
A History of the Windows Start Menu - ChrisArchitect
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/11/10923808/microsoft-windows-start-menu-20-years-visual-history
======
iolothebard
Actually the windows start menu used the same folder structure as the Win 3x
program folders items.

>Windows 95 Back in 1995, people lined up at midnight to get Microsoft’s
latest release of Windows, and it was the first version, alongside the
enterprise-focused Windows NT 4, to introduce the Start menu. It was designed
to make Windows easier to use, and group or organize applications in a list.
Before it arrived, Windows users could access apps through Program Manager. It
was largely a basic list of apps, with no real organization.

Clearly not even looking at how the start menu works from a file structure
layout is kind of funny if you're going to waste your time writing an article
about it.

~~~
Sophira
You're actually very wrong about that, but it's easy to miss thanks to clever
coding on Microsoft's part in Windows 95/98/NT4.

Program Manager in Windows 3.x would actually store its "program groups" in
.GRP files that were stored directly in C:\WINDOWS\\. If any of those files
were corrupt, Program Manager would give an error and simply not show you the
group. New program groups were created using an DDE interface to PROGMAN.EXE,
which could be guaranteed to be running at all times. (Unless you changed your
shell= setting in SYSTEM.INI, of course.)

In addition, you couldn't nest program groups, nor could you have program
items outside a program group. It basically _was_ a flat list of groups (which
were listed in the PROGMAN.INI file - you couldn't just copy over a .GRP file
and have it show up!), and each group was a flat list of program items. And
although there were program groups, it was true that many users would simply
put most of their apps into a single program group for ease of access.

Windows 95 changed all that. Now the Start Menu was stored in C:\Windows\Start
Menu\ (user profiles weren't really a thing on the 9x line of OSes; they
existed in some form if you used an enterprise network setup, but that's
beyond the scope of this comment) and were now plain folders and files, with
all the advantages that entails. Although the Start menu has changed locations
(and, on the NT lineage, was split into two locations - All Users and the
current user), it still retains this filesystem layout today.

The cleverness in Windows 95/98/NT4 came from the fact that the old DDE
interface that was used to create new program groups and items
programmatically (used by installers) stuck around, even while Program Manager
itself was relegated to a sideline and no longer guaranteed to be running.
(Windows would launch it invisibly when the interface was used.) When they
were used, a little window with a picture of a beating drum and a progress bar
would appear to show the user that the group and items were being created, as
the process could take several seconds and the installer might otherwise
appear to be hung.

Of course, programmers were encouraged to simply use the new folder interface;
it was much easier and quicker to use, and more flexible. The location of the
Start Menu/Programs folder was exposed as an environment variable, so it was
easy to write to the correct location.

Program Manager itself stuck around and could be used (and in the Windows 95
setup could even be selected as the primary shell instead of Explorer), but it
looked very different as minimised groups were no longer shown as icons but as
what basically amounted to a tiny title bar.

Program Manager was eliminated entirely with Windows XP (IIRC) and I suspect
the DDE interface went at the same time, though I honestly don't know - I
haven't had a program that would use that interface for ages.

~~~
dfox
The DDE calls to progman still work at least on XP. Various installers (even
for recent, but niche, software) still use these DDE calls for creation of
program groups. One tell-tale (and annoying) sign of installer using DDE is
that the created program group gets shown as explorer window.

Also, non-NT windows supported multiple user profiles at least since 3.1. At
first only thing that was per-user was password store for networking, and with
W95 essentially everything that is per-user today. (I suspect that the common
myth that there were no user profiles in w95 comes from the fact that by
default there was no prominent "log off" entry in start menu). Obviously,
there was no FS-level security, so only thing that was protected by profile
password was the aforementioned password store for SMB.

~~~
Sophira
When I said that user profiles weren't really a thing, I meant that they
really didn't save much different per-user unless your network was set up to
have roaming user profiles, which is what I meant about the enterprise
networking setup. I'm pretty sure that even Windows 95 had roaming support,
and as such the Start menu could change between users such a network, but I
could be wrong about that.

[edit: I just tested and the DDE interface works still even in Windows 10.
Wow.]

