Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17004 Expands Fluent Design

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By Nathaniel Mott
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Microsoft released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17004 to Fast Ring members of the Windows Insider Program who have elected to "skip ahead" to less stable builds of the operating system. Like its most recent predecessors, Preview Build 17004 is focused on bug fixes ahead of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update's release in October, but it also includes some visual changes courtesy of the company's new Fluent Design system.

Fluent Design was announced at the Build developer conference in May. It changes various aspects of Windows 10's user interface with more textures, new lighting effects, and a greater emphasis on animations. Much of these updates appear to be influenced by HoloLens, and it's clear that Microsoft is preparing Windows 10 for a world in which your primary device isn't a traditional PC with its monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Microsoft said in Preview Build 17004's announcement:

As we progress into the next feature update, you’ll begin to see more and more elements of Fluent Design light up. We love the enthusiasm we’ve seen for Fluent Design, and with today’s build you’ll notice that Reveal is now visible on Start in All apps.

That's a small change, sure, but the confirmation that Fluent Design will expand in future preview builds makes this release a little more exciting. The rest of the build is standard pre-release fare: Microsoft squashed a bunch of bugs in Microsoft Edge, improved Windows 10's input methods, and made the operating system more accessible by adding a new color wheel to the Color & High Contrast Settings.

Preview Build 17004 also fixed a problem that prevented Mod Organizer from loading mods into The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Microsoft said it also added a shortcut to the Edge browser to your desktop, but if you delete it, the company won't replace it with future builds. It's not clear if this is a minor bug or if it indicates that Microsoft will continue to push Edge on Windows 10 users with the Fall Creators Update.

The Fall Creators Update is set to debut on October 17. We'll probably see more of these bug-focused preview builds in the intervening weeks.

Nathaniel Mott
Nathaniel Mott
Freelance News & Features Writer

Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • shrapnel_indie
    Let MS fix the bugs, please. We need that.

    What we also need is a way to honestly shut off "features" we don't care for (ahem, Cortana, for example) or won't ever need/use, and allow/deny specific data in its data collection. MS is still too vague on what it is actually getting, and still fails to narrow down its definitions on what it does collect and tell us the truth.
    Reply
  • sadsteve
    More animations! I always disable animations after I install Windows, so just another useless (to me) feature add.
    Reply
  • rocrizzo5955
    99 Microsoft bugs in the code,
    99 Microsoft bugs..
    Take one down,
    Patch it around,
    1,785,642 Microsoft bugs in the code!
    Reply
  • lorfa
    "it's clear that Microsoft is preparing Windows 10 for a world in which your primary device isn't a traditional PC with its monitor, keyboard, and mouse."

    Yeah, screw those people, what with their highly precise clicking and speedy, productive inputs.
    Reply
  • therealduckofdeath
    Damn Microsoft for improving their operating system for working on touch devices like the Surface Pro! I also always force tweak my computer to work and feel like it did with Windows 3.11 For Workgroups! We don't need all this modern bling bling to be productive trolls in the internet!
    Reply
  • vijer
    Windows 10 is a great OS I just wish MS would separate Edge from Windows. I've tried it and it is okay but not anything great. So MS spends an inordinate amount of time fix Edge when they could be fixing Windows.

    Some think Windows 10 has a lot of bugs but I've been using it daily, on the Skip Ahead builds which are the most unstable, and it performs great. Are there bugs sure but mostly annoying bugs like - even after uninstalling Candy Crush it will return after one or two reboots. That annoying but not much different from MacOS where you can't remove many many Apple crapware.
    Reply
  • karma77police
    Happy with Windows 7
    Reply
  • zlpw0ker
    I just wish that MS would cut out the diagnostic that are beeing sent back to MS,I really dont like that myself. I wish they would give us the option to remove all the forced bloatware that windows10 comes with, as in a windows install.
    I'm a huge fan of black and white in windows and I think it would be really nice if MS would add feature to give windows explorer grey and or black and white, I know we have the high contrast,but its not the same.
    Reply