Windows 11 insider preview is here.
I just thought on my machine and I'm really excited to walk through
some of my favorite features.
Not only just using windows 11, the new look, the new feel, the new
snapping, but also my developer set up using visual studio 2022 to build
a desktop and mobile applications and using the Linux subsystem for windows.
So I cannot wait to show this all off.
So two.
Hey everyone.
I'm James Monson, Magna.
And I'm back this time with windows 11.
That's right.
The insider preview just dropped site updated as soon as I possibly
could on my machines over here.
And I'm real excited to show off some of the brand new features now, of course.
As always, if you don't know who I am, I'm James Watson Merino.
I do work at Microsoft.
I work on the.net community team, enabling developers around the
globe to build applications for anything with C sharp and.net.
And of course, opinions here in this video are my own, um, not Microsoft, although
I do work for Microsoft, like I said, I'm not part of the windows division.
They use.net and C-sharp, you can build windows applications, and I'll
show off some of mine here today.
So without further ado, let's just honestly just get into it.
And I can walk through some of the brand new features in windows 11.
It's just sort of just skimming the surface.
I've just really been playing around with it for the last few hours and I love it.
So here it is, this is the desktop.
Um, I've tried to remove any of the, you know, um, me anywhere.
So I'm just a voice now.
Um, but you'll be able to see me kind of like walk through this looks like a home
screen, some new fonts, some new things.
If I go in, we can see here's me.
I'll also say that the pin entry is brand new.
There's some accessibility features I'm just gonna go in
and type in my pin and log in.
And boom, here I am.
Inside of windows 11.
Oh my goodness.
It's it's I don't know.
It looks so great.
I love all the bits and pieces of it.
There's this new task bar down here.
Start search over here is a multi, um, desktop support, which I can go.
Tap into and see everything I have open.
These are the widgets and then other apps that are installed on the machine.
Now, some of the things that I love already about it is the new start menu.
I do love the task bar in the middle.
Um, it, you know, it does grow and shrink based on if you have things open or close
or if you're pinning different things.
Um, but overall, you know, yeah.
Kind of removes some of the clutter and gets all of my pinned items
right up top of these are the things that I'm using every single day.
And if I need to, I can always go into all apps and browse through them all.
But I love this right here.
Everything's here, including no pad with rounded corners looks beautiful.
And that's a good example here.
You can see how I open it up.
The bar opens up a little bit and then I can close it back down over there.
Same thing I can open up paint.
I can open it up.
No pad, I can open up just about anything and it's windows as you would expect.
Um, and I can of course come in and drag and drop things around.
Uh, but here's what I really like.
Let's say, minimize these down.
Let's say open up edge.
I love some of the subtle animations.
You already kind of seeing them as I sort of shrink it down.
You said a little, little, just little tiny animations
built right in to the OSTP.
I love it.
I can come in.
I can start pinning.
I just, I love this animation.
I know that there is some in windows 10, but I love that blur
in the background over here.
I can open it up.
I can open up paint on the other side.
Here's the other feature you're going to hover over the maximize over here.
Anything on this bar?
I can say, you know what?
Let me get all four.
Let me get no pad over here.
Um, and if I minimize this, we'll see that I can panel for them again.
So I put that over here, no pad, and then down over here and put the alarm clock.
So this is already had something on the other side.
It's going to put it there.
So just kind of like really cool just to see the new windowing system.
And it notices that I have things on the left-hand side.
All right.
So it's not going to ask me to fill it up again, but again, if I minimize some stuff
down hover over and I say, you know what, I want this to be over here now and pay
it on this other side, do this split view.
Just really, really elegant being able to come in and just automatically
sort of put the windows exactly where I want them on my screen.
Just like that.
Boom, which is really, really cool.
So pinning, love it going and doing that.
But again, just these animations, his love it coming in.
And of course, closing them down.
One thing that I've noticed so far about windows 11 is sort
of how integrated it all feels.
So if I come up over here, the settings page, absolutely fantastic.
It should be my, my desktop and my name of it.
And my windows update.
I can go into my Bluetooth devices.
I see everything that's paired here.
My mouse is my devices brand new icons, just, it feels fresh.
Um, network here, all the information that's really,
uh, pertinent is right up top.
It doesn't feel buried at all.
Right.
As I can see, I'm connected to the wifi.
It's on 5g.
It's on public.
Here's my data used in the last 30 days.
I can go in and personalize over here and there's themes that are built in.
So we wanted to toggle around different themes.
I could, I can come in to my colors and right now I have it in dark
mode, but I could change it to light mode if I wanted to or customize
it, turn on and off transparency effects and even adjust the contrast.
Of course, there's other things like time and language
accessibility features that are all.
But again, it just feels real fresh.
I would say I love that it's given me pertinent information right up front.
So I can go ahead and address that.
The other thing I'm really, really into is down in the bottom, right?
Actually I can come in and tap on this sort of little display center, I would
say, or I don't know what this is, but it's some sort of like little just
area that's telling me information.
