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By TarasBuria · Posted
Microsoft releases major feature updates for stock Windows 11 apps by Taras Buria In addition to releasing new Windows 11 preview builds, Microsoft announced that inbox Windows apps now have dedicated release notes in the official documentation. At long last, users have access to all the release notes for each app, with changes listed in chronological order. Microsoft used to announce feature updates for stock apps with each build. Now, with Windows Insider release notes hosted on the Microsoft Learn website, each app has a dedicated space for its changelog, which is very useful for those who want to track new features and improvements. Alongside that, Microsoft dropped massive feature updates for six stock apps: Clock, Media Player, Calculator, Voice Recorder, Photos, and Paint. Each app packs quite a lot of changes and new capabilities, so here are the release notes. Here are quick notes so that you can jump to the app you are interested in the most: Calculator Camera Clock Media Player Paint Photos Sound Recorder Here is what is new for the Calculator in version 11.2605.9.0: More accurate square-root results — Fixed rare cases where a calculation that should equal zero (like sqrt(2.25) - 1.5) returned a tiny leftover value instead. Readable text in High Contrast themes — Settings text now shows the correct colors in the High Contrast Aquatic and Desert themes. Fixed layout for right-to-left languages — For languages like Arabic and Hebrew, the graph, number pad, equation fields, and scroll buttons now appear correctly oriented. Reliable launch after upgrading — Fixed an issue where upgrading from much older versions could leave outdated settings that stopped the app from opening. Here is what is new for the Camera app (version 2026.2605.7.0): Zoom slider works on more cameras — The zoom slider now works on the latest cameras, respects your system zoom settings, and updates instantly when you change those settings. Full range of zoom levels — Fixed an issue where the zoom slider only showed three steps on some devices that zoom in finer increments. Front camera works on more devices — Resolved a problem that blocked the front-facing camera on certain wide-angle devices. More video resolution choices — You can now pick video resolutions that were previously hidden; the app shows a heads-up warning instead of removing them. QR links you can still use — When a scanned QR code points to something with no matching app, the link is now copied to your clipboard (with a notification) while still offering a Store search. Smarter default settings — When you haven't set a preference, the app now follows your system settings by default. The Clock app has a massive changelog with the following improvements in version 11.2605.9.0: Timers keep counting after they hit zero — When a timer runs out, it now keeps counting up (for example, -00:27:31) so you can see how far past the time you've gone. You can turn off the daily goal — Focus Sessions now include an "Off" option so you can skip setting a daily goal entirely. New 15-minute snooze option — Alarms now offer a 15-minute snooze interval. Run up to 3 countdowns at once — The Countdown Widget now supports three simultaneous countdowns, up from two. Timer Widget notifications now appear — Fixed an issue where the "timer finished" notification didn't show when the timer was started from the widget. Less clutter in Focus Sessions — Tasks you've already completed no longer show up in the Focus Session task list. More accurate focus progress — Fixed a rounding issue that could show your daily focus progress as a minute short (for example, 49 minutes instead of 50). Smoother World Clock comparisons — The World Clock compare page now loads dates as you scroll, so it feels more responsive. Up-to-date World Clock locations — Refreshed country and city names to match their current names. Correct sun and moon icons during midnight sun — Fixed an icon that wrongly showed a moon during all-day daylight in polar regions. Fixed back-button behavior in clock comparisons — Pressing back once now takes you back as expected, instead of jumping the date to 1926. Corrected the Newfoundland time zone — Newfoundland now uses the right time zone (St. John's). Disabled alarms stay looking disabled — Editing a turned-off alarm no longer makes it appear turned on. Cleaner timer cards — The expand button is now turned off on timer cards that have no time set, preventing actions that wouldn't do anything. Clearer theme setting — Updated the wording to "Choose your preferred app theme." Smoother Settings links — The "About" links in Settings no longer trigger an unexpected "switch apps" prompt. Fixed spacing in Spotify settings — Corrected uneven spacing in the Spotify settings card. Better focus visibility in High Contrast — The focus highlight in World Clock is now clearly visible in the High Contrast Aquatic and Desert themes. No more double announcements — Screen readers no longer read the timer value twice. Countdown names read correctly — Screen readers now properly announce the name of