Microsoft is continuing the unfortunate (at least for lowly blog writers who wanted an early Friday for once) trend of releasing builds on Fridays, with the release of build 23526 for the Dev Channel and 22621.2199 and 22631.2199 for the Beta Channel. Here are the details:
Dev Channel build 23526
Like the Canary Channel build released earlier in the week, build 23526 resets the Insider Preview Build Expiration to September 15, 2024. Don’t read too much into these expiration dates, they’re not usually a reliable indicator of when (non-Insiders) Windows builds are released, but here we are.
This build continues work on rich thumbnail previews (tooltips), and tips that don’t have a rich preview will no longer show a blank preview area. Cast is getting some further work, too, adding a “Can’t find a device?” link in Quick Settings for additional support.
Narrator gets some improvements with build 23526, too:
We have made the following improvements for Narrator:
- Changed default verbosity level from 2 to 3 which will now announce “Immediate Context Name and Type”. The Control context type like “list” or “toolbar” will allow users to better understand the focused control – same default as JAWS and NVDA.
- Narrator users are unblocked for typing Traditional Chinese characters in Windows by addition of Traditional Chinese dictionary for detailed reading.
We have made the following improvements for Narrator with Braille:
- When navigating to any attachment in Outlook with scan mode, narrator announces the & of the attachment, the same is now reflected on braille display.
- Navigate to different headings in Scan Mode using down arrow, or ‘Space + 4’ key in Braille device, now navigating to heading is reflected in Braille.
- When navigating a list with items , whenever Narrator announces index with the menu item name, Braille display also reflects the same index values as “1 of 4”.
There’s quite a long list of fixes as well as some known issues, be sure to check out the blog post for all the details.
Beta Channel builds 22621.2199 and 22631.2199
Build 22631.2199 (with new features rolling out) adds native support for new archive file types, oncluding .tar*, .rar, .7z, and more, meaning that you will no longer have to install a separate app to manage these file types, although encrypted archives are not supported.
22631.2199 gets the rich preview and Narrator changes that were also released with Dev Channel build 23526, along with new ways to turn on “never combine mode” for buttons on the taskbar, as well as a number of fixes for the “new features rolling out” Beta Channel build.
There’s a list of fixes for both 22621.2199 (no new features) and 22631.2199 (new features rolling out), too, be sure to check them out in the Windows Insider blog post.
