Hi all,
The following notice is applicable if you are using Windows 10 App Essentials add-on development snapshots:
By now folks should have heard about Windows Sun Valley (supposedly “Windows 11”, according to sources and a leaked build), a project to bring user interface changes to make it more modern, according to Microsoft. Sun Valley will be an important part of an upcoming event scheduled for June 24, 2021, and Windows Insiders, tech press journalists, and developers will talk about a supposed new Windows version for days. Because “Windows 11” branding may not be the final name for this version of Windows, I’ll refer to this new Windows as “Sun Valley”.
It turns out there are changes that will affect NVDA users, according to tests done on the latest public build (build 21390, not the leaked build). For starters, the Sun Valley update will change how you interact with emoji panel and clipboard history. There may be others, subject to confirmation after June 24th. I am keeping a very close eye on impact of next week’s event for NVDA users, and I’m sure several NVDA contributors are also observing this series of events closely.
To give you a taste as to what to expect from Sun Valley, I’ll be releasing a development build of Windows 10 App Essentials on June 17, 2021. This add-on build will require absolutely latest Windows Insider Preview dev channel build – build 21390 - to install and function. Also, to really make sure only folks who are adventurous and would like to give early feedback can install this build, this development build will require NVDA 2021.1 beta or latest alpha build to work. In other words, only Windows Insiders who are also beta testing NVDA will get this build – others will be greeted to an error message during add-on installation, telling you that the add-on is not compatible with the version of Windows you are using (Add-on Updater), require Sun Valley (manual installation), or not compatible with the version of NVDA you’ve got (if using 2020.4 or earlier). For the next week or so, additional development builds will be released that will require latest Windows Insider Preview and latest NVDA beta/alpha releases, and sometime in July, I’ll let users of older Windows 10 and/or NVDA install development builds again.
As for add-on naming, Sun Valley is still based on Windows 10 internally, hence it will still be called Windows 10 App Essentials. If the supposed “Windows 11” branding is confirmed next week, I’ll think about renaming this add-on, with details to follow later.
If you have questions, comments or feedback about upcoming Windows 10 App Essentials Sun Valley dev builds, please contact me directly (not on the list please) via usual channels (email, Twitter, etc.).
Cheers,
Joseph
