ChangeWindows 7.7
ChangeWindows 7 has now been with us for over 1,5 years and while so far we’ve done some iterative work on improving the website over the past 6 dot-releases, today we’re announcing the largest one yet. Welcome to ChangeWindows 7.7.
Windows Feature Store
Prior to ChangeWindows 7, we tracked changes from build to build. That however became increasingly harder as Microsoft moved to more and more aggressive A/B testing. Features would pop up unannounced randomly in various builds for different devices. Comparing one build to the next could see a new feature disappear, never have been there at all, or flip on then off again just because you rebooted.
We stopped tracking changes from build to build and instead go from release to release. But… what was responsible for all this A/B madness?
Well, that would be the Windows Feature Store (it’s actually more complex than that, but we’ll ignore that). If you’ve ever read an article instructing you to use tools like ViVe or Mach2, then you’ve interacted with WFS. And starting with version 7.7 — and based on data from Mach2 — we’re now going to show you the historic record for the Windows Feature Store in our brand new “Flags” section.
Here, you’ll be able to follow which feature flags were added, which status they had according to Mach2, what their ID is/was, and how they changed over time. Some feature flags might even show some extra information to explain what they exactly do.
We’re also providing a historic timeline of changes. Here you can see which flags were changed between builds. Were they added? Were they removed? Did their default configuration change? Did their ID change?
Note that this isn’t always correct. You might see some feature that are constantly flipping between 2 different states. We can’t really resolve that, so we have to work with the data we have.
Either way, you can also search through the flags database. Either by its name, its “readable” name, its description or its feature id. The search bar on top of every flag-related page will search for flags. Any other page will continue to search for releases as it has always been.
It’s early days for this new section of ChangeWindows and there is plenty we can do to improve it. One change we want to implement is to make it more clear which features have a custom description and even highlight some features that might be of interest.
Revamped timeline design
It’s been since ChangeWindows 3 since we last changed how the timeline worked. Today, we’re introducing an updated grouping and ordering. Instead of showing a line for each build, we’ll now group together all builds that belong to the same platform within a single day. Additionally, we’ve moved the version number of the related release to the front to help you find out which version of the OS you’re actually looking at.
These changes reduce the amount of data you have to process, give a clearer view of releases — especially on Update Tuesdays, — and they just look great.
Lots and lots of under-the-hood improvements
Beyond that, this update to ChangeWindows puts a lot of focus on under-the-hood improvements. Adding proper components, adding loading-states to buttons, standardizing the way we get confirmations from the back-end when doing things in the admin panel, revamping the login and registration pages, swapping out our build tools, etc.
Beyond that, this update contains some major bug fixes:
- Changelogs are no longer missing on mobile.
- When using the PWA, the title bar can no longer collapse in on itself.
- Fixed various instances where UI elements remained visible for roles that shouldn’t be able to see them.
- Fixes a number of typos.
- And 8 other bug fixes…
What’s next
Over time we’ll probably make some minor adjustments, add the aforementioned features to the flags-page, etc.
However, early conceptualizing on ChangeWindows 8 has also begun. This one will be once more a pretty big revamp and restructuring of the website with the main goal being to make platform-navigation the primary navigation on the website rather than the timeline, channels, and platforms pages are they are now on the sidebar. We’ll talk more about it when we get to it.
