Leaked Windows 8 Build 8518: Aero Gone, Square Corners All Round

Leaked pictures from the latest Windows 8 build 8518 from the WIN8_RTM branch have surfaced at WinUnleaked and they show the extensive ‘Metrofication’ of the Windows 8 user interface. Gone are the rounded corners and Aero glass effects and in are solid colours and square corners all round. The Windows 7 version of the appearance options allowed for the transparancy to be changed, while the screenshot below shows this option removed, along with the advanced appearance settings:

Also, applications such as Internet Explorer 10 now take on the colour of the current Windows 8 theme:

The boot screen follows a very minimalist style with just the Windows logo and the progress animation showing, as can be seen below:

So, gone are the rich, sophisticated and attractive GUI effects seen in Vista and 7 and in is the new minimalism, which may well not appeal to many. The changes (improvements?) are not all about visual style however, since there’s a lot of under-the-hood improvements too, as site admin, vNext, remarked: “Windows 8 is incredibly stable and fast, it’s far better than Windows 7 in all ways”. It will be interesting to see just how fast the finished product is. By the sound of it, it may well be even faster than the aged Windows XP, which would make for a welcome performance boost.