882 replies to this topic 5 votes

[Calum]

Intrinsica, on 31 July 2012 - 13:04, said:

Some people just enjoy hating things for the sake of hating them. Me, I have my reasons for disliking Windows 8. However, I wouldn't say that you're in the minority. When it's finished there will be a lot of happy people, I'm sure. I just don't think I'll be one of them.

Well said. I feel it's important to distinguish between those who just hate change and haven't given it a chance and those who have given it a chance but just don't like it. Often, some people who love a product don't understand that some others will dislike it—they appear to be somewhat blinded, believing that just because they love it, everyone should.

I do quite like the Metro experience of Windows 8. The features and elements of design I love far outweigh those I dislike. But that's because I'm after something that many who dislike the Metro experience aren't after. Some people find the Metro experience too limiting or just plain ugly, or even both, among other reasons, and such reasons are completely understandable.

[+Brandon Live]

DpwOX545, on 29 July 2012 - 00:01, said:

As far as the Start Button is concerned, MS may have removed it since a lot of their test users simply use keyboard shortcuts but that is just poor design. The most obvious reason is not all keyboards even have a windows key (macs!) so those users are basically screwed. In addition, I can't count how many times I was eatting/texting/etc when i needed to launch an app my right hand was on my mouse while my left was busy...while its quite easy to move my hand over and hit the windows key, its annoying to stop what you're doing instead of simply drag over the mouse and click.

You can invoke Start the exact same way you did in Windows 7. Just throw your mouse into the lower-left corner and click. There are actually *more* ways to get to Start with mouse than Windows 7, since you can also get to it from the charms bar on the right hand side of the screen.

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Now onto Metro....my biggest issue with it is that it doesn't really "mesh" well with a desktop experience and it's very much a 1.0 product. A lot of people use their desktop to multitask and constantly interact with 2-3 different programs at once.....Metro isn't good at this. Metro is good for wanting to use your PC for 5 minutes and then get off of it, not for copying data from a spreadsheet into an email while checking a running news ticker and as a result, many enterprise customers will ignore Windows 8.

How do you copy invoke a copy operation from one app to another while also looking at a third app? I don't think that's a real scenario. Sending content from one Metro style app to an e-mail is super easy (click Share -> Mail).

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Metro is also very incomplete, when you go in to the Metro system settings, most options will make you leave metro and use the classic windows control panel. Another example is the lack of a Metro File Explorer.....again when you need to do any serious work you have to leave Metro. For a UI element that is being forced down our throats, its very incomplete.

This is untrue. Almost zero options take you to the desktop. The very few that do are super rarely used and mostly one-time use things (i.e. setting up multiple input languages).

[+Brandon Live]

Chicane-UK, on 31 July 2012 - 12:57, said:

I'm reserving judgement till I try the final, RTM version. But I just can't get into the mindset that I essentially want my start menu replacing with all those tiles. My limited experience of trying the preview builds I just found it far more awkward and time consuming to get around with (for my usage anyway) no perceptible improvements to how I use my computer.

It's sort of the same reason why I never used the widgets on OSX - I dont want to have to switch over to a different screen to use them.. I want them right there on my desktop, if at all. I have to click away to another screen to get to them, why not make them just an application that you load with a click off your quicklaunch bar or something?

How is having a button on the taskbar better than just clicking in the corner? And how was the Win7 start menu any different? You had to "switch over to a different screen" there too. You had to switch to a screen that was ~1/10th start menu and ~9/10ths stuff you aren't looking at that isn't useful to what you're trying to do (launch an app).

I think some people are under the mistaken impression that the old start menu was not full-screen because someone somehow thought that was functionally "better," rather than a consequence of machine performance when Windows 95 came out combined with aesthetics (i.e. so you could see the pretty clouds which were part of the Win95 brand). After that it stayed that way because it was familiar. But you can't keep things around for that reason for ever, especially when they no longer serve their original purpose. The one thing the start menu used to do well (besides search) was launch pinned/MFU apps. In Win7, the taskbar very successfully took over those duties, and the Start menu became a search box with some old cruft attached (i.e. some shortcuts into Explorer which duplicated its jump list, and the nightmarish All Programs list). I still find it very confusing that anybody actually misses it :-P

[Javik]

Well for starters you have to go pixel hunting to find where to click, the window for the click is a lot smaller than with the old start button. And with the old start menu people were not forced to use it. You have Windows set up to open things with the metro apps by default, and you have people forced to use the start screen whether they want to or not. And that's where the irritation of most people is, you have taken their choice away. If you were that confident that the new start screen was so loved the code for the old start menu wouldn't have been pulled out, it's not as if it adds a great deal of bloat. If you were that confident that people would see the virtues of the new start screen you would not be needing to force them to use it.

And that's the main problem with the "new" Microsoft, you throw in an obsession with making change for the sake of change, and an obsession for competing with Apple on every front (especially for a piece of the app store pie) and what do you get? Ugly and disjointed products that very few of the core Windows demographic seem to like.

