Why Microsoft Killed the Windows Start Button

Barence writes "Microsoft claims it took the controversial decision to remove the Start button from the traditional Windows desktop because people had stopped using it. The lack of a Start button on the Windows 8 desktop has been one of the most divisive elements of the new user interface, and was widely assumed to have made way for the Metro Start screen. However, Chaitanya Sareen, principal program manager at Microsoft, said the telemetry gathered from Windows 7 convinced Microsoft to radically overhaul the Start menu because people were using the taskbar instead. 'When we evolved the taskbar we saw awesome adoption of pinning [applications] on the taskbar,' said Sareen. 'We are seeing people pin like crazy. And so we saw the Start menu usage dramatically dropping, and that gave us an option. We're saying "look, Start menu usage is dropping, what can we do about it? What can we do with the Start menu to revive it, to give it some new identity, give it some new power?"'"

Comments

stopped using it?

[X0563511]

Who the hell is their focus group? I've not met a single person who doesn't use the start button.

Re:stopped using it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the little box you can tick that says "Send anonymous usage data to Microsoft"? It's that data. Not a focus group, but telemetry data from actual windows installs.

Re:stopped using it?

[Anonymous Coward]

And only idiots agree to send them that data.

Re:stopped using it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find myself using the Search function in the Start menu more. Just type the first few letters of the program I want to open and BAM motherfuckers! It starts.

Re:stopped using it?

[cpu6502]

Pinning means creating a program "shortcut" but instead of putting the shortcut on your desktop, you drag it to your taskbar on the bottom. I'm not sure why the MS employee said it's "new" to Seven? I thought that function has existed since XP.

Re:stopped using it?

[ryanmc1]

Actually you described using the quick launch feature. Pinning is a bit different. To pin something to the taskbar you right click it and choose "pin to taskbar" This is not the same as using quick launch because it does not create a new icon on the taskbar when the program starts. This reduces the number of icons using up space since you will only have one (with quick launch you have two or more, one for quick launch, and then another for each running instance of the program)

Re:stopped using it?

[Eponymous Coward]

I pin a bunch of stuff. I love that I can then use win-1, win-2, etc... to launch the pinned apps. The Windows 7 UI is one of the most keyboard friendly UI's I've used.

Re:stopped using it?

[Captoo]

Correction: This works even better in Windows 8.

Re:stopped using it?

[dissy]

The only time I've seen staff use the Start button here is to log off when they're done with the machine. If there was a button on the taskbar to do that, they'd never use the Start menu at all!

In case you actually wanted to provide that, it's pretty easy to do.

Create a shortcut, and make the target:
C:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -L

Then you can change it's icon to a custom one, or just browse to \windows\system32\shell32.dll and pick the normal icon out of there.

The -L flag is log off. You also have -r to reboot and -s to shutdown.

Similarly, you can make a "lock terminal" icon too.
Create a shortcut and make the target:
C:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

Ironically, the last one there is very useful on application servers if you have any programs that run as servers but are not a real service.
I have one server scripted to auto login as administrator, and then a few shortcuts in the program menus "startup" folder, prefixed with numbers to provide an order.
The very last icon in the startup folder is named "9999-Lock" which is the above shortcut.

On boot up, the server auto logs in, runs the crap software, and locks the terminal. This all happens in a few seconds, so anyone local at the console would not have any chance to do much before it locked on them. You still need the password to unlock just the same as login, so its pretty secure if your servers are locked away in a server room.

Re:stopped using it?

[Idbar]

Furthermore, right-clicking on pinned apps let you open recently open files, and actually pin those files as well.

If you have a VS Project you work constantly, you can pin it in the VS Pinned icon. If you have a folder you have to open constantly, you can pin it to the explorer pinned button.

Some other thing people don't know about those little icons, is that if you middle-click them, you create another instance of the application. Need 2 explorers to easily move files from one to other? Double middle-click on the explorer pinned icon, and boom.

Re:Translation

[gnasher719]

The worst part: Apple users don't like to admit that it's a real pain in the ass to launch an app on Mac OSX that is not docked, but the dock has limited space so you can't put everything there. Spotlight works if you can remember the name, but otherwise you're scouring the applications directory (which is usually a terrible mess) looking for that icon.

You just put the applications folder into the dock. Click on it, and all the apps are there. Well, that's the old fashioned method. The new one is to click on Launchpad. The folder method has the advantage that you can make a folder, put aliases to all the second-most-useful apps in there, and put that folder into the Dock.

But what you really do is to use Spotlight.

Could work better...

[Junta]

In Windows 8, if I search for 'update', it prominently says "no results". Intuitively I think "oh it must not be there" not "oh I should look over at the right column and see there is a category that has more than '0' to find the results.

IIRC, Win7 will display all the results rather than forcing you to switch categories.