~~~
dfox
IIRC Windows 9x had local profile support in that different local users had
different HKCU, desktop, start menu and such, but did not support roaming
profiles in the sense that these data were not replicated to domain profile
directory and profile directory offered by domain controller was essentially
normal windows share that was used for documents folder (and used directly
online, without the replication)

Edit: essentially only thing that you would get by joining to domain was logon
scripts

------
bisby
> The Start screen itself was designed to look simplistic, but using it was
> anything but. Microsoft shipped the first version with the built-in apps
> pinned by default, but no quick access to search or shutdown options

I never had issues because the standard procedure for me is "hit windows key"
"start typing" and it behaved the exact same in windows 8. If you were on the
start screen, you could start typing to search, which is easy, and the
QUICKEST access you could ask for, but unintuitive for normal users to start
typing with no prompt.

Ctrl-Alt-Delete logouts/shutdowns is what I feel like theyve always wanted
people to do (for security reasons? no idea). But then again, how often do I
shutdown my computer. If something needs me to reboot, theres almost always a
prompt.

I imagine that classifies me as a power user. Not minding to do things the
"right" way and not needing prompts to guide me along.

I haven't used windows 10 yet, but I get the vibe that everyone loves it
again, because they made the start menu not fullscreen and added some simple
prompts to gain access to the functionality that was already there.

~~~
WorldMaker
«I haven't used windows 10 yet, but I get the vibe that everyone loves it
again, because they made the start menu not fullscreen and added some simple
prompts to gain access to the functionality that was already there.»

They made fullscreen-ing the Start Menu an option (as post 8/8.1, some of us
now prefer the fullscreen even on a desktop; with well chosen Live Tiles it
becomes a better version of something like Mac OS X's "widget expose",
IMNSHO).

Also, I think the biggest UX deal that makes Win 10 seem so much superior to
non-Power Users is that they moved the search bar from the bottom of Start
Menu onto the taskbar itself. (In hindsight, this seems like something that
should have happened sooner, and was why people would install some of the
nastier adware out there just to get a search box on the taskbar...) Ever
since Vista added it, most average users and many Power Users still haven't
seemed to pick up on the press the Windows key and start typing thing (which I
too have used since Vista), so prominently showing the search box is a big
deal in Windows 10.

------
whoopdedo

        Before it arrived, Windows users could access apps through Program Manager.
        It was largely a basic list of apps, with no real organization.
        While Program Manager did have smaller menus, most Windows users
        simply launched apps and used it as a list. 
    

The author doesn't address the evolving way that icons were added to the start
menu. The Program Manager started with a few predefined groups:
Communications, Accessories, Games, among others. Installers sometimes used
one of those groups, or created it's own generically named group. This made it
difficult to discover where your programs were installed. One of the purposes
of the Start Menu has been to make it easier to locate newly installed
programs. But even though the standard Program Manager groups were carried
over to Start Menu folders (Accessories persists to this day), the most common
pattern became to create folders with the name of the software vendor.
Microsoft eventually made this a recommendation.

But tiles reversed this recommendation, so after installing something a user
would not easily find it in the large, seemingly unorganized list of tiles.
That's part of why there was a demand for the return of the Start Menu.

~~~
makecheck
I've always hated software grouped by vendor. Vendors have an inflated sense
of self-importance; their name means nothing to anyone except them.

And this poison has made it over to Mac OS X, as well. Bundles should be
installed directly in /Applications, because you know, they're _bundles_ that
can contain as many files as the vendor wants! But no, there's always somebody
like Cisco that has to go ahead and create a stupid subfolder anyway.

~~~
gberger
I'd argue that vendor folders make sense in the case the names _do_ mean
something to the user. For example, Photoshop and Lightroom under Adobe, and
Word and Excel under Microsoft Office.

~~~
makecheck
Not to me. In order to search for things, at least in some version of Windows,
I remember having to type out the whole “Microsoft W” or “Microsoft E” to get
it to match anything (as it would only search the beginning of a string).
Fortunately the names of items in the Start menu could be customized, although
I also found that updates or other Windows quirks could routinely reset any
custom values. It got to the point where it wasn’t really worth it to tweak
anything because I didn’t know how long my changes would last.

Also, vendor names aren’t stable. What about when Flash was installed by
Macromedia (but is now Adobe)? It makes no sense for products to shift around
because of the company of the week.

------
benplumley
I found the analysis of how the desktop was treated in 8 a little far from how
it worked in reality. The impression I got was that if you were using a
tablet, then sure, the desktop was 'just another app', but if you were using a
PC then it was as front-and-centre as it had been in 7.

