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WattsvilleBlues posted:What's the underlying reason that the Start menu appeared instantly and reliably up to and including Windows 7, but since then has taken a massive performance and reliability hit? mostly the web integration as others say, if you disable that poo poo it's usually fast enough to not notice a difference But also partially because from win95 to win7 the start menu (and taskbar etc) was part of the explorer shell. So it was pretty minimal and MS had very strong incentives to keep it tight and bulletproof. If it crashed or had performance problems that was your whole shell crashing or having performance problems, which affected the whole user experience quite badly. Now the start menu and taskbar are in UWP apps like ShellExperienceHost (10-11) and StartMenuExperienceHost (11). Pulling them out of explorer isn't the problem -- modular systems are generally good, and while UWP apps have more overhead than oldschool win32 C++ they're not that bad. The problem is those reliability incentives aren't as big, and competing incentives (pushing bing search, MS account services, data collection) have enough sway to inject bullshit into what used to be "hands off, don't gently caress with this" components. If the taskbar is all hosed up, well, it's not that bad is it? You can still use the PC, right? A lot of the bullshit is done to seek profit in other areas of MS's business since Windows is not a growth area anymore.  buffbus posted:About 10 years ago there was a Microsoft web service outage which caused windows 7 start menus to lock up. Lasted about half a day IIRC. Sure this wasn't windows 8? Win7 didn't have direct internet integration in the start menu.
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Apr 9, 2024 14:55
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down1nit posted:I use the start menu just fine. I like that run as admin comes up as a choice when searching. I like having icon folders, I like not having to open "All programs" immediately after hitting start. I've tried to explain to people why I hate it, why it affects my workflow, and why it ultimately costs time and drains me mentally, and why this isn't acceptable and have maybe succeeded...once? The difference between people who are pretty passionate about OS UX and those who look at the W11 Start Menu and don't see what the problem is is fundamentally that the former group's demands on an OS are substantially higher because they use a computer as a versatile tool, not as "thing that starts browser and games". For a lot of people who don't care, it's generally because their requirements are so low that as long as they can get a browser, they are probably fine with out an operating system works. In fact, they don't need an operating system - they just need a web browser. They almost all just need a chromebook - a browser attached to a OS with such limited functionality that I actually literally couldn't get poo poo done, but they probably wouldn't notice because at the end of the day, your requirements are, 'Well, it starts chrome I guess'. I find it particularly annoying trying to combat this, 'Oh you just hate change', or 'it's just group hate' crap. No - I can actually use a computer and so my requirements are high and when you break my workflows in way that makes them measurably worse then they were previously, that's something I'm going to be noisy about. I'm a nerd who bought a Pro license of Windows when I had almost no money because access to GPO promised (and delivered) functionality that let me work a little bit better. I run a domain out of my house these days because I want domain-level features. I ask a lot out of my Computing Experience™. Me and you - we don't have anywhere close to the same requirements. You also are probably just ignorant of how good software can actually be. Have you ever tried searching your disk with Everything (the software)? Go download that and come back to here and I dare you to defend Window's terrible search, and then realize this is an example among dozens of 3rd party software just doing Window's job better than Windows., So my terse response to this kind of thing is, 'You don't care, because you can't really use a computer. You don't even know what to care about'. That's a bit of a dickish assumption, but I've also never met someone who could actually leverage OS features effectively defend modern MS's horseshit designs. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 19:22
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:I've tried to explain to people why I hate it, why it affects my workflow, and why it ultimately costs time and drains me mentally, and why this isn't acceptable and have maybe succeeded...once? The difference between people who are pretty passionate about OS UX and those who look at the W11 Start Menu and don't see what the problem is is fundamentally that the former group's demands on an OS are substantially higher because they use a computer as a versatile tool, not as "thing that starts browser and games". Not the OP, but I definitely use my OS for more than just "launch browser". Not all the time, sure, but often enough that I interact with Explorer regularly, and it's... fine for me. I haven't used the start menu since I discovered Launchy like 15 years ago, so I can't speak to that. I also use alt+tab so I don't do much with the taskbar, either.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:37
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I only use my windows pc for games and I still can’t stand the new start menu. It just feels slow and lovely compared to the third party ones.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:44
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I'm confused as to why the software engineers don't try to fix stuff like this. Don't they use the software they create?
