Microsoft: New Windows Terminal update gives you better tabs plus these features
Microsoft has released the latest monthly update to its preview of Terminal, the Windows app for developers, with improvements to tabs.
Developer
Tabs are an important UI feature of Terminal, allowing developers to work on multiple tools like Windows Subsystem on Linux distributions and PowerShell Core.
Last month's updates introduced the Cascadia Code Typeface, improved settings, and enabled stylus support. Now the new Terminal Preview 1910 release tweaks the UI with better color contrast between tabs, rounded corners on the dropdown and tab separators. These improvements are due to updating Terminal to WinUI TabView version 2.2.
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And just like a browser, Terminal now warns the user when clicking the X button on the window if there are multiple tabs open. Plus users can double-click the tab bar to maximize the window. There are also keybindings for increasing and decreasing the font size.
Any installed Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) distributions are automatically detected by Terminal and appear in the profiles.json file. They can be accessed in the dropdown menu but can be hidden too if users don't want to see them there.
As promised last month, settings is an area Microsoft would be working on for future Terminal preview releases.
Terminal now ships with a 'defaults.json' file that includes all default settings. Any changes to the file are ignored and overwritten. Users can configure custom settings from their own profiles.json file.
There are also new launch settings that allow the user to set the Terminal to launch as maximized or to be set in an initial position on the screen. There's also an option to set Terminal to launch to the left or above a primary monitor for those who use multiple monitors.
SEE: Microsoft: This new Windows Terminal update gives you 'way better settings'
Microsoft is planning to continue releasing monthly updates for Terminal until it reaches 'feature-complete' status at the end of 2019 and then is aiming to release version 1.0 in April 2020.
The company has also shipped PowerShell 7 preview 5, the second last preview release before a scheduled December launch of the Release Candidate that's aligned with the .NET Core 3.1 final release.
Microsoft is targeting general availability of PowerShell 7 in January and it will be its first Long Term Servicing release. .NET Core 3.1 is slated for release in November 2019 and will also be a long-term supported release with support for at least three years.
The new Terminal Preview 1910 release tweaks the UI with better color contrast between tabs, rounded corners on the dropdown and tab separators.
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