Microsoft Killed the Start Menu Because No One Uses It

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft recently killed the Start Menu, and their explanation for it seems fairly straightforward: no one used it. This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but Microsoft explains that use of the Start menu dipped by 11 percent between Windows Vista and Windows 7, with many specialized Start functions — such as exploring pictures — declining as much as 61 percent."

Comments

This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[denis-The-menace]

When you can't figure out the easy way to launch stuff, look in the Start Menu.

This is change for change's sake.

Re:This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[ackthpt]

When you can't figure out the easy way to launch stuff, look in the Start Menu.

This is change for change's sake.

Indeed. I actually use the Start Menu dozens of times each day. I have shortcuts on the desktop, but usually the are obscured by all the work I'm doing. Because most people don't use it is a pretty poor reason to remove it.

The way they've complicated Task Manager I can't see too many neophyte users struggling with that beast now - might as well remove it, too.

Re:This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[Anonymous Coward]

When you can't figure out the easy way to launch stuff, look in the Start Menu.

You can't. Because they didn't like the look of the big, floor-to-ceiling look of the old XP system, they shrunk it all down so that it only shows 5-6 items at a time and has a scrollbar.

In short, they made it harder to use and less functional than the XP Start Menu, and to everyone's amazement, people stopped using it, and then they claimed it was some sort of UX triumph.

Ditto with the control panel - rather than one big screen with 100+ tiny icons on it, they reworded a few things ("Display" becaome "Personalization", and there are 2-3 different UIs rather than the tabs on the old-fashioned XP display.cpl) and made them all look like web-apps. Now that it's unnavigable with words or icons, everyone uses "search" and it "feels faster". You can't write documentation that says Start-Settings-ControlPanel-Display-Screensaver, you have to say "search for 'screen saver' and clicky on whatever pops up"... *sigh*

This is change for change's sake.

Much like Firefox, most UX innovation is precisely that. If you don't get the results that match your pet UI design philosophy, move the feature around, and while your users are trying to find the feature you don't want, accumulate enough telemetry to claim your users aren't using it as often, then take it away. (Status bar, full URL in the URLbar, etc.)

Re:This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[Sponge Bath]

It's more akin to a the owners manual not telling you where the spare tire is.

Microsoft has moved the start menu functions to the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

Re:This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[tunapez]

So much easier to keep people inside a walled garden if there are no doors or ladders. It's called behavioral shaping and it is much more profitable when your customers' options are limited and locked.

Re:This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[GuldKalle]

They are already out of date? It should read "Beware of the Lion"

Re:This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[studog-slashdot]

You can't. Because they didn't like the look of the big, floor-to-ceiling look of the old XP system, they shrunk it all down so that it only shows 5-6 items at a time and has a scrollbar.

In short, they made it harder to use and less functional than the XP Start Menu

ClassicShell to the rescue.

Also, 7 Taskbar Tweaker.

Re:This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[Reziac]

And the problem fundamentally isn't that the Start Menu is too complicated. It's that they've never provided a good tool for *managing* it. So the average person, being unaware that it's just a bunch of directories and shortcut files, suffered with the floor-to-ceiling scrolling menu from hell. M$, on noting their complaints, responded by taking away most of the menu. This led to a different set of complaints, since now no one can find anything and the reaction is to give up on the start menu entirely.

But it still didn't solve the real problem, which as I said is still that there's no good tool that average non-savvy users can turn to for *managing* the Start Menu. How hard could it be to make a nice little interface (not relying on drag-and-drop in the live menu, which in my observation is usually a disaster) geared toward letting average folks sort out their programs into reasonable hierarchies, so the Start Menu isn't always One Huge Mess??

Re:This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[Calydor]

One of the big problems that caused the Start Menu to seem daunting to some people, I suspect, is the way every single publisher of anything wants to advertise their name everywhere.

Back in the old days Sierra was known for not letting you choose exactly where to install something, it HAD to be in a \Sierra\ subdirectory. Same thing happened in the start menu, so you ended up clicking Start, Programs, Publisher, Developer, Program Name, maybe version, Program. And usually the Publisher and Developer folders would only have a single entry since Heaven forbid companies actually keep the same exact name for more than a year at a time.

Can't really blame Microsoft entirely, though the majority of the blame does fall on their shoulders. Stupid greedy marketing departments have their share of it, too.

Re:This is like GM removing the spare in trunk

[Reziac]

An AC says,
=====
There's an EXCELLENT tool for managing the start menu. Just open Windows Explorer and navigate to the directory that contains your start menu shortcuts. By default this will be something like "C:\Documents and Settings\%YOUR_USER_NAME%\Start Menu". Once there you can simply create, delete. cut, copy and paste shortcuts around to your hearts content. Simple, fast and effective. After ten minutes work you'll have all your shortcuts arranged just how you like them.
====

Yes indeed, this is precisely what I do, and I try to teach this method to others, but have found for the less-tech-savvy, it's a losing battle. They really don't and can't see the relationship, and are deathly afraid of messing with it from behind, so to speak. They need a tool that they can directly relate to the start menu, see it as it visually applies to the menu layout.