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Apr 9, 2024 19:52
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WattsvilleBlues posted:I'm confused as to why the software engineers don't try to fix stuff like this. Don't they use the software they create? Large software companies aren't just nerds writing pure code and focusing on what's performative and offers good features. When you start getting into teams that are large enough to have more than one manager, factionalism, not invented here, and infighting over who's idea are best (so, politics) become an increasingly larger part of what goes into the actual software. Microsoft in particular is infamous for this. People weren't kidding up thread when they discussed how the Start Menu was getting stuff stuck into it by other teams; the AI people in the Windows 11 development team have lots of political credit, so they spend it pushing AI, or Cortana, or web integration into the Start menu. Then the people who are actually responsible for the Start menu (if there even IS anyone who's specifically responsible for it) are told to do that integration with their development time, not focusing on making it more stable or performative. Stability gets pushed back to the bugfixing phase of development, and then you're doing triage on showstoppers and the Start menu being slow is less priority than it crashing on systems using Dell trackpads or some poo poo, and that's how you get where you are today. Basically, people know that it's bad, but they're powerless to fix it.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:58
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MikusR posted:It was also like that in Windows 8. And even in early betas of 10. Windows 8 broke search in the start menu. It really was downhill from there, but maybe in new and exciting ways each time
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Apr 9, 2024 20:05
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Arivia posted:Basically, people know that it's bad, but they're powerless to fix it. This is the unfortunate truth. The higher level directives are going to have massive influence on what actually gets done, and if the word on high is 'Integrate AI, make sure there are ads for OneDrive, and for god's sake make sure Search is always hitting bing!' ... Well, thems the breaks.
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Apr 9, 2024 20:08
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WattsvilleBlues posted:I'm confused as to why the software engineers don't try to fix stuff like this. Don't they use the software they create? Any time you see a company with an obvious problem you can be sure there are tons of people in that company who are pissed about it.
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Apr 9, 2024 20:28
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Jesus, this is where you need strong leadership and authority to allow leadership to clamp down on poo poo like that. Ugh. I mean, Apple is as big as Microsoft surely and so far as I know their desktop software doesn't suffer from this, certainly not to the same extent?
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Apr 9, 2024 20:28
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I don't know I said no to cortana, onedrive, bing once and it never came up again. My W11 start menu contains just icons to my programs so no web poo poo, and when I start typing it turns into a context sensitive search window that finds everything integrated to windows registry, on top of settings. Now how does one have a workflow that is start menu dependent to such a degree that it's breaking it? What's happening there?
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Apr 9, 2024 20:29
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Their leadership demanded lovely, defective keyboards so the laptops would be 1mm thinner.
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Apr 9, 2024 20:29
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macOS doesn’t suffer from the exact same issues but it still runs into problems striking a balance between user-focused design and design for pushing services so the issues it does have stem from the same place. Same goes for iOS, really.
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Apr 9, 2024 20:37
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imma still call bing 'bung'
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Apr 9, 2024 20:37
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Like it’s hard not to look cynically at Apple rolling out the desktop App Store and coincidentally making it a buggy chore to install traditional software that requires updated permissions (with prompts that time out, disappear, occur in multiple different settings windows, fail to function, etc.)
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Apr 9, 2024 20:42
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I've started a new job where I have a Linux workstation and while there are certainly a few tiresome things about it, it's amazing how much less of a gently caress it is to use in many ways for everyday things. I moved away from Linux around the time of Windows 10 because it was good then! It's very sad.
