
Microsoft Explains Why the Start Menu Needed to Die - chaostheory
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394101,00.asp#fbid=STAXx2f_Lig
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Derbasti
So... The Start Menu needs to die, therefore make it a whole frigging screen
instead of a popup menu.

Very similar to the New Explorer thing: most people don't use 80% of explorer
menu features, so put them in the ribbon where they take up even more space.

I don't get this line of reasoning.

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kinkora
I don't know about you guys but what I took out of that article is that
Microsoft is secretly/stealthily tracking its users? How do they know if
someone is using the start bar "11 percent less than before"? Not only that,
it goes on to even say:

 _Instead of navigating through the nested menus within Start, or even
searching for apps and documents through the live search function, users began
to pin apps to the Start menu or the taskbar for even quicker access.
Microsoft data found that most users (above 40 percent) didn't pin a single
app to the Start menu, with steadily declining numbers pinning 1 (20 percent),
2 (15 percent), and so on._

It doesn't say anywhere in the article that it was a focus/user group and it
sounds like it was generalized to refer to every Windows user so how did they
collate all of those data? Shouldn't someone be raising some privacy concerns?

Disclaimer: I've not used Windows since XP. I'm a *nix user.

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kenjackson
Windows has opt-in telemetry data. Many of their product do too. So there is
some bias to those that opt-in, but I've heard that they still get tens of
millions of user data.

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kinkora
Ok, makes sense. thanks for that ken.

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Shenglong
I feel old when I say this, but: most Microsoft changes make me angry. I don't
understand why my desktop path needs to be changed 3 times between ME -> XP ->
7 (for example).

With that being said, I found W7 to be pretty intuitive. I don't use the start
menu for much other than quick access to programs that I don't want to
clutter. The start menu is on the corner, and easy to click. It's easy to de-
click if I need to, and I don't need to minimize anything to access it. This
will be a sad day.

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Roboprog
I hear you: the UI is shuffled each time, but it still seems to run slow and
complicated, and programming windows is ... more work than I care to take on,
if there is an alternative. (this from somebody who had been using DOS /
Novell / Windows / Borland dev stuff for about 10 years before ever picking up
Linux -- MS totally lost me just before the underwhelming release of '95)

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orthecreedence
I'm a bit scared and annoyed of this new interface. I use the start menu such
an incredible amount that having it bring up an entire new screen would
undoubtedly interrupt a lot of the workflows I'm used to.

It seems everyone is converging on mobile, as if it's going to replace the
desktop. It's not. Desktop will always be here, and to pretend it's going away
and force tablet interfaces down everyone's throat is a pretty bold/stupid
move in my opinion. Then again, I'm biased because I'm not a complete moron
when it comes to computers. Maybe 99% of the market will LOVE not having a
start menu.

Is my monitor a touch screen? No. So let's not pretend it is. I don't care
about pretty interfaces or big video buttons that play when I hover over them.
I want something I can launch programs with. Is it really hard to do something
like

if(is_computer) { show_useful_start_menu(); } else if (is_tablet) {
show_retarded_start_menu(); }

I understand I'm the minority, but if they do away with the start menu, I'll
probably stay on windows 7 forever.

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dasil003
Doesn't it matter what they ultimately replace it with? To me the Start menu
seems like a clumsy catchall from a bygone era when people were still
transitioning from DOS. It's grown bloated over the years and it's original
design purpose is long gone. Yes, you use it all the time, because there's so
much essential stuff crammed in there, but can't you imagine something better?

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Roboprog
Sadly, "Program Manager" was better.

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Roboprog
Oh dear. I remember using Winders 3.0/3.1. They had this thing call "Pogrom
Manager" (or something like that). In it, you could make a bunch of little
boxes, each of which held several things you could click on and run. It was
actually fairly useful, when you weren't just using winders to switch between
mess-doss apps. (and frankly, Dr. Dos did a good enough job app switching if
you weren't actually running any gooey apps)

Then, out came winders 95 with its fancy pants "start" menu, and some Rolling
Stones song about making a grown man cry, or at least some part of that song.
I didn't really like the start menu, too much chasing things down multiple
levels of moving targets.