The wise AC continues,
====
Why oh why has computer user interface design suddenly gone down the toilet on all platforms ? Who are the imbeciles who have suddenly decided that we should throw away 30 years worth or design paradigms just for the sake of some new shiny, unusable, cumbersome, inefficient , graphically intensive SHITE.
====

Couldn't have said it better. Tho I think this is what happens when management sees "SHINY!" as a marketing tool, and lets the marketing dept. convince them SHINY will outsell USEFUL (which sadly, is often true).

The AC continues,
===
Oh well looks like my "trusty" XP machine will still be going strong for another decade or two (or at least until 2038 when I'll be dead anyway ;)
===

Same here... fact is, I still have a Win98 machine in everyday use, because the durn thing still Just Works. Well, maybe by 2038 there will finally be a linux desktop I can love (I keep hoping) but if Gnome-the-latest and the-daily-Firefox-version are any indication, FOSS is hellbent on copying the madness.

Ok, how do they know?

[0racle]

Seriously, exactly what data and from where are they collecting it to figure this decline in usage.

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[Ghostworks]

The data actually makes a lot of sense: Windows 7 gave user's the ability to pin program icons to the taskbar even when they're not running. So now your most frequently used programs don't need to be in the start menu or on the desktop to quickly get to them. I would imagine start menu usage would fall dramatically once the programs you use 90% of the time are pinned to the task bar.

I find the new start screen to be an odd solution to this problem. For that matter, I find it odd to thing of the drop as a "problem".

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[0123456]

Not sure, but the justification is that most people pin their most-used applications to the task bar.

Probably because the Windows 7 Start Menu is such a disaster that they can't find anything there anymore.

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[jedidiah]

...that still leaves the less frequently used stuff to sort out.

One of the key strengths of a GUI is supposed to be tasks that you do so infrequently that you are prone to forget how to do them. A good GUI helps smooth over that sort of problem. A bad one just makes it so hard that you just want to reach for a bash prompt.

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[gcnaddict]

The data received trough the CEIP is astounding, but what's even cooler about it is the fact that all of it is clean. None of it contains personally identifiable information unless there's an application crash where the user volunteered to send more than the usual set of data.

The CEIP was used in the development of the Windows 7 taskbar as well as the Ribbon UI in Office 2007+. In all cases, the goal was to improve usability, and Microsoft's own statistics (empirical and otherwise) show internally that they succeeded. I'm willing to say that Microsoft has recently become a very powerful player in creating engaging and highly usable systems, and that's based on empirical evidence rather than pure opinion. The sheer amount of research done by Microsoft's labs to ensure that a particular UI is easier to use and more productive than the previous version is mindblowing.

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[hedwards]

Yes, but the start menu is there because you don't always have room for everything on the bar. And often times you don't want to minimize all your other programs just to get to the desktop icons, which themselves are likely to be a mess.

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[vlm]

Well, considering those are the same users who typically have their desktop so full of icons that the wallpaper's indistinguishable and a gazillion icons in the system tray to make launching those program faster, why not kill wallpapers too? (Personally, I'm more of a minimalist and have no icons on my desktop and try and keep my system tray pruned to the bare minimum, so the start menu is very important to me).

Why force everyone to one paradigm? Some people thrive in clutter, both in the real world and on their computers. Some people are ultraminimalists. I get rid of stuff in my visual field until I can't get rid of any more. Backgrounds are distracting, see thru windows annoy me. I don't need 250 icons on the background for stuff I never use. Its mentally kind of a sh1t or get off the pot thing for me. If I wanted to look at that ... whatever, I'd look at it. Not what my computer wants me to see instead. First thing I do is get rid of the background and put up a shade of gray about as bright as my surroundings. Then I get rid of 90% of the icons on the screen. Basically every millisecond I spend searching is wasted time. On a CLI search time drops to zero quickly. On a GUI search time never drops.

I like ratpoison, because 99% of my productive time is spent in a terminal. XFCE is OK. I used KDE until it took about a gig of memory... all to start a terminal window... so I scrapped KDE.

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[oakgrove]

The quick launch bar was introduced with Windows 95 via internet explorer 4 shell so people have been "pinning" launchers for a lot longer than Windows 7 has been around.

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[Tomato42]

I find adding stuff to registry or PATH so that I can just WinKey+R "calc" Enter, much faster than searching a gui list. And it works on every Windows since 95.

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[quixote9]

"A bad one makes it so hard that you just want to reach for a bash prompt."

So true in both the computerese and the English sense of the word "bash."

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[wierd_w]

Ask and you shall receive.

Set RPEnabled in:

HK_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

To "0". This disables Metro, and re-enables the win7 style start menu behavior.

Additionally, on the win8 developer preview version, doing this enables additional scare text about being fired if you leak your copy....

10 guesses which way microsoft employees use it.

Re:Ok, how do they know?

[oakgrove]

Considering the fact that many programs defaulted to adding themselves to it, customizing it wasn't really an issue. You remove stuff from it the same way you remove anything else in Windows, right click > delete. You need to dig a little deeper for your objections to it.

Launchy did it for me

[Mean Variance]

Once I started using Launchy that pretty much took away my need for the Start button.

Launchy plus the Quick Launch toolbar (for Windows XP) pretty much does the job.

Once in awhile I go to Start and am surprised by how much stuff I have installed.

