Microsoft revamps OneDrive for Web with responsive design

Microsoft today updated OneDrive with a new responsive Web design. The new look is rolling out to all OneDrive users “over the next couple of days” and will arrive for OneDrive business users before the end of the year.

The design update follows an update specific to photos at the start of the year, as well as revamps of the Android, iOS, and Windows Phone mobile apps. Today’s release, however, is apparently a redesign built from the ground up, including the visual grid, color palette, and typography.

“When we began design work on the new web experience we could have just updated some colors, adjusted a few font sizes, and called it a day, but we knew that wouldn’t be enough,” the OneDrive team explained. “In order to achieve a truly cohesive web experience across the breadth of devices people use to access OneDrive we had to start from scratch.”

First up, OneDrive has picked a 4-pixel grid, which the team says offers flexibility in layout while still maintaining visual density and stability across both web and native layouts. All components (panels, dialogs, file list, left navigation, commanding, and even buttons) have been reworked to snap to the new visual and responsive grids.

The team also performed an “extensive audit” of the various devices owned by OneDrive users, and found that the ideal number of responsive breakpoints was six. The result was the responsive grid, which structures the service while still being flexible to your screen’s size:

The color palette has also had a few adjustments, although nothing major has changed: It’s still the OneDrive blue with some complementary tonal grays and a few accents. The font is still Segoe, a custom type family that is seen across Microsoft’s digital products.

To the untrained eye, this may not seem like a big set of changes. But as an occasional OneDrive user, I can tell you this was much needed — just last night I was very frustrated trying to access the service on a mobile device. Hopefully these changes address that, in addition to making OneDrive much easier on the eyes.