So now, start menu will die. Die, start menu, die. Only to be replaced with
something that looks much like Pogrom Manager, only with more pixels and bits
per pixel to dress it up nice. Just goes to show you the MicroSlop can admit a
mistake, even if the mistake is old enough to get a driver's license.

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lomegor
I somewhat agree with Microsoft, but if, and only if, they provide another
easy way to run commands and see all other applications... Either way, I think
Windows 7 is too different from Windows 98 to ever go mainstream. People just
want a better looking Windows 98.

EDIT: Meant Windows 8, not 7

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chadgeidel
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses".
(Not) Henry Ford. The sentiment still applies.

Or are you saying that already?

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pmr_
I actually found one change to the Start Menu the enabling change for me:
Typing the name of something and (often) just getting the application that I
wanted to start. Just saying what I want and let the machine to the finding
for me just feels like the way things should be done to me.

I'm finding it hard to believe that people are actually pinning infrequently
used things like the Control Panel to the task bar or is there another way to
access it that I don't know of? Isn't that leading to visual clutter? Users
never cease to amaze me.

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r00fus
I actually found one change to the Start Menu the enabling change for me:
Typing the name of something and (often) just getting the application that I
wanted to start. Just saying what I want and let the machine to the finding
for me just feels like the way things should be done to me.

> So they ripped off OSX Spotlight (which stole it from Quicksilver/etc) -
> I've used spotlight to launch apps with 3-4 keyclicks since forever:

OSX: CMD+space,Fir<return> = Launch Firefox and Win7: WINkey, Fir <return> =
Launch Firefox

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cletus
I actually found the Start menu incredibly useful in Windows 7. Admittedly it
was a usage pattern they indicated: I would pin commonly used apps to the
Start Menu and would rarely if ever open up beyond that.

I would also use the auto-complete to find things as a second (distant) use
case.

One thing that always annoyed me about the Start Menu was how companies would
use it. For example, shortcuts notwithstanding I would have to go:

Start > Programs > Firaxis > Civilization IV > Civilization IV Beyond the
Sword

The part that really annoyed me was putting the company name in there. I don't
care. In fact it may not even be obvious who the company is that makes
something you want to use.

I actually bought a copy of Windows 7 retail version for the explicit purpose
of using it from computer to computer for years to come, probably in XP-like
time frames (ie 5-10 years).

Microsoft needs to realize that these infrequent _expensive_ upgrades (largely
for features nobody cares about) are a decade out of date.

Honestly, there's _still_ nothing wrong with XP. Microsoft just went out of
their way to kill it by deliberately not supporting it with things they
definitely could've. One of the great things about XP was the low resource
requirements (minimum 128M of RAM). IIRC 64-bit Windows 7 is at 2GB minimum
now. For what exactly?

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SomeCallMeTim
I actually found the Windows 7 Start Menu killed a primary bit of usability
that I'd been relying on: The ability to have folders of links in the start
menu.

I use nearly 20 programs on a regular basis, and another 20 I use occasionally
and would like the be able to find without digging through the Program Files
menu, and I don't want to clutter the task bar with all of them. The way I
have it set up in six folders on the top of the Start Menu (NOT inside
"Programs", but above Programs), I can pull any of them up with a Ctrl-Esc and
few hits of the arrow keys.

The text search feature works great when you can remember the name of the app
you're looking for. My brain doesn't always work that way, though. Since I
have the various apps sorted by category, I don't have to look through more
than about 6 at a time to find the one I need.

I'm actually using a "Classic Windows Start Menu" app that replaces the new
Windows 7 Start Menu with one that behaves the way I've come to depend on.

Until I found the Classic Start Menu app, I was getting stuck on the search
line a lot, trying to remember what some tool was called. No fun.

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maratd
Just an FYI. You can create a folder and place multiple folders of links into
that folder. Then create a toolbar on the taskbar pointing to that folder.
Then reduce the toolbar to the smallest possible size. You will find that you
can now traverse the multiple folders of links by highlighting them. No need
for any extra apps.

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SomeCallMeTim
Did that. That was my first attempt at fixing this problem.

Doesn't work for me, since I can't get to it from the keyboard. If there's a
keyboard shortcut to open it, then I never found it.