Re:Launchy did it for me

[roblarky]

Am I the only one who actually spends the time to keep my Start menu organized? I have root categories (Productivity, Utilities, Internet, etc) under which I place all applications. My Programs menu pops out to a starting list of main categories, then branches out into easy to find sub-categories. The first thing I do when I'm at the "Finish" screen of a setup wizard is uncheck the "Run {program x} now" box, go to the desktop to remove any icons it put there and drag its Start Menu group into the appropriate folder.

Sure, I keep 3 programs pinned to the taskbar, but I use the Start menu all the time since I don't want my taskbar or desktop cluttered with shit. Also, I'm a big mouse user and don't want to type what I want to run.

Re:Launchy did it for me

[Mortimer82]

I used to do this a long time ago, but I found I was going against the flow. It felt like a never ending battle of me vs the default set up. And then, any time I sat on a computer with "defaults", I wouldn't be used to it.

It would be fine if I never changed computer, or never needed to re-install the OS, however, any time you used a different computer / OS, you would need to re-organize things, go against the defaults. The other problem I had was that sometimes it was hard to perfectly categorize things.

I used to be an IT techie and can't remember if I changed my habits before or after I got my current job in customer support for a computer game company. Our busiest times are after work when everyone is at home, so that's when we have the most people on shift. They tend to change shifts every now and again to give people a chance at the better work hours, not so often any more, but when I started it was once every 2 months. Because of that, I got very good at deciding what settings are worth customizing. I also got pretty good at making most of my important data roaming friendly.

We don't use windows roaming profiles, but we each have our own personal network space. So, when I sit down at a new computer, I have a quick check list file for what I need to set up on new computer which is something like this:
- Change "My Documents" to point to a location on my personal network space
- Have Firefox use a profile which is located on my personal network space (I have a .bat file which edits a file for me automatically to set this up with one click).
- Set up outlook.
- Turn off keyboard layout shortcut keys. We have a multilingual office, so our system images include other language keyboard layouts like French. (Did you know that Ctrl+Shift+Left will change to a different keyboard layout on the fly, and will do it only for that current application which will confuse you even more!)
- Turn off accessibility shortcut keys (Yes, I held down shift for 5 seconds because I was thinking about what I wanted to write, not for you to pop up a disruptive dialogue asking if I want to use sticky keys).
- Shortcuts in quick launch for applications I use every day.
- Installation of in house developed .NET managed and auto updating support tool.
- And a few other little tidbits.

I can be up and running in less than 15 minutes on a new computer.

Although, about the start menu thing, at work on WinXP (windows 7 is coming "soon") I use Win+R to bring up the Run box to start things not on my quick launch bar, at home on my Win7 machine I use instant search.

People on here slamming instant search obviously haven't used it. It's really great, at work it's absolutely awesome in outlook, you can search for email by recipient, time, subject or body and have results within seconds. On Windows 7 and Vista, it's really fast on the start menu. Keep in mind that by default it only indexes certain locations like your documents and start menu, to keep the index efficient and fast. It seems to update itself pretty much in real time as you save new files or install new programs.

As for resources it uses up, can't say I feel the pinch at all, then again when I bought my Core i5, I also got 8GB of RAM at the same time as RAM is really pretty cheap these days. I absolutely love my home PC through and through. I use it for games, virtual machines, development, all sorts of stuff.

Disappointing

[Lindan9]

Maybe I really am in the minority here but I really do use the start menu all the time. I like to keep very few icons on my desktop and just use the start menu. I like to think this is a mistake but perhaps I'm just set in my ways

This is why I still use Windows XP

[duguk]

This is why I'm still on Windows XP; I like the Start Menu and being able to group my applications by purpose in a *menu*.
I don't want them littered over the desktop or in silly toolbars.

Re:This is why I still use Windows XP

[kiddygrinder]

i'm not reorganising that clusterfuck every time i reinstall or install a new app, i used to do that back in win 95 days but now i'd rather just jam stuff on quick launch

Re:This is why I still use Windows XP

[Lakitu]

citation needed? have you ever seen a win95 start menu?

If you want to have some fun, you can googling to find the posts like "why do i have to press start to shut down" or "why do i have to press start after my computer is already started", and see various complaints about it. Many of them include intricate workarounds to rename the button, remove the button from use, create shortcuts to shut down in one double-click, and so on.

The most common complaint I remember is about its necessity. Some people liked the original program manager MDI interface, and the self-professed experts seemed to prefer the File Manager tree view which morphed into the current day's explorer.exe. During the XP era, many users recreated Program Manager-esque layouts through shortcuts on their desktop or using all of the startbar's real estate as a giant quicklaunch bar and meticulous asperger control of their systray.

People wondered "what is the point of the start button with a sane windows shell organization?" which you would struggle through answering even today, especially after all of the improvements and bugfixes allowing a user to actually keep it organized. I'd like to see you answer that question today, because on my win7 install, programs are launched from pinned icons, recently-ran list, launchy, or the launchy style search/run box, with about 1 in a million being launched from the actual all programs menu. Many newly installed programs keep their yellow highlight for months, since they are never ran from the start menu.

The start button was an abomination in win95, and has progressively inched towards usability over the course of one and a half decades. It still doesn't make sense, and many of the new improvements to windows make it virtually useless. Anyone who wastes a second on nostalgia for their classic-themed Windows XP desktop is basically an utter moron not interested in actual usability.

gg microsoft!

