Whew, that’s a relief! Windows 11 is sporting a fresh new design, one that is as focused on simplicity and style as it is on streamlining the user interface across the OS and all its apps, panels and pages.
But amidst all these flashes of the new design language are concerns that this glitzy overhaul may be coming at a cost — a performance cost.
After all, things work as fine as they can currently in Windows 10 when it comes to speed and performance. Why risk breaking things when they are working so well? Fluent Design elements like Mica signal at the potential of this new design language, but they are new territory for Microsoft.
Luckily, the company is very confident that this approach will not affect performance.
In a new questions and answers session, the software titan explained that these new design elements actually offer better performance and experience than previous implementations like Acrylic.
As explained:
“Performance is really a top priority for us and we want to ensure that all these fun new functionalities (Mica and rounded corners) are super-fast and don’t impact the OS. For example, Mica was specifically designed for higher performance when compared to things like Acrylic.
For rounded corners, we optimized our rendering performance so you shouldn’t notice any difference compared to square corners.”
Sounds good.
Redmond also touched up on the notion that Windows 11 design elements like the centered Start Menu and rounded corners are inspired by macOS, with the company copying Apple.
Kevin Gallo, head of the development platform at Microsoft explained that good design tends to be similar where we learn from each other, but Fluent has been around for a long time, and this design language is evolving with how people use Windows devices.
Speaking of which, while things seem to finally be moving in the right direction when it comes to the Fluent Design philosophy, it still might take a fair while to fully see it implemented across Microsoft software and services.
Yet, on the positive side of things, the company seems fully aware of what it needs to do.