each countdown. Keyboard focus stays put — Focus no longer disappears after you press the Timer Reset button. Clearer alarm toggle for screen readers — Tidied up how the alarm on/off switch is announced. The Media Player app received plenty of changes as well (version 11.2605.14.0): Custom captions — You can now personalize how closed captions appear, with caption styling tied to your Windows caption settings, plus a quick link to open those settings directly. "Indexing" banner in the play queue — When your media library is still being scanned, a banner now explains why some items may not appear yet. Fixed the look of selected items — Corrected a layout glitch with selected items in lists. Fewer playback failures — Improved how the app recognizes supported file types, so more files play without issues. Playlists need a name — You can no longer accidentally save a playlist with a blank name. Cleaner look for empty playlists — Improved how a playlist appears when it has no items yet. More stable play queue edits — Fixed a crash that could happen when changing the play queue while the app was switching between sessions. Clearer "missing codec" message — Improved the dialog that appears when a file needs a codec you don't have, with clearer guidance on what to do. A big update is also available for Paint in version 11.2605.61.0: Adjustable eraser transparency — You can now control how transparent the eraser is. Cleaner stamp brush strokes — Fixed visible color shifts and artifacts when using stamp-style brushes. JPEG photos save in place — Opening a rotated JPEG and pressing Save now overwrites the original instead of unexpectedly prompting "Save As." No more crash on bad image files — Opening a damaged or invalid image, from within the app, by double click, or commandline, now shows a clear error message instead of closing the app. Classic selection behavior restored — The selection outline now hides while you move, resize, or rotate a selection, just like in classic Paint. Tidier AI image panel — Fixed missing spacing at the bottom of the AI image generation panel for a cleaner layout. Visible button hover in light theme — Toolbar split buttons now show a clear hover highlight in the light theme. Snappier toolbar — Streamlined how the ribbon lays out, giving a small speed boost at startup. Fewer background crashes — Fixed a crash that could happen while background tasks were finishing up. Stable app shutdown — Prevented rare crashes when closing the app. Fixed layer removal glitch — Deleting the active layer no longer leaves the layers list in an inconsistent state. Here is what is new in the Photos app (version 2026.11060.2004.0): AI watermarking — AI-generated or edited images can now carry a visible Copilot watermark. You choose Never, Always, or Ask Every Time in Settings, with a confirmation when saving. The watermarking is off by default in settings. Better viewing of small images and pixel art — Tiny images (like 16×16 pixel art) now zoom in far more to fill the screen and stay crisp instead of looking blurry. Select scanned text with the keyboard — When text is detected in an image, you can now navigate and select it using the arrow keys, Shift+Arrow, Home/End, and Ctrl+A, with a clear focus highlight. Fixed a crash in text recognition — Resolved a crash that could close Photos while detecting text in images; the app now recovers gracefully. Easier keyboard navigation — Tabbing through the navigation bar no longer stops on hidden controls, so it takes a single Tab to move past it instead of three. And finally, here is the Sound Recorder (version 11.2605.1.0): Waveform shows with Bluetooth mics — The live waveform now displays correctly when you record using a Bluetooth audio device. No more stray scrollbar — A non-working horizontal scrollbar no longer appears at the bottom of the waveform unless you've zoomed in. Mark button ready right away — The Mark button no longer looks grayed out until you hover over it after opening the app. Markers hidden for WAV files — Markers are now turned off for WAV recordings, since that format can't store them — so they're no longer lost silently. Smoother deleting — Quickly pressing Delete and Enter to remove several recordings in a row no longer triggers a "file doesn't exist" error. Fixed a memory issue — Resolved a memory leak that occurred each time a recording started. You can find all these changelogs in the official documentation here. -
By ShahinD · Posted
again, an article about Microsoft Edge and ridicules hater's comments -
By leonsk29 · Posted
From this very same article: "For organizations that prefer a “more deliberate pace”, the Extended Stable channel remains an option." -
By leonsk29 · Posted
Or every other browser, because they all behave the same, at least the mainstream ones. Firefox does exactly the same: background updates, restart to install them. Haters gotta hate, I guess. -
By ShahinD · Posted
or google chrome
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tapo
For context, this was supposed to be part of the IE 7 public preview released thread. It seems this is too big for that section, so I'll post it here.
