MetroFetro has released a new version of MetroUnlocker, which among other things (like actually using the 8056 Immersive Browser files this time and him actually remembering to also copy the x86 files along with the AMD64 files in the latter version of 8056...) now supports builds 7989 and 8032:


Obligatory screenshots (first one is 7989, second is 8032 and excuse the aspect ratio differences, I ran these builds on different computers):


He actually explained what was broken with these builds which caused the older versions of MU to not work properly on the readme, so if you're interested, check it out.

Nice! But what about builds like 7927 to 7973 (and its other compiles)?

Not supported. You could try them but no guarantee. There is some work happening for those builds by a different person, also using better patches compared to any version of MU.
Have patience BTW. The developer does not want to be bothered with people asking for a ETA.

I still remember those who said if 7989 had any start screen or charms it would be so incomplete and ugly.

I think the black on white charms is beautiful. Too bad they didn't extend to everyting else.
Is the fishy wallpaper scrolling with the page? I needed some glitcy 3rd party to get that in 8.1.

7989 looks as though it had the most thought and effort put into it metro compared to later builds. Will def give this a try.

I already know about the other work .

They weren't 100% wrong tho, as while some elements to look very interesting and beautiful (like the Charms bar and the background of the Start screen), other parts of the UI are indeed quite glitchy and incomplete (like the tiles, the Settings charm, the OOBE, the pinned app behavior, the fact that some of the charms do not work at all, etc). But, it is still very interesting and cool that a pre-80xx build was finally fully redpilled, especially as by 8056 (the previously oldest build we have a fully working redpill for) most of the Metro UI was standardized (8032 still has some differences compared to later builds, such as the size of the tiles, the gradient background, and some of the icons, which resemble 7989).

To answer your second question, yes it does scroll. Interesting to see the parallax scrolling behavior already in place. Here's a video demoing it (on real hardware with touch to boot):

It's a shame Microsft gutted many of these features and elements just for a flatty zune UI.
It's these subtle details that make an impressionable difference. Many of the features MS "added" in 8.1 (for instance start screen wallpaper) already better implemented before even 8RTM. If they just kept them in, wtf, instead of damage control reimplementation after removing for no clear reason.

The magic of Microsoft. Break things and remove other just to do it.

I will install on my x230t and see about a higher quality 60fps recording.

I actually decided as an experiment to try to port over the 7989 fish pattern to 8032 (I choose it because of how the gradient background matches 7989's background).

I opened 8032's shsxs on Resource Hacker and replaced the resources for the 8102 pattern with the ones from 7989 (located in imageres.dll BTW). I then modified the registry for it to use the pattern. The result?



It does work with 8032's other accent colors BTW (although I do think it looks good with that dark blue). I'm speculating that after the patterns were moved into shsxs, early on it still used the fish pattern instead of the 8102 tiled one. I do know that shsxs stored patterns were implemented on 8032 and 8056 (the Immersive Control Panel on the latter two builds mention patterns). And as you saw, once the fish pattern from 7989 replaced the tiled one from 8102, it works just fine. But I think the only way to truly confirm is to see an earlier shsxs be leaked.

7989, different color

To get it, go to hkcu/software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/explorer/accent and create a dword named ColorSet, set it to a value of 1 and then logoff and logon