After numerous leaks, it’s pretty much a given that Microsoft’s next OS will be Windows Blue. What we don’t know is when it will be released. A leak of an early build over the weekend suggests that we may be seeing the new OS sooner than we thought.

Some intrepid Windows explorers have installed Windows Blue already and are now just starting to find out what’s in the updated OS. It seems that Windows Blue is a small update to Windows 8 with a number of new customization options alongside a few updates to programs.

The major update, of course, is that the Start Screen, or Metro interface, has received a few needed upgrades. For starters, Live Tiles can now be resized so users can enlarge the presence of more important apps, and reduce the size of less used apps.

Multitasking in the Metro interface has also been improved with two apps now being able to share equal width on the screen. Before, one app would always take up the majority of the screen thus making the other app kind of worthless as only a small portion of it would be visible.

As for programs, Windows Blue will apparently ship with Internet Explorer 11. There’s not many details on what improvements Microsoft have made, but there’s bound to be more information released as people dig around in the new browser.

If you want to get more in-depth with Windows Blue, YouTube user sM4llziE has uploaded a walkthrough of the changes coming to Microsoft’s next OS:

[NeoWin via Engadget]