eye Control keyboard – To use the keyboard, select the keyboard from the launchpad, and dwell at the characters you want to type. You can type numbers and symbols on the &123 page and function keys on the Fn page. We currently support the EN-US keyboard layout.
- Eye Control shape-writing – Type faster with your eyes by shape-writing on the Eye Control keyboard. To use shape writing, turn it on from the keyboard settings (found on the Fn page). Once it is on, you can form words by dwelling at the first and last character of the word, and simply glancing at letters in between. A hint of the word predicted will appear on the last key of the word. If the prediction was incorrect, you can simply select an alternative prediction provided.
- Eye Control text-to-speech – Communicate with your family and friends in person by using text-to-speech. To use text-to-speech, select text-to-speech from the launchpad. From here, you can use the keyboard to type sentences and have it spoken aloud. At the top are phrases that are spoken aloud immediately and can be edited to say different words. This uses the default text-to-speech voices, which can be changed in Settings > Time & Language > Speech > Text-to-speech.
- Eye Control settings – Access settings from the Fn keyboard page to adjust the dwell times, turn on/off shape-writing, and turn on/off the gaze cursor used to test hardware calibration.
- We're giving Microsoft Edge a refreshed and more modern look in the browser frame, inspired by the Fluent Design System. The use of Acrylic material provides depth and transparency to the tab bar and other controls, and we've improved button animations to feel more responsive and delightful."
- Based on your feedback we've adjusted the design of the address bar so now even if the address bar isn't in focus to start with when you click and drag the text it will remain under the cursor. Previously the text would shift as the "http://" appeared – this change will make it easier to quickly edit parts of the URL.
- We fixed an issue where right-clicking on an image in Microsoft Edge and selecting copy then later pasting the clipboard content would result in the image URL being pasted rather than the image itself.
- We fixed an issue where if a tab had been opened while Microsoft Edge was in full screen mode, using Ctrl + W to close that tab while still in full screen mode would close the content but leave the tab in the frame.
- We fixed an issue where if you had two unrelated tabs in Microsoft Edge and opened a link from the first in a new tab, the new tab would appear to the right of the second tab rather than the first.
What's new for Mobile?
- We made some improvements to the Field Medic Store app, where we fixed an issue with collecting Watson crash data, enabled spell checking when editing a report, and updated the PowerOn/PowerOff profiles to include additional battery info.
- We fixed an issue where the screen would occasionally flash black after launching or rotating the Camera app.
- We fixed an issue with the HP Elite X3 reporting that the SD card had been removed from the device when it had not.
- We fixed an issue with Continuum where, after the attached monitor is unplugged, occasionally the mobile LCD does not power off and the mobile battery could be drained.
- We fixed an issue with the Windows inbox NFC driver where occasionally the wrong card type data was reported.
- We improved the Cortana resume-from-suspend behavior to enable a Cortana skill to be authenticated before the user interacts with the skill.
- We fixed an issue with the behavior of the hardware search button in countries where Cortana is not available. In this case, the OEM provides the search app or URI.
You can check out the Windows Blog for the full changelog, including a list of known issues!