[Alex Belits]

I see, insanity is really taking over.

Re:gg microsoft!

[Anonymous Coward]

I see, insanity is really taking over.

Hey maybe the microsoft developers, gnome developers and ubuntu developers were infected by a common disease ?

11% ?

[alphatel]

So if all blackberry users used the phone icon 11% less over a 5 year period the ability to dial would be removed? Personally I used the command on mac or start on windows button very often for a number of reasons. I cannot understand the advantage of removing either.

Re:Except for when you need it

[The MAZZTer]

If you tap the Windows key and start typing, like in previous versions it will start searching for what you typed. So that still works the same, at least.

WTF?

[Cro Magnon]

Without the Start Menu, how do I shutdown?

Re:WTF?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Without the Start Menu, how do I shutdown?

Hold the power button down for ten seconds, just like always. :)

Re:WTF?

[Fallingcow]

The new Stop Menu?

Re:WTF?

[tverbeek]

No, seriously. How do you shut it down then?

I looked at the developer preview of Win8 for several minutes the other day and could not figure out how to shut it down. I got to ye olde explore.exe desktop, but as soon as I clicked on the Start button it threw me back to Metro with no clue what to poke at or stroke or swipe. Granted, I'm old and set in my ways, but I still rank as "well above average" on the tech-savvy scale. If I can't figure it out, I sure as hell won't be the only one.

Re:Indeed

[ColdWetDog]

People seem to want symbolic icons that represent the programs they want to run; they don't want to look through a long menu and read a bunch of text.

Really? Seems to be a common theme and maybe I'm just abnormal but I cannot stand interfaces with a dozen geometric shapes with random squiggles and colors that are different from every other interface with a dozen geometric shapes with random squiggles and colors.

Just put the damned labels in whatever language the system detects it's supposed to be in. Leave the squiggles and lines to the finger painting set.

Re:Except for when you need it

[0123456]

If you tap the Windows key and start typing, like in previous versions it will start searching for what you typed. So that still works the same, at least.

Yeah, I use a GUI because I love typing commands so much.

Re:but my run button!

[SQLGuru]

Window+R......just like now. If you use the Run command, you're power-user enough to learn a keyboard shortcut.

Menu is less usable

[Archangel Michael]

I've found myself using the Start Menu much less, mainly because it is not functional as it is. It was much easier to drop a shortcut and clutter up my desktop than it is trying to find what I need on the start menu.

So, it follows, make something less useful, people will use it less, then you can remove it, citing as an excuse, it is not used like it once was. Freaking Genius.

Re:...the dock.

[atlasdropperofworlds]

I think you're confused. The start menu is the same as spotlight, not the dock. On windows or ubuntu, hit the windows key and type what you're looking for to start a search, on OSX, it's command-spacebar. This is my primary mode of using any OS now.

That monstrosity in Windows8 IS NOT the answer.

[rahvin112]

So in Windows 8 (for those that tried the demo, yes I downloaded the ISO and setup a VM to try it) they replaced the simple little menu in the start button with a whole screen monstrosity that takes the entire desktop. Taking over my whole desktop because I pushed the start button isn't the answer to this problem. IMO people don't use the start menu much because they put icons of their most used programs in the quick launch tool bar and on the desktop itself. Instead they take a simple menu, blow it up full screen and if you decide you don't want to pick a program and go back to what you have running, there is no logical way to do it (there isn't a close button that's obvious, ESC doesn't work, right click doesn't work). That's fucked up.

Gnome3 and Ubuntu's solution to doing away with the start button is far better than what MS has cooked up and I don't really like those either but I can see them working better). If I fail that badly using their "NEW AND IMPROVED" start menu I can't even comprehend how disastrous this will be for the less computer literate. The best part is, you cannot bring back the old start menu that I could find. It's not in the control panel, the options are gone from the right click menu, etc.

MS is making a huge mistake overlaying their Windows Phone 7 Metro interface on windows. This is a huge fuckup that's obviously being done to use the windows monopoly against the phone competition. It's going to backfire and damage windows just like Vista did.

Re:That monstrosity in Windows8 IS NOT the answer.

[Alef]

Well, you know the old saying: If you can't make phones into small PCs, make PCs into big phones.

Re:Indeed

[Miamicanes]

> People seem to want symbolic icons that represent the programs they want to run;
> they don't want to look through a long menu and read a bunch of text.

Oh god, no. Please don't remind me about Lotus SmartSuite's Hieroglyphics from the mid-late 90s.

Give me a nice, recognizable icon AND text, so I can recognize the icons I care about frequently, then find the remaining functions without having to play "guess what this is supposed to be symbolic of".

new start menu blows

[Lehk228]

usage fell because the start menu with the scroll interface blows, to start a program that does not start with A i have to click the start menu, click all programs, drag the scroll bar looking for that shit, then click the program folder then click the program.

it would seriously take less time usually to winkey+R then type the path.... IF m$ had not decided to separate 32 and 64 bit programs by default install folder (what the fuck?) so in order to manually launch an app i have to remember WHICH folder it's installed in

it's a shame, aside from that BS windows 7 is overall rather nice, reliable and i like the libraries function to provide convenient lists of folders holding similar content on different drives or otherwise in different places on your drive for whatever reason

A likely story. Not.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Microsoft killed the Start menu because they want to force everyone to use Windows Phone, even if they aren't (initially) buying a Windows Phone. They failed for years to sell phones that look like a Windows desktop, so instead they're changing the Windows desktop to look like their phones, and hoping that iOS and Android end up looking "foreign" to phone users as a result.