A little off-topic, but here's my current start menu appearance with Classic
Shell: [http://i.imgur.com/sRXiINp.png](http://i.imgur.com/sRXiINp.png)

~~~
gregmac
They were pretty separated. The taskbar was always shown, but switching from a
metro app to a desktop app or vice-versa, the whole screen did a flip
animation and you switched to the alternate UI.

Another noticeable separation was in windows switching: Win+Tab or the corner
hover action (top left corner,I think? I disabled it so not 100% sure) only
showed metro apps, plus a "Desktop" app. I believe Alt+Tab only listed desktop
apps (I may be remembering that wrong, pretty sure 8.1 added all apps to the
Alt+Tab switcher).

None of that would be so terrible, except that it felt so half-finished. You
had to use Explorer (Desktop app) to browse folders, but if you loaded an
image, it would "flip" and open the metro image viewer app. Same for PDF
files, and a handful of others. Worse was Control Panel: parts of it were
updated to use metro, but not all. It would do the "flip" animation as you
navigated around. That was pretty jarring.

I ended up disabling everything "metro" in Win8 and installing an alternate
start menu, and after that, to me, it really just felt like an incremental
improvement to Win7 with a beta optional full-screen UI on top that could be
safely ignored.

------
sdegutis
I gave up years ago on hoping for anyone to come up with a sane UX. Everyone's
been experimenting with it for years, but no device I've ever used seems
_more_ easy and intuitive than any other. They all have weird quirks that you
have to just sort of figure out by trial and error and then memorize. So
whatever. As long as I can eventually figure out how to use the thing to get
the job done, then I don't care. But I've been using Emacs for work every day
(along with CIDER for Clojure) and found myself more productive in it than
other IDEs/editors, so I'm probably in the minority.

------
xufi
Atleast in 10 they fixed it but ruined it again by adding all those ads for
games on the Windows Store and still kept those silly live tiles

~~~
romanovcode
You can remove live tiles and it will look clean.

------
Theodores
Back in the day Apple had a neat menu in the top left. You clicked on it and
the menu dropped down and you did stuff with it. When Microsoft came along
with the 'Start' menu I felt that their design was a reaction to the precedent
set by Apple and that the 'drop up' menu idea was bad UX. I did find myself in
a minority of one concerning this, nobody else I knew moved the menu bar from
the bottom to the top.

I stopped using Windows when Ubuntu became the popular Linux flavour of
choice. I haven't looked back although I didn't really like the switch to
Unity that much. I have adapted rather than go some Linux Mint or other route.
I learned how to 'alt-tab' again but still find Unity a tad compromised when
it comes to easily switching between terminal windows.

Nonetheless I am glad the Ubuntu dash is a 'drop-down' affair rather than the
anti-pattern 'drop-up' menu.

Maybe now that Apple have all those icons in the bottom and Windows has the
'drop-up' menu the 'frame' of interaction is understood that way, to be as
natural as a 'QWERTY' keyboard.

~~~
benaiah
How is “drop-down” an anti-pattern as opposed to drop-up?

~~~
Theodores
I must have misspoke, 'drop up', as per Win 95 onwards is anti-pattern to me,
everything menu-wise that is drop-down is good, again to me, given that is the
UX I learned first with WIMP GUI's.

~~~
dingo_bat
But why? It seems highly arbitrary to me that drop up is bad and drop down is
good.

~~~
somecallitblues
Drop downs make more sense because you always read from top down.

------
agumonkey
I was often confused on how much importance was given to win 3.x program
manager. But hey, we're talking android launchers. How times change.

------
timgws
> and it was the first version, alongside the enterprise-focused Windows NT 4,
> to introduce the Start menu

Didn't NT 3.51 have the Shell Technology Update that included the start menu?
[http://everything.explained.today/Windows_NT_3.51/](http://everything.explained.today/Windows_NT_3.51/)

------
mkoryak
Serious question. What happened to windows 9?

~~~
gregmac
Because seven eight nine.

One theory[1] is that during testing, much old apps were found to use:

    
    
        if (version.StarstWith("Windows 9") 
        {
            // windows 95/98
        } else ....
    

[1] [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/191279-why-is-it-
called...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/191279-why-is-it-called-
windows-10-not-windows-9)

~~~
WorldMaker
I did a Google Code Search at one point (too lazy to replicate) and found that
exact code in a ton of Java files, including what appeared to be still
shipping code from the Oracle JVM. Thanks, Java.

------
nightski
Honestly in Windows 10 (even in Windows 7/8) I rarely use the start menu at
all anymore. The taskbar has pretty much replaced it 100%.

