ChangeWindows 6 Preview 2

About a month ago we showed of the first look to ChangeWindows 6. We’re back today, with another update to ChangeWindows 6. A few new enhancements are coming to our user-facing pages, plenty more to those that aren’t.

Timeline enhancement

First off, you will see that the colored dots that we introduced in ChangeWindows 5.2 are gone. Instead, you’ll now see the version of the corresponding milestone. Where you’d previously see a light teal dot, it will now say “2004”. This removes the need to hover over these dots, makes it easier to scan over the information and is more touch-friendly.

The major reason for the removal of the dots however is that the colorcoding we’re using isn’t really that useful. Not anymore. When Microsoft was supporting 2 or 3 releases together, our users could easily learn what each color ment, but today we find ourselves tracking 10 different milestones and its just a mess. You’ll see in future updates that these colors will move even further to the background, if they aren’t removed entirely.

Milestone enhancements

Today’s update revamps the entire milestone system. Previously, milestones were the only “dynamic” content on ChangeWindows. Which platforms and which channels were available to any given milestone wasn’t a setting and thus everything was always available. Today’s update changes that.

We’re removing platforms and channels from our codebase itself into our database. Not only will this allow us to add new platforms and channels faster whenever that becomes necessary, it also means that we can much faster follow Microsoft’s constant flip-flopping with names.

So which channel and which platform is available to a milestone now has to be assigned. Previously a fixed combination could be set on or off, now however we can not only show if a channel for a platform withing a milestone is active or not, but also if it ever existed at all.

Channels

The old “Rings” page has been renamed “Channels” and this is where you’ll find the visual change that the above update to milestones brings. Where we would previously only show the active channels by milestone by platform, we now show all of them. Inactive channels are shown grayed-out.

Even more admin tools

We’ve made even more changes to our admin tools. And still plenty more to come.

ChangeWindows 5.5

We have also updated the main website with a new update. ChangeWindows 5.5 removes the old Ring detail pages and provides a link to our Preview. We decided to remove this to make it simpler for us to keep track of the various channels in the Insider Program and the information on our Preview website is better kept up-to-date.