I can hover over the battery, the audio, the wifi.
But if I tap on it, We can see that I get information about wifi battery
saver, airplane mode, my brightness of my screen of a surface over here, I can
go in and edit this and look at this.
I can go in, remove these, add another one.
So if I want her to put nightlight project rotation, lock connect on
here, I can add more remove these pins, really customize the things that
I want, and that feels really good.
I really like it.
And of course, go into settings and get to all my settings.
Same thing over here.
And notifications notice here that I have some different information from the store.
My calendar over here, I can make these a little bit smaller.
I can clear them off if I wanted to just, I love these subtle animations
that are sort of starting to pop up all over the UI, just even that right.
Look,
I love it.
Just, I, I th I think I, it looks really, really.
Also you can search.
So if I'm over here and I wanted to do whenever I can go and search for
wind river and I'll pop up right here, again, notice the rounded corners on
all the screens that are coming up.
It feels really nice, really fresh.
This is just the latest normal preview build that you can totally get.
Um, let's look at widgets over here, widget, so we can see the
heat warnings going on in Seattle, different stocks that are going on.
Um, all the news stories that are occurring, my profile,
I can search the web.
I can add widgets, uh, over here on merge conflict, merge conflict that
I found the podcast that I do every week with Frank, we were talking about
how I wanted widget supports, and I thought this was so cool that if I
wanted to, I could add to do's widget.
E-sports different things like that and really customize my widgets.
I'm excited to see where widgets go in the future too, but I just sort
of nice to have just right here.
I can pop it out, get to my widgets, see my weather information.
It's not in my face.
It's there when I.
The other thing I noticed over here is the finder.
I think this is really cool.
A file Explorer.
Um, here's all the new icons for pictures, music downloads,
everything pinned over here.
Notice that when I go over to my desktop, I get new icons over here.
Uh, if I go into.
Linux.
That's kind of cool.
There's in boon two going on.
So I can actually tap in into, in boon two, which is in the
windows subsystem for Linux WSL.
You can see everything there that's mounted, but notice again that when I'm up
here and click on new, I can do new items.
Let's say I'm on the desktop.
I can do a new folder and new item, anything that I could create before.
And there's all bunch of more different things in here deleted.
Doing inverting selection, properties, and all of this, all the icons feel
just really, really good overall.
Like I just I'm looking at it just looks really good to say it again.
It looks really fresh, like updated.
Uh, I really love this look and feel of every icon.
There's a lot of details of the team put into here that really makes it look like
a brand new, beautiful operating system.
And I'm, I'm just really, really digging.
Um, let's talk about the windows store and the Microsoft store here.
The Microsoft store has been refreshed.
So here's the home screen.
Um, there's, you know, all the essential apps, things like that top
free apps, you can tap on apps here.
Um, if I search from my app, let's say my stream timer over here, it actually
pops out on the list and I love that I didn't change anything on my store.
This is an app.
I use the countdown when I live stream on Twitch.
Uh, I can see over here.
That has all my descriptions.
It has nice screenshots.
And again, even those have nice animations popped into them.
I can scroll down and see all my ratings I'm doing fairly.
Okay.
That's good.
Um, and read the reviews.
I just, I just am really, really enjoying this refresh.
Look that I get, even when I just hover over this notice out there and
getting these nice little animations, it makes the operating system feel alive.
And panels was really saying that even here, when I just slightly
tap on that back button, it just very subtle going on here.
And again, if I open up down here, my stream time.
I didn't do anything to my application to make it work.
Um, with windows 11, it's just a UWP windows application and it worked
straight out of the box over here, including an app purchases, all that
good stuff, which is really, really cool.
So everything is working at the nice rounded going on.
And again, look at this, I can pin it over onto my different sides.
Just like I would expect, um, coming into this, which is really, really cool.
So I'm getting these different pinnings going on right here automatically.
And again, I didn't have to do anything, uh, which to me as a developer is, is
really, really key, uh, beyond that.
Uh, I love this new desktop mode.
If I click on this desktop switcher, you can see that I could actually come in
and just drag and drop windows down here.
So if I wanted to put, you know, a development or just put some apps
down here, I have development desktop, and these windows are right here.
They are minimized already.
They come back in too.
My switcher down here and go to social.
Here's my social, the entire taskbar updates, which what with
what is available on that desktop?
So I come back over here.
You can see everything is back, just how I had it earlier, right over here.
So pretty neat.
Just overall, really, really digging that.
And there's my Android emulator.
So to me so far, again, even just those little animations that are
going on, um, as a very first preview, I am really, really blown away.
So widgets integrations into the new file system and seeing
WSL on there is really cool.
I'm loving again, like I said, those animations that are just so key, but
really finding that information at your fingertips when you need them, just
really cleans up the UI and it feels really consistent across the board.
I am so far loving it.
I'm only a few hours in, I mean, I'm just a few hours in it's,
it's kind of crazy to think.
