Mining Redstone 4: Timeline (Premium)

Last month, I dove deep on the Fluent Design System, the new design language for Windows 10. Today, I'd like to tackle a much meatier new Windows 10 feature called Timeline.

First unveiled at Build 2017 way back in May, Timeline strikes at the heart of what I believe to be the focus of the next Windows 10 version, currently codenamed Redstone 4: Productivity.

So what is it?

Timeline extends the multitasking capabilities in Windows to includes activities from other PCs and, as exciting, activities that happened earlier in time. The idea here is that many Windows users---not just power users, but even mainstream users---now use multiple PCs and devices, and they work on projects over periods of time.

From a user experience standpoint, Timeline appears in Windows 10's Task View display, which you access, as before, by selecting the Task View button in the taskbar or by typing WINKEY + TAB. In previous versions of Windows 10, Task View displayed thumbnails for all of your open apps and other windows, plus a "New desktop" button and/or thumbnails for any virtual desktops you may be using.

In Windows 10 "Redstone 4," Task View now displays thumbnails for activities---e.g. apps you ran and other windows you opened---that you performed earlier in time, from the current PC, from other PCs, and from your mobile devices. These activities are grouped by time, and you can scroll vertically to see more and, in effect, go back in time.

Timeline provides ways for you to dive into activities, too, so you can see and access more. For example, you can toggle the view of any time period between "See all" and "See only top activities," depending on your needs at the time.

Like so many other features, Timeline sounds great in theory. But like so many other features, it also relies on developer buy-in. And this has been a tricky problem for Microsoft---and for Windows 10 users---so far. For example, the My People feature that debuted in the Fall Creators Update also relies on developers to support it explicitly in their apps. But to date, very few have. And for the most part, anyone who wishes to use this feature still has to stick with a handful of compatible apps that are built-in to Windows 10.

Microsoft claims that "developers are working hard to enhance their apps" to support Timeline. And ... maybe they are. But in the initial release for Windows Insiders, Timeline only explicitly supports a handful of Microsoft apps, including Microsoft Edge, Maps, News, Money, Sports, and Weather from Windows 10, and Microsoft Office apps like Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

To address this potential Achilles Heel, Microsoft has already published guidelines to help developers create Timeline-compatible activities. Behind the scenes, these activities are written to the Microsoft Graph, a data store in the Microsoft Azure cloud that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to generate insights based on a user'...

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