Tons of new goodies. Microsoft has released Windows 10 build 17713 to the Fast ring of its preview program, with this version packing in new features in abundance.
Like most recent Redstone 5 builds have.
Redmond detailed these new additions, and along with some welcome updates to the Microsoft Edge web browser, we have some updates for the good old Notepad app too. This is one of the simplest applications in the operating system, and it’s refreshing to see it finally getting a look.
First, the browser stuff.
On the Edge side of things, we now have the ability to have per-site media autoplay controls, whereby the browser allows you to control autoplay permissions individually for each site under the “Website permission” section of the Website Identification pane.
A new dictionary function helps look up definitions for words in Reading View, Books, and PDFs, always welcome this.
It is also possible to have a word read aloud to you to hear the correct pronunciation or expand more details from the definition.
Also improved are toolbar options, and the toolbar can now actually be pinned unpinned at the top of documents, making all the tools easily accessible. The software titan has also packed in a bunch of rendering performance improvements with this build.
Onto the Notepad enhancements, then, which there are many in this version.
Build 17666 introduces extended line ending support for Notepad, along with wrap-around find and replace where the application will remember previously entered values and the state of checkboxes and automatically populate them the next time you open the find dialog.
Text zooming is one of the more requested of features for the default text editor in Windows, and happy to report that it’s also finally here!
It is also now possible to display line and column numbers when word-wrap is enabled.
The company has also packed in a ton of other improvements to Remote Desktop, integrating biometrics capabilities here. Azure Active Directory and Active Directory users can now use Windows Hello for Business to authenticate to a remote desktop session.
Starting with this version, we now also have faster sign-in on shared Windows 10 PCs.
You are also sure to appreciate Windows Defender Application Guard improvements that are part of this build, whereby the software titan has introduced a new user interface inside Windows Security that allows users to install and configure their settings right then and there.
Finally, another thing of note is a set of inking updates, where embedded handwriting is now the default experience for text entry with a pen in modern applications.
Marvelous!