People click on the Start menu when they want to find something to Start. Imagine that. The bottom line is that the Windows 95 UI (which is to say, Microsoft's ripoff of the RiscOS UI) was the pinnacle of personal computer desktop UI design. Everything that's happened since then has been change for change's sake and has only served to annoy users and get in their way.

Re:Except for when you need it

[shutdown -p now]

It's not, since it doesn't look only in command names, but also in their human-readable descriptions; and not just from the beginning, but a match anywhere in it. It also searches other things that register with it, e.g. Control Panel applets (pretty handy - you can type something like "make text bigger", and it'll get you to the DPI settings; on the other hand, if you type "fdisk", it opens the partition manager, even though that's not called fdisk - so apparently there's some keyword-based system there). I believe it also looks in the standard Documents and Pictures folders.

I think KDE had something similar since 4.x, though.

Re:Indeed

[vlm]

People seem to want symbolic icons that represent the programs they want to run; they don't want to look through a long menu and read a bunch of text.

Want and use are two different things.

Its been proven by human interface design studies people have been trained to desire, even demand squigglie icons, but in actual use they simply read the text.

Some of it is cultural. If you live in a culture where literacy = two dozen or so glyphs, you probably don't use icons and just read the text underneath them, or, frankly, guess based on location and tool tip popups. If you live in a culture where literacy = ten thousand different glyphs, then you probably actually use icons.

Do you visually scan for an orange slime trail underneath and over a white blue circle, or the words "Firefox"? Most people look for the words.

Re:...the dock.

[causality]

It surprises me as one of the very few things I miss about Windows after moving to Linux was the Start menu. The Gnome main menu always seemed very sparse in comparison. What doesn't surprise me is that people used the XP menu more than on Vista or 7. Other than search and a few other minor things, the XP start menu is better. When I'm just sifting through it, I can find what I'm looking for much faster than the Vista click-a-thon.

It's possible I am misunderstanding you but ... It sounds like you are using one particular desktop available to Linux (out of dozens) and concluding that using Linux means you must give up ever having an equivalent to a start menu. Have you really looked into it?

For example, KDE has a "start menu". So do several different window managers.

Re:...the dock.

[EvanED]

Other than search and a few other minor things, the XP start menu is better.

I'm a CLI person to some extent*, so I'm sure that biases my opinions, but to me that's like saying "except for the fact that IPS panels have way better colors and viewing angles, cheap TN monitors are better than IPS."

IMO the search ability adds a world of different; I like the Vista/7 start menu way better than the XP menu solely on account of that. Sure, navigating through the menu sucks in comparison to XP, but the search feature not just closes that gap but blows past it.

* I actually hate most current CLIs, but they're the best we have at a lot of things, so I use them a lot of the time.

Re:Except for when you need it

[0123456]

It's not a command line, it's a search box. Been that way for a while - it's actually surprisingly useful once you realize that.

Yes, and? I have one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the mouse. I move to the menu, click on it, click on the section I want and click on the application I want. It starts. I use the mouse to interact with the application.

Alternatively I can take my hand off the mouse, type some crap, hope Windows finds the right application and then put my hand back on the mouse again. Why would I possibly prefer that?

I assume you have used a search box before? Some newfangled web sites have started using them. Or are you still a Yahoo! Directory fan?

Yes, I understand, you're so totally l33t because you prefer inefficient UIs.

Re:It's less typing than you might expect.

[LinuxIsGarbage]

much better to type the name, then hit enter

[win], n o [arrow as needed] [enter]

Excatly This!

[DnemoniX]

I did the same thing, loaded it into a VM to give it a whirl. Guess what? Metro sucks! It is a tablet interface and needs to stay on tablets. It looks like a Windows phone raped Windows Media Center and this was the result. There are already utilities out to disable this "feature", so what does that say about it?

Re:...the dock.

[SuricouRaven]

Ignoring the start menu side of things for now... Vista-and-seven's search just really, really sucks. The ability to search within files is gone, which is really annoying. It also completly fails at searches which return large numbers of results. Just yesterday someone asked if I could search my huge collection of furry porn for [YOUDON'TWANTTOKNOW] - Vista returned just a couple of pagefulls, when I knew there was more. I had to use my linux system to search, which found hundreds of results - and that on a very simple filename-only search, nothing that should be difficult.

The MS start menu is a cluttered mess

[Lussarn]

There is really nothing wrong with a start menu. Microsoft however never enforced a good practice with their start menu, the signal to noise ratio is VERY low. It's cluttered with company names, uninstallers and readme files. Why should I have to know the name of the company if I want to use a program, looks very much like advertisement to me. Instead of enforcing a good practice they have extended the start menu with "most used programs" which really doesn't cure the underlying problem, and to me it's even more cluttered. They should get rid of everything but the program starters in correct folders, Games in games folder and so on, one program has one menu entry, this was probably how it was meant to be by the original designer but never enforced. Look at Gnome, very simple, and very effective. And now MS have come to the conclusion that nobody uses their cluttered mess of a start menu, and are killing it. I say it could be fixed, but MS doesn't seem to know what's wrong with it...