Now, the other thing I want to talk about though, is my developer setup
and some of the really cool things you can do with WSL or building mobile
and desktop and web applications too.
So let's go ahead and check that.
So the first thing I want to do is talk about, um, WSL.
So WSL is the windows subsystem for Linux, and here I can do dash dash list.
And if I come in, we can see that I have a moon 2 20 0 4 installed.
So if I actually just go over here, here is a moon too, so
I can just snap it over there.
Now.
I haven't been.
Um, the right hand side.
And again, I can go ahead and make that bigger, or I can say, um, LS, LS.
There we go.
I guess I have nothing in this folder, so I could do, you
know, uh, make, you know, Durer.
I can do anything I want and log into my account there.
Now, the other thing we can do though, is we can do WSL list online.
And what that enables us to do is install.
Linux distros into WSL.
So if I wanted to, I could say WSL, install the D and I could do a room 2
18 0 4 and go, there's going to download that in boon 2, 4, 18 0 4 LTS onto.
My windows subsystem for Linux over here.
Right.
And then it's going to install it and it's going to enable me now to
test and run, um, Linux applications.
I'm looking at this, it's going to launch it and boom.
There's 1804.
In fact, I give you a running 1804 and a 2004 right here, side by side.
If I wanted to.
So this will install it.
I'll create a new username.
Type in a password.
Boom.
And now I'm good to go.
Now I'm inside of right there.
And if you're debugging from, let's say visual studio over here,
here's visual studio, 20 19, 20 22.
Sorry, actually 2022 is the preview that just released.
You can go ahead and debug your applications into WSL with
the connector or with vs code.
Now, I also want to point out though that all your normal stuff's going to work.
So if I go ahead and I created a new xamarinforms project here, I can just
debug locally on my windows, 11 machine here, and this is going to use, um,
uh, Don net and here XAML was Xamarin forms to deploy my windows applications.
So the same frameworks that I was using for my stream timer, I'm using it here.
And this is actually neat because this is almost what I do every time.
Which is basically pin the application to the right-hand side and visual studio
over on the left-hand side in this split.
So if I was to say welcome to windows 11, just like that, it updates with
XAML hot reload and we're good to go.
That's super neat.
Additionally, um, as you would expect, I can use all of my
iOS and Android features too.
So if I said that is my startup and I just debug over here.
I have my Android emulator.
Hey everyone.
Quick editor note, this is just the standard Android emulator running on hyper
V shifts with visual studio here, visual studio, 2022, but also 2019 for standard
Xamarin and Don and Maui development.
So things that I've shown in all my videos.
This is not the windows 10 running Andrew.
That's not in the insider preview, um, in this build.
Um, so this is just an Android emulator.
Like I've shown a billion times on my YouTube and Twitch streams.
I just want to clarify that up in case, for some reason you thought it was that
it's just a standard Android emulator.
Enjoy.
This is running on hyper V uh, over here, which is super cool.
So it's running super fast with hyper V uh, the Android emulators, and this is
going to build up and compile my Android application as I would expect and start
debugging, uh, with all my new changes.
Again, right on windows 11.
So again, I have this set up.
All right.
The application is launching.
Um, so we're going to let it connect up.
It's initializing hot reload into our debug session here.
So again, we have our full native Android application written with.net right here.
Let's see how it reload connected.
And ideally, it's just built to come in and say orange.
Have it update their windows 11 exclamation points all over the place.
And now we're using reload with visual studio 2022.
And here in this case, I have my Xamarin forms application, but you
can also of course, bill my DyNet Maui application, run that across windows,
iOS, iPad, iOS, Mac iOS, and Android.
But at this point, I have sort of my entire setup.
I can run everything I want.
Here's vs code.
I'm using.net, uh, notebooks to run some code, like hello, windows 11.
I'm learning.
I'm doing a bunch of, and yeah, I'm just doing all the stuff I would normally do.
I mean, I'm really digging this brand new update to windows with windows
11 and I am a sucker for animation.
So just looking at this and just that subtlety.
Yeah.
Those transparencies and the blurb behind it, I think is great.
And again, just even just dropping it down, sinks down,
and then it pops up that icon.
And, you know, I think too in general, that that is just something
that's really, really neat.
So here, if I pop that down and up, it just automatically does that for me.
And you can see it actually switched, uh, desktops for me when I did that since I
already had this open and another desktop.
So that was super neat.
But yeah, there you have it.
I mean, that is, to me, in a nutshell, some of my favorite
features inside of windows 11.
I know I just scraped the surface, but I wanted to put something out there.
Me exploring windows 11 and talking about my dev set up
with WSL visual studio, 2022 vs.
Code and.net.
It was, I hope that you enjoyed this video.
If you did give it a thumbs up over there on the YouTube that
goes into the YouTube algorithm.
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And if you want to find out more things about building applications, windows,
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Thank you so much for tuning in super appreciate it.
And thanks for watching.