And for the record, Xbox Live was a good idea. I'm not a blind troll or anything.
Yeah, Microsoft intended to make search faster by overhauling the filesystem by adding another layer. "WinFS", which ran on top of NTFS (Which is an actual filesystem) was intended to make searches easier.
Of course, it was never implemented, so it doesn't really count. If you think unimplemented things count, it used used Apple's concept of 'stacks', saved searches that behave as folders. They patented it in the mid 90's. WinFS was designed to use stacks all around the filesystem, not just for quick search.
When it comes to desktop search, I honestly don't know (probably a Windows shareware vendor), but Google's attempt at Google Desktop Search, was to create an index beforehand, so searches didn't take so long. It also searched inside files so you didn't need to know the file's name. MSN Desktop Search, aside from copying the name "Desktop Search", was a direct ripoff. Apple's "Spotlight" search, was jumping into the game. Bringing back stacks, and adding the same type of quick searches GDS was well known for.
Back in its heyday, RealAudio/RealPlayer was actually pretty good. Quicktime had been out for a number of years, for Mac OS as well as Windows. What is now known as Windows Media Player used to be "Video for Windows", and used the avi container. Video for Windows was essentially a copy of Quicktime. When streaming video became more popular than local video, Microsoft rebranded it.
And Windows media only 'works' if you're running a Windows-based PC. Whereas Real has good software for the Mac and Linux, Microsoft did a horrible job on the Mac player, eventually contracting an outside company to turn it into a quicktime plugin. They don't support Linux at all.
What? Are you kidding me? Microsoft has always copied Apple when it comes to user interfaces, and it became really blatant when they were working on Windows 3.0, when they even hired Susan Kare (designer of the Mac OS icons) to do the Windows 3.0 icons as well. Windows 95 is also a copy (move the start menu to the top of the screen, make the cursor black, and the icons to the right hand side rather then the left).
They also only started codenaming their user interfaces starting with Windows XP, which is the only time they changed it in years (and was right after OS X came out). OS X's UI, codenamed Aqua, was suddenly met by OS XP's UI, codenamed Luna.
And hell, if you still don't believe me, there's even a video showing how much of a ripoff the Vista UI is.
Actually, they were both pretty terrible (Anyone remember Netscape's <blink> tag?) but Microsoft had, and continues to have, a fear that if something is used worldwide and open, then Microsoft's dominance will begin to slip. Remember, they only made a clone of CP/M, and got to where they are today though no-good business tactics (as well as illegal) and being in the right place at the right time.
Netscape, being very popular and available for Mac, Windows, and Unix systems, is seen as a threat. So, after licensing the original Mosaic code from Spyglass, they build IE. Of course, they never paid Spyglass a dime, but that's another story.
So they take IE, mold it into Windows as much as possible, then force it on their users in Windows 98, saying it cannot be removed (though it could, and Microsoft got burned for that).
The hope is, if everyone's running IE and viewing ActiveX websites, instead of Netscape and Java, then nobody could use another OS if they wanted to use the web.
ActiveX didn't catch on as well as they hoped, since Java was popular for the language, as well as applets. So they make their own JVM (Java Virtual Machine) which is shipped with Windows. The Microsoft JVM is incompatible and does not follow the specifications that Sun licensed them the technology under, meaning MSJVM applets wouldn't run on other JVMs for other platforms. When that failed (Sun sued and won), Microsoft makes a clone. C# and .Net CLR to replace Java and the JVM.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I do not like Microsoft.
Edited by tapoLink to comment
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