Start Me Up

[carrier lost]

Curses!

Now how am going to get to telnet so I can get back into my Sun workstation so I can reset the X server?

Developers destroyed the start menu

[MobyDisk]

The start menu was a nice one-click or one-key access to all your programs. But a combination of Microsoft watering it down + installers misusing the start menu have damaged its usefulness:

HOW TO USE THE START MENU
1. Don't use the start menu for branding. Example:
Start\Symantec Applications\Norton Antivirus\Norton Antivirus.lnk
should be
Start\Norton Antivirus.lnk
(*) This is usually committed with Sin #2 below

2. Don't make a group for one icon.
Start\Super Editor\Super Editor.lnk
should be
Start\Super Editor.lnk

3. Don't place icons in 3 places
- Quick launch
- Desktop
- Start menu

Put them in the start menu, and let the user decide what applications are important enough to put on their desktop.

4. Don't put multiple icons where 1 will do
Start\VideoLan\Documentation.lnk
Start\VideoLan\VLC Media Player.lnk
Start\VideoLan\VLC Media Player Skinned.lnk
Start\VideoLan\Readme.lnk
Start\VideoLan\Configure VLC Media Player.lnk

Documentation is part of the application. Skinned/non-skinned is an option within the application. Configuration is part of the application.

5. Don't put control panel icons on the start menu.
Ex: Start\ATI Catalyst Control Center.lnk
should be
Start\Control Panel\ATI Catalyst Control Center.lnk

6. Don't modify the start menu when I run your app or update it. Ex: I move Quicktime under "Junk" but it reappears whenever it updates. Another one is FinePrint which re-adds itself when the driver starts.

7. Microsoft: Don't limit the size of the menu menu then add a scroll bar. Windows Vista and 7 limit it to 1/2 the screen then add a scroll bar, even if everything would have fit just fine had it resized.

8. Microsoft: The icons need to be clickable size. A 16x16 icon at 1600x1200 is inappropriate when the app provided a 128x128 icon.

9. Don't forget keyboard support! This has gone down hill since Windows '9x.

10. Don't place icons under Start - Programs. Everything is a program. Just place them under "Start"

11. Don't place applications in the registry startup - place them in the start menu's startup group so that the user can remove it easily if necessary.

Re:Developers destroyed the start menu

[blair1q]

3. Don't place icons in 3 places
- Quick launch
- Desktop
- Start menu

Any app that does that is lazy. The non-lazy ones give you the option during installation, and you uncheck the ones you know you won't use. Firefox gets all three. Word doesn't get Desktop. Everything should have at least a start menu entry, because that's /usr/bin on a Windows box.

Re:...the dock.

[makomk]

KDE actually has two choices of start menu... one closer to the style that Windows 98/XP and older versions of KDE used, and a newer more modern one that's more akin to Vista and Windows 7, though I think it's actually based on an alternative menu for KDE that predated both. I think there's also a full-screen replacement like the Windows 8 start screen, but I've never actually used it.

People know names. That's what names are for.

[FoolishOwl]

I read somewhere that studies found that inexperienced users are more comfortable starting applications by typing (part of) the name of the application, than they are searching for graphical icons in a nested hierarchy of menus. It makes sense: you probably already know you want Firefox, and with menus, you have to figure out where in the hierarchy Firefox will be.

The Ubuntu Unity interface all but forces you to launch most applications that way, and I found I quickly got used to it -- then noticed it's easier to launch applications in pretty much the same way in Windows 7 and Android, and even in OS X, where it's not quite so encouraged.

The difficulty lies in finding out the names of applications you have installed, or would like to have installed. I like Unity, but it's biggest shortcoming is that it's really difficult to find a proper list of installed applications. That's where the Windows Start Menu, and similar menu systems, is really helpful.

I used to find the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines for the menus surprisingly misguided, in this respect: you're not supposed to actually use the name of the application in the menu system, but rather list it by the intended use of the application. "Web Browser" is a silly way to label Firefox, and it makes things worse for less obvious applications. I had to resort to command-line tools to work out that the "Disk Usage Analyzer" that was crashing on start-up was actually named "baobab".

Re:...the dock.

[neokushan]

If you press the winkey, you can just start typing to bring up the program you want. "cmd" even brings up the command line. I find this easier than clicking anything, does this not work for you or have I missed something?

Re:Indeed

[Altus]

See most of what I have seen on the subject suggested that while people initially use the text to understand what something is, the ultimately associate the icon with the activity, even if the icon isn't very representative. They also get used to the icon being in the same place from use to use and look for the icon the recognize in the place they expect it to be first.

Of course this only happens once they have been using a device for a while and the text is still necessary but there is a reason that icons are useful, at least when they are different enough to identify quickly.

Re:...the dock.

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

as an average slash dotter (here since 2004ish, degree in computer science, UNIX aficionado, i must disagree. If you add quicksilver (or spotlight search in a pinch) then OSX is the best environment for productive coding IMHO - so there goes that idea!

Re:...the dock.