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Apr 9, 2024 20:46
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WattsvilleBlues posted:Jesus, this is where you need strong leadership and authority to allow leadership to clamp down on poo poo like that. Ugh. I mean, Apple is as big as Microsoft surely and so far as I know their desktop software doesn't suffer from this, certainly not to the same extent? Strong leadership is pushign the AI into everything because it makes their stonks go up
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Apr 9, 2024 20:54
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My issues with the Start Menu are mostly with Windows Search, as the two are wed - most people prob just use the start menu to hit the Windows key and start typing anyway. As others have said, the primary culprit is the conflict with delivering a user-focused UI while also wanting to promote online services. While I won't say it 'destroys my workflow', my issues with Start/Search on an unmodified system (I get that some of these can be fixed with gpedit/reg entries, which I do): - Not resizable. Important when "Recommended" takes up half the display area, but even more critical when the start menu becomes the Search results after typing - the fonts used for the search results is much larger than the font used for the actual start menu apps screen. - Scrolling to see more Pinned apps is unresponsive. This is because each "section" requires the UI to smooth scroll to the next with some inertia, then fully come to a stop before it responds to the next mousewheel event. In the All Apps list for example, using your mousewheel to scroll up and down behaves like it does in every other website/app, it responds instantly (with some delay due to smooth scrolling animation) with each directional change. On the Pinned apps list, you have to wait for it to start scrolling, finish its animation, then wait another second while it comes to a near-invisble full stop, before it responds to another request. - Web search results take priority after the one hit (usually - the randomness of results is another matter). I don't need 5 different suggestions for web search to see the hit I wanted cut off that I now have to scroll for. I actually don't mind the inclusion of web search results, it's just that of course the Bing team wants their cut, so there it is instead of being able to place a priority. - The bizarrely-large oval categories links at the top aren't customizable in terms of priority (why can't I specify videos as a common search category for example?), and laughably the last link (Photos) is always cut-off in a default install - need that space to show the Bing Rewards and CoPilot logo! (and it probably would still fit regardless!)   BTW if you use the reg entry to disable web search results, it gets rid of the Bing rewards counter/copliot icon and the Photos category is no longer cut off, but the shell team didn't anticipate that, so the right-arrow icon remains, next to a ton of empty space. Clicking on a category near the end of the list, such as Photos, will inexplicably shift the category icons to the right, giving another new arrow icon on the left, even though there's nothing to scroll back to and no reason to move anything! Basically, the scroll icons aren't actually reactive elements that appear when they need to like every other scroll arrow that appears when content demands it, there were permanently slapped in there because at one point, they realized they couldn't fit what they needed to in one line and the solution was just to drop a scroll icon there, which will remain fixed forever regardless of actual space necessity. They didn't design a simple overflow scroll system, then just stuck a permanent arrow in there which will shift content, always - regardless if it needs to. This is actually a recurring theme you run into with the Start Menu and search results, it's not really reactive to available space - you get the impression is it exactly what it is, a hastily thrown together web app that 'integrates' various departmental requests in a way that is not even as responsive to varying DPI's as actual web sites are. For example, if you disable web search results through group policy, some search results give you something that looks like this:  Why does Documents need to be expanded? Look at all that available space. It's likely because it's still assuming it doesn't have that space available, because normally, it would be filled with irrelevant web search results first. I mean, jfc man. - The keywords search will miss results because the search term word is in the middle of a hit, rather than at the beginning. - No integrated email/contacts/meetings results. This has been an issue since Windows 7. - No drag and drop ability. I find the file I want, here's an open window I want to copy this result into it. Why can't I just drag it, like I could with Windows 7 or the Start Menu replacements? - The large Preview window on the right is useless. Why can't it preview image/video files of a reasonable size, or show more details about a folder/file (and allow me to copy those attributes)? Powertoys has a Quicklook clone which is decent, albeit still not as reliably fast as Mac OS Quicklook (and this should have been built into Windows a decade ago regardless). Happy_Misanthrope fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 21:10
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WattsvilleBlues posted:Jesus, this is where you need strong leadership and authority to allow leadership to clamp down on poo poo like that. Ugh. I mean, Apple is as big as Microsoft surely and so far as I know their desktop software doesn't suffer from this, certainly not to the same extent? I would argue that while MacOS and Apple software doesn't suffer necessarily from the obnoxious inline advertising that MS does these days, they have forever failed at delivering functionality worth a drat. The difference is that MacOS has *always* been that way - it's always been an OS that's super opinionated about how you use it and so nothing was ever taken away (At least in quantity that Windows is currently experiencing). MacOS has sucked forever if you want to get opinionated about workflow. It's sucked to manage both locally and at scale. It's sucked to try and customize visually. It's sucked at delivering functional options. And it's always sucked at these things, so it doesn't feel like it suffers from it, but it does. Windows is still the superior OS if these are things you value and it's better by a huge margin even today, but it's frustrating to watch Windows drift in the direction that it is.