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evanw
After getting hooked on a keyboard-based launcher like Launchy
(<http://launchy.net>), I pretty much stopped using the Start menu entirely.

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Masse
I can sort of see why they do it, and it might be good enough for many people,
but it makes me think what happens to the rest of the programs. For example I
have maybe 5-7 programs I use daily, but every now and then I might need
another program. Do I need to clutter my desktop or go search the program
files?

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majmun
I'm not suprised startmenu lost usage in win7. It is because in windows 7 they
kindof made it less user friendly you must operate startmenu in small box in
bottom left corner and not like before where you can expand menu on whole
screen. and you can't change it to classic start menu.

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darasen
Now will they kill the registry?

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Hominem
This makes sense to me. Many people, including myself, just dump icons on the
desktop. Every time I open the start menu it seems like I am digging forever
to find what I want.

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aresant
I love that MSFT is building a UI in response to actual data, but something
about these posts and the resulting UI seems cold and methodical.

Maybe it's just the writing style that's throwing me but the leap forward in a
consumer facing OS that iOS delivered felt like a more organic process.

Reminds me of that quote from Jobs : "It's really hard to design products by
focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show
it to them."

As a result I wonder how much of Apple's process was reactionary from data /
focus groups vs. from Steve / Ives "gut"

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wanorris
And yet, to me at least, the Metro UI itself doesn't feel at all like the sort
of result you would expect from a product designed by focus groups. As with
the ribbon (which I'm also a fan of), it feels like they worked with focus
groups to identify pain points, used genuine inspiration to come up with a
design solution, then used more user testing to refine that solution.

Honestly, it feels like Apple has been playing it too safe with their UI work
the last few years, while Microsoft is doing real innovation. (Hardware, of
course, is an entirely different matter.)

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pedalpete
I agree with your hardware comment, I wish PCs wouldn't look like Macs. So
cold and austere. I hope with the ultra-lights, PC manufacturers start
experimenting with alternative materials, like Asus did with their bamboo
line.

I've also always wondered why the CPU isn't stuck on the back of the monitor
where it can be provided with better airflow.

As far as the ribbon, I have to disagree, it seems such a hodgepodge to me,
and though I like WP7, I don't think it has a warm inviting feel, it's just
cool.

iOS always felt boring and cold to me.

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majika
> I've also always wondered why the CPU isn't stuck on the back of the monitor
> where it can be provided with better airflow.

That would result in increased latency between the CPU and the rest of the
system. Put the the motherboard and memory on the laptop's monitor and it
would start getting too top-heavy.

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pedalpete
I was suspecting something like that, though with the weight of laptops these
days, I suspect the top heavy will become less of an issue. I'd guess
HD,keyboard,trackpad and ports are the majority of the weight in the lower
half.

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bchjam
the best feature of win7's start menu (desktop search) is still there in the
win8 start screen, but I have to admit that accessing it with any frequency
starts to feel a bit too alt-tabby

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chadgeidel
Yeah, it's like they have 2 OSes in there. I love the new "tablet UI", but
it's jarring to have to switch "home" from one application to start another.
They need to include have a search box in the traditional "desktop" somewhere.

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ghurlman
Hit the Windows key, start typing - just like in Windows 7. The UI is
different, but the results are the same.

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georgieporgie
For years, Microsoft jammed the Start Menu where it didn't belong (Windows
CE), now they're stuffing a tablet interface where it doesn't belong.

I'm extremely suspicious of their interpretation of usage statistics. As a
"power user" I habitually decline any offer to track my behavior. Also, as
discussed in the previous article about Explorer changes, do the statistics
speak to the number of people who choose other methods, or to the lack of UI
discoverability? Clutter up the desktop of your freshly-bought PC with enough
partner icons, and the Start Menu gets lost in a sea of visual information.

The new interface reminds me of the old app-launchers/menus in the pre-Windows
days.

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bluedanieru
Are you sure that's the data they're basing all this on? Terribly unscientific
for them, if so.

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georgieporgie
No, not at all. But that's the problem: to my knowledge, they haven't
disclosed much about their methods of collecting data, nor how they've come up
with their percentage numbers. Since Microsoft seems to be ruled by politics
and pet projects, I'm extremely suspect of the objectivity of their
statistical analysis.