[+Brandon Live]

Javik, on 31 July 2012 - 16:40, said:

Well for starters you have to go pixel hunting to find where to click, the window for the click is a lot smaller than with the old start button. And with the old start menu people were not forced to use it. You have Windows set up to open things with the metro apps by default, and you have people forced to use the start screen whether they want to or not. And that's where the irritation of most people is, you have taken their choice away. If you were that confident that the new start screen was so loved the code for the old start menu wouldn't have been pulled out, it's not as if it adds a great deal of bloat. If you were that confident that people would see the virtues of the new start screen you would not be needing to force them to use it.

It's hard to miss an infinitely sized target :-) Whether you realize it or not, you clicked in the same spot in Win7. Hitting any other part of the old button/orb was actually rather difficult (unless you exerted special effort to do so).

The old start menu code would have required significant churn (i.e. lots of dev and test cost) to make work on Win8. That would've meant cutting other features (or quality, or performance). I think we made the right call.

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And that's the main problem with the "new" Microsoft, you throw in an obsession with making change for the sake of change, and an obsession for competing with Apple on every front (especially for a piece of the app store pie) and what do you get? Ugly and disjointed products that very few of the core Windows demographic seem to like.

Actually one of our core principles is "change is bad unless it's great." We strive very hard not to change things unless we absolutely need to in order to move forward, and even then only if we can be very certain the benefit of the change meets a very high bar.

And I don't know what "app store pie" you're referring to. From what I've read, Apple makes no money on the app store (or not a meaningful amount anyway). It's a key piece of the larger ecosystem (and provides huge value to both end-users and developers), but it's more of a means than an end.

[Javik]

I don't really buy that at all, the start menu in early builds of 8 was exactly the same as it was in 7. I also doubt the voracity of your second claim given how dismissive you are of anyone that refuses to swallow the metrification of all your products.

[Dot Matrix]

Javik, on 31 July 2012 - 17:12, said:

I don't really buy that at all, the start menu in early builds of 8 was exactly the same as it was in 7. I also doubt the voracity of your second claim given how dismissive you are of anyone that refuses to swallow the metrification of all your products.

Huh? He was saying that keeping the old code in Windows 8 would have required too much. And really, it was only there for one reason: it was familiar. But you can't let that keep you from moving forward. There was nothing there worth keeping other than app pinning and search - and the Start Screen has that.

[+Brandon Live]

Javik, on 31 July 2012 - 17:12, said:

I don't really buy that at all, the start menu in early builds of 8 was exactly the same as it was in 7. I also doubt the voracity of your second claim given how dismissive you are of anyone that refuses to swallow the metrification of all your products.

The start menu you're referring to had a lot of bugs because it wasn't kept in sync with other changes in the platform (i.e. MFU was totally broken, for one). It could not launch Metro style applications. It had no means to even represent them, because Metro style apps provide different resources. Its search infrastructure was similarly incompatible, didn't support new localization features, etc. It did not support our modern DPI scaling mechanism. It had problems with the new multi-mon features (i.e. secondary task bars). And these are just the things I remember off the top of my head. And then, even if we had put in all that effort (or just enough to keep it stumbling along), and sacrificed other features or overall quality, it would have created a disjointed experience which have been awful to use and to support.

Contrary to what you may think, we don't make these decisions on a whim.

[Dashel]

Brandon Live, on 31 July 2012 - 16:12, said:

You can invoke Start the exact same way you did in Windows 7. Just throw your mouse into the lower-left corner and click. There are actually *more* ways to get to Start with mouse than Windows 7, since you can also get to it from the charms bar on the right hand side of the screen.

Except the lack of a visual cue makes this harder to discover. Plus since you keep putting your fingers in your ears on this one, hot corners are terrible in a windowed remote session. Additionally, we are now forced to have it in the lower left (no longer tied to Taskbar position). No one cares that there are 'more' ways when the primary one was fine.

Brandon Live, on 31 July 2012 - 16:12, said:

This is untrue. Almost zero options take you to the desktop. The very few that do are super rarely used and mostly one-time use things (i.e. setting up multiple input languages).

'Almost zero', really? Its disingenuous bull**** like this that creates such bitterness. Metro is a minefield that is completely reliant on the desktop to function (because its alpha) while the desktop is now artificially reliant on Metro. You never know when you will flip over to the other side. Its very incomplete. You didn't address the lack of a file explorer and glossed over every other setting as rarely used. The reason Metro wasn't released on its own is because it has no legs to stand on currently without the desktop. The desktop isn't just there for legacy purposes. So far, Metro is a mini-OS bolted onto a far superior one.

Brandon Live, on 31 July 2012 - 16:34, said:

And how was the Win7 start menu any different? You had to "switch over to a different screen" there too. You had to switch to a screen that was ~1/10th start menu and ~9/10ths stuff you aren't looking at that isn't useful to what you're trying to do.

You switched over to a different window, not screen. Fundamental difference. I think that's really the line in the sand still. Those of us that were content with Start and people like you who found it nightmarish. Of course the new menu really doesn't address any of that no matter how much you like to pretend it does. Users will be no more likely to pin applications or launch from All Programs now than they did with Win7. Users still don't understand right-click for the most part, shall we get one button mice too?

