Each release of Windows has a codename: the name the project is given internally, but not the name it will finally be released under. For Windows 8.1 in 2013, that name was “Windows Blue”. For 2015, it appears we’ll be talking about Windows Threshold.
Longtime Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley reports that Threshold is being used as the label for the 2015 release, and that the broad aim of that project is to create a more unified code base for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox One. While all three of those platforms currently sport the Windows ‘Modern’ interface and have some common coding elements, developers still need to target each platform separately. That won’t change completely with Threshold, Foley reports, but there will be more unified elements.
Threshold is a long way off, and it seems certain we’ll see another update to Windows 8.1 before that, given Microsoft’s commitment to a yearly upgrade cycle for its operating systems at both server and desktop level.
Microsoft codename ‘Threshold’: The next major Windows wave takes shape [ZDNet]
Comments
5 responses to “Windows Threshold Is The Codename For The Next Major Windows Release”
And I suppose they’ll bring back the traditional start menu! Ugh Microsoft, just when I stop complaining about a feature I miss from the “old windows”, you just go and bring it right back! What will I have to complain about now?!
Jerks!
So you’re complaining about something that they haven’t even done yet?
delete me!
No no no. I just finished fixing all the stuff that stopped working when I went from 8 to 8.1
I just hope that they get in a new team of UX and UI guys, and do some actual user testing.
The interface in Windows 8 is terrible, both subjectively (my own experience with the damn thing) and objectively (following good UX principles).
Reading blogs from MS designers, I get the impression that they have engineering backgrounds or just don’t understand how to take learning from real user testing. I remember reading alot of comments along the lines of “Users only used feature X for Y percent of the time, so we buried it away in a completely obscure place”. There didn’t seem to be a real understanding of user oriented and task based design.