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Apr 9, 2024 21:12
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Great posts! (Weird to take poo poo like this personally tho. I still don't see how I was defending it but if I need to be on a different "team" to get good, valid arguments then OK.) Everything: the grass will always be greener using a third party thingy and it's 100% fair to compare the different approaches. The fundamental start menu approach, ever since 95 was laughed at and only changed substantially with 98 OSR2 when the web was introduced. It was still bad, but in my opinion, improved functionally, and XP/Vista just made a lovely product a bit better. Everything took all idiocy out and just delivered a good product, simple as. They weren't locked into a patent or years of sunk costs. Things are allowed to be complex or simple depending on the use case. I agree that it's way too simple for power users. A valid point! It's OK to be level headed and distribute W's as well as L's when deserved imo, you're not in high school anymore... right?! == If you need to know about me to form your next argument, here goes: I am kinda old. I have used these things since Deskmate and I do know what good software is and isn't. You can and should leave me out of it though, I am not a start menu. I do repairs on computers for work and have seen way more problems on previous iterations of windows than anything at all in 11 (stability wise), so the dissing of something much improved is confusing, honestly and I'm genuinely interested in opinions.
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Apr 9, 2024 22:22
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I don’t think you responded to a single one of the criticisms that people took the time to point out.
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Apr 9, 2024 22:24
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I mean that’s fine if simply don’t agree with looking at OS functionality that way but if you suggest people are expecting the wrong things out of it and they’re being silly when they describe exactly how the Start menu used to support what they wanted and no longer does then you shouldn’t be surprised you get a negative response.
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Apr 9, 2024 22:28
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The only thing that can save us now is Windows 11 Plus! ngl that would be pretty sweet, need those themes son
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Apr 9, 2024 22:29
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I mean, I would still pay an eye-watering amount of money for a license to a version of Windows that Doesn't Suck™.
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Apr 9, 2024 22:34
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down1nit posted:... It's ok to have a conversation without being a smug, condescending twerp.
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Apr 9, 2024 22:37
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down1nit posted:
down1nit posted:Have you guys tried actually using it or are you just being edgy?
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Apr 9, 2024 22:48
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:I mean, I would still pay an eye-watering amount of money for a license to a version of Windows that Doesn't Suck™. And I'd pay an extra $5 for a key from Lodge North. 
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Apr 9, 2024 23:04
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Happy_Misanthrope posted:- No drag and drop ability. I find the file I want, here's an open window I want to copy this result into it. Why can't I just drag it, like I could with Windows 7 or the Start Menu replacements? Speaking of drag and drop... They don't allow you to drag and drop files onto the explorer address bar anymore either. This is one of the things that just keeps pissing me off as I used to do that a lot. Also the modern bits at the top of explorer(tabs, address bar and toolbar) take like half a second to load every time I launch it. It doesn't affect the usability or anything, but it's just so pathetic.
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Apr 9, 2024 23:13
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what are the workflows of you folks who have the start menu breaking your workflows all the time? i'm honestly curious what sort of things these days require a whole bunch of opening and closing applications via the os. like whatever os i'm on when i'm working i'm just opening my editor, some number of terminals, a browser for docs, a chat client, maybe a pdf viewer, and then i'm just leaving em open forever. like i feel like i barely use the start menu because i'm just popping new terminals in wsl or whatever
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Apr 9, 2024 23:20
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Phobeste posted:what are the workflows of you folks who have the start menu breaking your workflows all the time? i'm honestly curious what sort of things these days require a whole bunch of opening and closing applications via the os. like whatever os i'm on when i'm working i'm just opening my editor, some number of terminals, a browser for docs, a chat client, maybe a pdf viewer, and then i'm just leaving em open forever. like i feel like i barely use the start menu because i'm just popping new terminals in wsl or whatever For the Start Menu itself, I get a couple things, in order of what I probably use the most: • First class access to the control panel • Pinned Apps. "Why not just use pinned apps on the taskbar?", you ask. A Great question! Pinned Apps on my start menu are apps that I very occasionally use, but want quick access to when I want them. Examples would be things like DotNetPeak, WinSCP, and a couple others. • First class access to Network Connections - this is low key a killer feature of Open Shell if you are frequently in these settings. • E: Right-Click functionality. No, not the lovely kind - the real kind. Being able to interact with these items like the folders, files and shortcuts they are is so nice. • Viewing my programs in a way that actually makes any goddamn sense. Common stuff gets launched from the Taskbar. Less common stuff gets launched from alt + space if I know the name. Some things get launched from Pinned Apps, but sometimes there is something I know that is on my computer that I can't remember the name of, but if I saw it, I'd remember it. When I'm browsing 'All Programs', this is generally what I'm trying to do and being able to only see 10 or so items at a time is loving joke. My 'All Programs' menu has about 200 items in it and I can see them all at the same time with Open Shell, because that's kinda the point. Also, it never takes extra time to show me the Start Menu - something I definitely can't say about my work computer's default Start Menu. Besides that, I have Everything integrated into my taskbar and I have a pile of settings and bits of information on the Explorer window that suit me better. I have my own backup software I integrate into Explorer because everyone else sucks at this, and of course, Everything also overrides Explorer's default search. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 23:43
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See I don't know if the assumptions are correct here. The start menu is a quick popup menu. It disappears once you focus some other window. I don't want it to act like an real folder view, that would be annoying. I don't want random drag and drops from a menu that'll close as soon as that happens. The right panel isn't pointless, it offers context sensitive actions.  I don't want it displaying image previews. I don't want random private poo poo popping up as I'm looking for something unrelated. I want to open file explorer to do that. I appreciate your view, but I would hate that start menu just based on that lol.