[FireFlie]

Actually I find spotlight barely usable. Granted, I'm on an older Apple machine, but for me Quicksilver is the way to go hands down. Personally, I wish that Apple got rid of spotlight years ago, purchased Quicksilver, and integrated it into their base operating system. Cmd+space or ctrl+space for quick launch of applications, folders, contacts, sending email, doing arithmetic, looking up words, sending an instant message, running an applescript, and practically anything else that you would want to do on your system.

I wouldn't say the dock is useless, but over the past six years I've probably used it for less than 1% of the applications that I launch.

Re:Department of Redundancy Department Jackass

[dan828]

Because this is slashdot and I didn't bother to read it. Not much of a traditionalist, are you?

Re:...the dock.

[HermMunster]

Microsoft hasn't a fucking clue. They either don't get out of their own offices or they don't use their own product.

Re:...the dock.

[hairyfeet]

Sadly as someone who builds and sells PCs I can tell you why nobody uses the start menu, its because THEY PUT EVERY DAMNED THING ON THE DESKTOP! That's why. I'll get these machines and literally you can't even tell what wallpaper they have for all the damned icons all over the thing.

As long as they have contextual search and Action Center i'll be happy. I can't even remember the last time I fired up start>all programs, its all Action Center and search. But personally i think Win 8 is gonna bomb as its TOO radical. While Win 7 was an easy sell showing the screencaps of Win 8 to over 100 customers so far NOT A SINGLE ONE has had a single nice thing to say about the Win 8 UI, nor has anyone said they'd be willing to run it. the closest I got was this exchange "That is a nice looking cell phone screen. is that Android? I've heard of that, its supposed to be nice....what do you mean windows? Windows what? Well that's just stupid! Why would I want to run a cell phone on my desktop?".

I think little Rita's reaction says it all. Not a single person i showed Win 8 to liked it, wanted it, or was even interested in trying it. it is just too radical and reminds too many of a cell phone. And I hate to break the news to MSFT, most folks hate their cell phones. Oh sure they won't let the thing go, but they can all name a dozen things, from bad reception to UI quirks that really piss them off. so having your new OS look like a cell phone? Not the way to get folks to love it.

Final prediction: Windows 7 becomes the "new XP" aka the OS that just won't die, Win 8 becomes Vista part II, and I get to spend a year and a half stripping windows 8 off and putting windows 7 on because nobody wants to run it, just as I had to do with Vista and XP. Oh fun, oh joy, thanks MSFT you clueless bunch of PHBs.

I stopped using it as much in Vista

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Mostly because the search for files function in Vista no longer works. How do you ship an OS when search works in the previous version, but no longer works in the 'upgraded version'. We upgraded your car. You can no longer shift into reverse.

Re:...the dock.

[Vegemeister]

ctrl-alt-delete down down enter.

Re:Except for when you need it

[Dahamma]

It's not a command line, it's a search box. Been that way for a while - it's actually surprisingly useful once you realize that.

Yes, and? I have one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the mouse. I move to the menu, click on it, click on the section I want and click on the application I want. It starts. I use the mouse to interact with the application.

Alternatively I can take my hand off the mouse, type some crap, hope Windows finds the right application and then put my hand back on the mouse again. Why would I possibly prefer that?

Ok, I just tried this:

With one hand on my keyboard and one on my mouse, I hit the Windows key with my thumb, then "W" with the same hand, then it popped up all apps starting with W (as well as a bunch of documents, mp3s, web page shortcuts, etc). One mouse click and an app (Word in this case) is launched.

I tried the same thing with just the mouse and start menu, it took 4 clicks with some mouse movements, scrolling, and browsing through cumbersome lists of folders first.

So, it's *faster* with a mouse - and that's for something trivial like an application. It's even more dramatic for a random document, file, or Web bookmark. But it's irrelevant anyway. Once using Word you have to use both hands on the keyboard anyway, of course. I assume you used both hands to type that last post?

Yes, I understand, you're so totally l33t because you prefer inefficient UIs.

No, it's because I have actually tried out the things I discuss so I have an informed opinion...

Re:Indeed

[korgitser]

This is the classic labels versus icons debate, as witnessed in late gnome 2 for example. Some people prefer labels and some prefer icons, This depends on whether you're primarily a verbal or a visual guy/gal.

Also they work differently depending on whether you're accustomed to the menu at hand. Labels are better when you are in an unfamiliar menu, they communicate new meaning more precisely. Icons are better in an already familiar menu, they communicate known meaning faster.

As a car analogy, try to replace traffic signs with excerpts from the traffic law. Or try to replace the traffic law with diagrams. Both have their places, and only your user knows which is which. So you have to give him both.

Re:...the dock.

[jazzmans]

Way, way back in the windows 3.1 days, I used two shareware applications, one was called big windows, (it was 4 virtual desktops) and the other was a right click program manager menu that worked anywhere on the desktop. They were THE killer apps for windows.

I used those on 95, 95 se, 98, and they didn't work on win 2k. I searched and searched and searched, and always found something that gave me the same functionality. I always auto-hid my start menu on windows, and in linux I have two menus top and bottom of screen, and they both are autohide.

Now that I've been a linux only camp for over ten years, XFCE4 does both these exact things perfectly. IOW, microsoft can screw up their system all they want. Me? I've still got my multiple desktops for organizing running applications, and right click anywhere menu.

