What's changing through Windows 7 beta

Microsoft isn't making any big changes from the beta, but as already noted, there will be a lot of little ones. Microsoft has now posted a list of them.

As I noted Wednesday, Microsoft isn't making huge changes to Windows 7 as a result of the beta feedback, but it is making a lot of little ones.

In a posting to its Engineering Windows 7 blog on Thursday, Microsoft outlined some of the changes that will be made for the next public version, which will be a near-final "release candidate" build.

Along with the ones mentioned in my previous article, Microsoft is making more than 30 other changes, including expanding its Aero Peek touch interface, adding broader support for older FAT32-formatted hard drives, and making it more apparent when a window in the background wants a user's attention.

In addition and as it had already committed to, Microsoft is making some changes to the User Account Control feature, following concern that efforts to make the feature less annoying had also made it less secure.

"We change a lot of things in the beta based on feedback and we try to do so in a systematic manner with the focus on the goals for the release," Windows engineering head Steven Sinofsky said in the blog posting. "The goal of having a fully functional beta was to make sure we received reliable feedback and not a lot of 'hey this doesn't work at all' sorts of reports. This has allowed us to really focus on delivering a refined (release candidate) where the changes we made are all the reflection of feedback we have received."

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