Microsoft is expected to launch the Windows 9 OS’s technical preview on September 30th and there have been reports of the Start Menu image leaking out. If that wasn’t enough, German site WinFuture has released a video demoing the Windows 9 Start Menu for a good 2 mins 42 secs.
The video above gives a very good idea of the changes in the Start Menu in the upcoming Windows 9 release. It seems to have taken the good parts from Windows 7 and Windows 8 to give us new hybrid start menu. Apart from the regular list of apps on the left pane, you also have the Live Tile interface on the right hand side. The account details are on top of the left hand pane and you have a dedicated power button to activate restart / shutdown / sleep modes.
You can right click on the applications in the left pane and pin them to right hand side as a live tile. Just like you would on Windows 8/8.1, you can also resize the live tiles and move them around. As you pin more apps on the right hand pane, the size dynamically increases.
Considering this type of interface seems optimised for the mouse users and would be to clumsy with the touch interface, Microsoft has also added an option to “Use the Start Menu instead of a Start Screen”. When this option is not selected, the start buttons functions just like it would with Windows 8/8.1, taking you to the Live Tiles interface from the desktop mode.
As seen with the Calculator app, not all modern apps need to be snapped to the edges or work in full-screen mode. You can even have apps working like regular Windows 7 apps which can be resized freely.
Microsoft is expected to release an early Windows Technical Preview by the end of the month or beginning of October to let developers and enterprise customers evaluate the changes. Only time will tell if this is indeed the final implementation of the Windows 9 Start menu. We are expecting to see a lot of changes by the time the retail version is out next year.