Oh yeah, OS X sucks floppy donkey balls. I hate the 'dock'
ubuntu sucks shrunken monkey balls
Gnome bites my hairy ass. Why oh why would i want to stupidify my desktop like gnome seems intent on doing?
ribbon looks crappy, but I have no direct experiance with it so . . .

jaz

Re:Except for when you need it

[sgbett]

I'm running the version of OSX that doesn't have a start menu, it's the one that comes as default on macs. You can grab a copy from the app store if you are interested in trying it out!

Re:...the dock.

[arth1]

Windows + TAB + TAB + Enter = Shutdown

Actually, no - it's the last action you performed from the submenu. If that was a restart, it will restart instead.

The reason why people don't use the start menu anymore is twofold, and both reasons are due to Microsoft, not the users:
1: The menu is inconsistent. Things move around. People choose options easier by spatial cues than by reading the text every time. "Smart" menus are anything but. (This goes for the godawful "awesomebar" in Firefox too)
2: The user should not wait for the UI, but the other way around. To have to hover and wait or click again, and then find and hit little arrow keys to scroll through the full list, you slow down the user, without adding anything of value.

I've tried Windows 8 preview, but it took me half an hour to find out how to shut down, and I still haven't figured out how to navigate to and bring up the program I want to run. It's just not intuitive. "Try to look like an iPhone" is a recipe for failure unless you are an iPhone. This is why Gnome 3 fails so badly too.

Re:Except for when you need it

[dudpixel]

this is fine, except I rarely use the search unless I dont know what I'm looking for. If I know what I'm looking for, I'd rather navigate right to it.

With the start menu - you can do it all with the mouse - with one hand. Replace it with a search box, and now you need 2 hands...and most people will still grab the mouse to make the final selection.

This is just Microsoft moving things around to justify the never-ending upgrade cycle.

The next version will have a different interface again...its just change for the sake of change.

Re:...the dock.

[gumbi west]

I'm afraid your unix-geek card is going to have to be revoked if you prefer 4 clicks to a CLI command.

Re:...the dock.

[gumbi west]

If you think there are no options in OS X, you need to get to know the CLI. It is still unix, you can go and edit the script / config files just like any *nix.

Re:Except for when you need it

[Grishnakh]

Alternatively I can take my hand off the mouse, type some crap, hope Windows finds the right application and then put my hand back on the mouse again. Why would I possibly prefer that?

It would be preferable to just search through a well-organized menu, where all your applications are grouped according to their function (e.g. Internet, Games, Office, Graphics, Utilities, etc.), and are then very easy to find with a couple of mouse clicks.

However, Windows doesn't do that. It throws all the apps into a cluttered and completely disorganized menu where everything has its own category named after the vendor, rather than the software's function, so if you have more than a handful of applications on your windows box, the application menu becomes a giant mess.

So the search box is a useful work-around for this situation.

I have a search box in KDE too, but I never use it because the menu is well-organized and I never need to bother. Everything is easy to find here.

On Killing Seldom Used Features

[XPulga]

Let's do a quick exercise in Microsoftian design: The week has 168 hours.

Shall we assume the typical adult male has 4x 15-minute sexual intercourses per week ? It's probably pushing a bit, but fine, let's exaggerate. That'll be 1 hour per week.

Shall we assume the typical adult male urinates 8 times per day (once every 2 hours while awake), and each event lasts 1 minute ? That'll be 8 minutes per day, 56 minutes per week. Let's round things up and call it 1 hour. We're exaggerating anyway.

166/168 = 0.9880. On our typical adult male, the penis is idle and unused 98.8% of the time. If the human body was designed by the Windows 8 design team, we would be dickless.

Re:Except for when you need it

[marcello_dl]

The usefulness of alternatives to the start menu is irrelevant because the start menu was familiar to the average user.

Taking familiar stuff away decreases usability, always.

Of course MS uses the same metrics or usability that everybody else does, so they know it. But they want to make their environment unique no matter the cost, so that switching to alternatives is cumbersome and/or competition has to catch up if they want to provide an UI familiar to windows users.

We could call it "ribbonisation", or, in linux land, "ubuntisation".

No shit Sherlock

[MistrX]

When they changed the way Start works since Vista, it sucks bigtime. Having lot's of programs installed makes that list too long and the hassle of finding your program becomes too great to bother with it. The way XP works was better to me: Expand it all over your desktop. Nice a grid of all your installed apps in one sight.
Switching to classic isn't an option, it removes the shortcuts aswell. It really goes into primitive mode, 98 style.

Now I use 3rd party tools to get my OS to do what I want with it. How absurd is that?

Microsoft! Stop telling me on how to use my pc please! And bring some legacy options back that WILL enhance usability.

Re:...the dock.

[Cyphax]

In RDP, END takes over from Delete. :)

Re:...the dock.

[Agret]

If you press start and type 'cmd' you have to wait for the start menu to finish searching for it before it will let you launch it via enter. You will find it's more productive to press Windows Key + R and type cmd and hit enter and you get it up instantly.

Re:...the dock.

[_0xd0ad]

The Quick Launch is a toolbar docked in the Task Bar with no title, small icons, and no icon text, which displays the contents of the folder "%appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch".

Win7 doesn't include it by default, but you can add it.