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Apr 9, 2024 23:54
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There are some heated opinions about the start menu in Windows 11, and I just took time to double check that I have no performance issues with it at all. The recommended section that's there has always shown me recently installed programs and downloaded files, and does what I need it to. I would perhaps like it if the search bar would stop integrating web search options if I need to look up individual documents, but I suppose File Explorer is the job for document/file search anyway (srsly I'm asking if that's the best way to search)? The windows 11 taskbar has been good for me, but if you want to go back to the previous styles of taskbar, then try Start11. It does a lot, you can customize to do whatever you want, and even include ~colors~.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:15
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Yeah I think this conversation started with Microsoft newly attempting to block apps like that (specifically, StartAllBack? I think).
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Apr 10, 2024 00:19
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I too have literally no issues with search, it's immediate and prioritizes local files over web suggestions. Not saying those issues don't exist for some people but it certainly *can* work as intended. 
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Apr 10, 2024 00:24
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lines posted:I've started a new job where I have a Linux workstation and while there are certainly a few tiresome things about it, it's amazing how much less of a gently caress it is to use in many ways for everyday things. I moved away from Linux around the time of Windows 10 because it was good then! It's very sad. What line of work gets you a Linux workstation on your desk? What distro? Do you literally develop server software or some such?
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Apr 10, 2024 00:24
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wash bucket posted:What line of work gets you a Linux workstation on your desk? What distro? I haven't had windows at work for more than a decade before I changed jobs last year and they gave me a windows laptop, whose entire reason to exist is to run their bajillion applications in the tray and serve as the terminal that I use to ssh to the linux VM where I actually do all the work. I did desktop applications, web applications (so server and client), embedded junk and now I just work on a custom OS for a very specialized appliance. There was not a single second (nor is there now) where I felt that there was a need for windows. I'd love it if the laptop I have would be linux, even if it would just be used as an SSH terminal. But, IT need their lovely applications to run.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:40
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wash bucket posted:What line of work gets you a Linux workstation on your desk? What distro? I'm a research academic in high-assurance cryptography. Honestly most research software I'd be running in WSL anyway (this is what I did during my PhD, which I'm currently finishing off).
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Apr 10, 2024 00:49
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Last Chance posted:Yeah I think this conversation started with Microsoft newly attempting to block apps like that (specifically, StartAllBack? I think). Yeah, startallback seems to be targeted, but Start11 is allowed and still works great. Wasn’t startallback stopped because the creator is Russian? I guess Stardock is more trustworthy according to Microsoft. Taskbar customization is still on the menu, and the issue seems to be startallback itself for reasons unknown.
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Apr 10, 2024 01:05
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They're not even 'blocked' it's just "hey uninstall or rename these you can revert it the update"
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Apr 10, 2024 01:22
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god please help me posted:Wasn’t startallback stopped because the creator is Russian? I guess Stardock is more trustworthy according to Microsoft. The creator of startallback is russian and afaik is "for peace". When the war started his reaction to the embargo of the russian financial system was "ok the app is free now". (I have no idea, but I'd speculate that the fact he is able to have paypal payments function again is that he may have left the country.) Microsoft has given zero statement or context for why the block. The block is only on the RTM preview of the upcoming major update -- if there was anything untrustworthy or suspicious happening they would have 100% put it on the Defender blacklist for all versions, not the compatibility one. in other words *bzzzzt* wrong
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Apr 10, 2024 01:26
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