The only change is semantic zoom and it currently has all of the problems with the classic menu. The very idea of 'groups' on StartScreen and auto-sort behavior screams how disjointed the approach is. Go to All Programs and it gets worse. Visually scanning rows and rows and rows of icons on a larger, grid is not more efficient if you know where you are going.

[+abysal]

I like Windows 8.

However, unless Windows 8 RTM changes things; Start Screen search has been over simplified and "nerfed" for lack of better words compared to the the previous start menu implementation. It's a shame because I like almost everything about the OS except the inferior search interface.

They need to:

• Combine searches into 1 index category; so non of this Win-F, Win-Q, Win-W nonsense.
  
• Provide full right click options for each search term, properties, path, shortcut pinning, send-to, etc.
  
• Allow for non-full screen searches; for example, have the Metro search screen snap to the left or right side of the screen, similar to the network connections "side bar".

[Shadrack]

Brandon Live, on 31 July 2012 - 16:34, said:

--x-snip-x--

In Win7, the taskbar very successfully took over those duties, and the Start menu became a search box with some old cruft attached (i.e. some shortcuts into Explorer which duplicated its jump list, and the nightmarish All Programs list). I still find it very confusing that anybody actually misses it :-P

I don't get why anyone misses that mess either. The new Start Screen is so much more customizable than the start menu. And the "All Programs" list in Windows 7 is not a pleasant thing to hunt around in.

There is one thing that I do like about the Windows 7 start menu that I can't seem to find in Windows 8. I like the "recent programs" and I also liked how most of my recent programs had submenus for the recent items that I had in that program. I realize that this is about the same usefulness as pinning a program to the task bar and right-clicking to get its recent items but I don't pin every program to the task bar (only the ones I use often enough). Maybe there is a similar functionality in the Windows 8 start screen, I just haven't found it yet.

[MorganX]

It's alright, I'm sure RTM is going to be better than preview and preview is OK. You don't use the start menu as much as you think. One thing I am missing, is quickly launching a favorite from the start menu. Browsing and launching from nested Start menu folders has no equivalent that I can find. It's quite a bit more work to accomplish same but it's not that big of a deal. Just sorely missed.

[Dashel]

Shadrack, on 31 July 2012 - 18:40, said:

I don't get why anyone misses that mess either. The new Start Screen is so much more customizable than the start menu. And the "All Programs" list in Windows 7 is not a pleasant thing to hunt around in.

Sure, if you are at the 'hunting' stage, the new menu might be helpful to the uninitiated. The claim the new screen is more customizable is silly, I think the 'show your Metro' thread is proof of that. Its demonstrably less so in many of the ways that count - its conception of hierarchy is goofed. Loose containers for pinned items is really the only change, and they really aren't very useful in their current state. Try deleting, moving or renaming anything from the All Programs menu and see how customizable it is. Try getting your app pin to stay in the location you want it to without it shuffling (or worse, having to fill additional columns because you can't just drop things in the bottom of the menu or wherever you want them). You already hit upon its lack of recent items or a conception of file content.

Shuffling around the placement of the equivalent of Desktop shortcuts isn't customization.

[PGHammer]

Javik, on 30 July 2012 - 22:53, said:

I stopped reading there because, of course you are completely and utterly wrong. Since the start menu was altered in Windows Vista it rarely causes overhangs because most of the menus and even the jumplists are self contained.

So are you saying that it does not - by default - allow subgroups? I have news for you - the subgroup has existed since Windows NT 4.x (when NT and 9x shared the same shell) and that behavior did not go away - Windows 7 still retains it, and, as you so quaintly put it, because it's always been there.

Worse, you (in one of your criticisms of a post of mine) seem to think that wasting time ordering your Start menu is a good thing. I find the very idea of having to take time that I should be using to get things done ordering my Start menu extremely distasteful. Work time - and especially when it's for someone else - should be about work - not futzing around ordering your Start menu.

[MorganX]

PGHammer, on 31 July 2012 - 19:00, said:

So are you saying that it does not - by default - allow subgroups? I have news for you - the subgroup has existed since Windows NT 4.x (when NT and 9x shared the same shell) and that behavior did not go away - Windows 7 still retains it, and, as you so quaintly put it, because it's always been there.

Worse, you (in one of your criticisms of a post of mine) seem to think that wasting time ordering your Start menu is a good thing. I find the very idea of having to take time that I should be using to get things done ordering my Start menu extremely distasteful. Work time - and especially when it's for someone else - should be about work - not futzing around ordering your Start menu.

I don't have strong feeling either way but you do know the Win 7 Start menu is generally cleaner and much more efficient, especially over time without modification. You can customize it to be super efficient and personal. The Metro Start page is a mess. Maybe when most installs adhere to Metro and if somehow nesting is allowed in the Start Page. I can group items but can't create a heading, either it's not there or I haven't discovered it yet. Just sayin ... When I can pin say, "Computer" to the Metro start page and hover over it and drill down from there, or my personal folder, or SkyDrive for that matter, then you can start comparing it's as a productivity tool to the Windows 7 Start Menu. Having said that, Metro is OK for what it is. It was clearly not designed to carry over all of the productivity of the Win 7 Start Menu.