Microsoft isn’t sharing specifics, but according to new information on its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) blog, the company is definitely planning to distribute in late October a pre-beta build of Windows 7 to attendees.

I’m assuming this build will not be the same one (the “M3″ build 6780) that leaked over the past week. The reason? Microsoft just added a bunch of new Windows 7 sessions to the PDC agenda that are focused on new user interface elements that are not part of the 6870 build I saw last week. One of the new PDC sessions mentions a “Windows 7 Desktop Taskbar.”

Another mentions “new shell user experiences APIs (application programming interfaces). And another is slated to discuss “new APIs to find, visualize and organize.” I haven’t seen the new taskbar that is part of some of the Windows 7 builds that I’ve heard a select few testers have seen and had an opportunity to play with.

It’s not surprising that Microsoft has been especially vigilant in guarding what the UI of Windows 7 looks like, as that’s the final “fit and finish” that distinguish operating system releases. I’m curious how similar the Windows Live Wave 3 services and Windows 7 will be in terms of user interface elements — and whether the UI can and will be influenced by tester feedback at this point in the development cycle.

Source: ZDNet