Windows 8 Secrets: New Desktop Theme

With tech enthusiast web sites from around the world continuing to leak Windows 8 information in the wake of the Release Preview, your intrepid “Windows 8 Secrets” co-authors offer a bit of color commentary about what you’re seeing and how these features will really work. In this new co-post, we look briefly at leaked images of the upcoming new desktop theme in Windows 8.

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This week, Winunleaked posted a number of tiringly similar screenshots that depict the coming Windows 8 desktop theme that will replace Aero. As Microsoft previously promised last month in a mammoth Building Windows 8 blog post, the company decided to remove the Aero “glass and reflections” and “take some ideas from [their] new [Metro] design language and apply them where [they] could.” So the new theme features squared off window edges, new default white window chrome, and a less translucent taskbar.

In fact, it looks just like this:

In the following shots, you can compare the Release Preview Windows Color and Appearance control panel (top) with the renamed Color and Appearance post-RP (bottom):

Windows 8 Release Preview

Windows 8, post-Release Preview

Unlike with the Release Preview, you will be able to independently color the Explorer window chrome and the taskbar. But if you choose to do so, only the taskbar will be colored, and Explorer windows will remain a flat white, as above. Here’s a shot depicting an Explorer window with coloring.

As part of the Metro-ish changes to the desktop, the window buttons are getting a flat, Metro-like refresh as well. Here’s a close-up.

Have you seen any other Windows 8 leaks you’d like to know more about? Drop us a line and let us know!

–Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera