The Weird History of the Microsoft Windows Start Button

Gamoid writes: Windows 3.1 was so complicated that even a Boeing propulsion scientist couldn't figure out how to open a word processor. A behavioral scientist, who once worked with BF Skinner at Harvard, was brought in to Microsoft to figure out what was going wrong — and he came up with the Start button, for which he holds the patent today. It's a weird and cool look at how simple ideas aren't obvious.

Comments

Difficulty

[nmb3000]

Windows 3.1 was so complicated that even a Boeing propulsion scientist couldn't figure out how to open a word processor.

What a useless statement. An astrophysicist might have had a difficult time setting his VCR to record All My Children while he was away at work. Just because someone is an expert in one field doesn't make them all-knowing.

Raymond has also posted several articles about the history of the Explorer interface, including one about the origin of the Start Button and one about the taskbar.

Re:Difficulty

[gweilo8888]

Mod parent up. For goodness sakes, I was 17 years old when Windows 3.x first came out, had precisely zero training of any kind, and figured out how to use its GUI all by myself in the space of about ten seconds. It's not just a useless statement, it's also a vast and very obvious over-exaggeration.

Re:It's not weird at all.

[fustakrakich]

Somebody was facing a problem. He thought about the problem.

He looked at System 7

He proposed a solution. It worked.

MenuChoice and HAM (1992)

[tepples]

System 7, introduced in 1991, had an Apple menu, which held shortcuts (called "aliases") to applications. Third-party extensions such as MenuChoice and HAM, released the following year, allowed aliases to be grouped into folders. (This is exactly the behavior that Microsoft would later implement in the "Programs" section of Windows 95's Start menu.) Apple later bought the rights to HAM and integrated it in System 7.5 (1995) under the name Apple Menu Options.

Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992)

[ShanghaiBill]

I was kinda surprised Microsoft didn't get sued. It was pure Mac without the finesse.

Did you sleep through the 1990s? Microsoft got sued.

Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992)

[MacTO]

The Apple menu wasn't quite the Start Menu. It was similar in the sense that you could add programs in it to use it as an application launcher, but that was simply a consequence of the history of the Macintosh system software. Older versions of the system software placed device driver like desk accessories in the Apple menu. With System 7, those desk accessories became normal applications and redesigned Apple menu was changed to take that into account. Indeed, I'd be surprised if Apple intended it to be used as a generic application launcher.

In contrast, the Start Menu was designed to contain every application on the system. This means that it was a genuine starting point, rather than a place to access commonly used applications. The designs even reflect that. With the Apple menu, you were given a menu with analogs to the old desk accessories and you had to add anything else yourself. With the Start Menu, you are given a menu that contains all of the applications on the system and you have to removed unwanted stuff yourself.

Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992)

[dbIII]

Later on I'm surprised the Win7 advertisements didn't go like this:
"I'm a PC and looking like a Mac was my idea."

Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992)

[dcollins117]

The other absolutely amazing thing they introduced in Windows 95 was the shortcut.

Otherwise known as soft links or symbolic links, which DEC and RDOS have had since 1978.

I'll assume when you say "they introduced" you meant to say "they copied" in the same manner as MSDOS is really a clone of CP/M and the Windows GUI was copied from Apple, etc.

Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992)

[CronoCloud]

Otherwise known as soft links or symbolic links, which DEC and RDOS have had since 1978.

and in Unix even before that

Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992)

[TheRaven64]

There are a few differences. First, symlinks are a property of the filesystem. This means that the normal filesystem APIs just work with them and you need special APIs for things that care about whether it's a link or not. In contrast, shortcuts are just another kind of file and everything that wants to follow them needs to know what the target is. Second, shortcuts contain a lot more information than just a path: they include the path to the destination file, an icon, the set of command-line arguments to pass, and some other flags. For example, I used to have a load of different shortcuts to the WinQuake (and, later, GLQuake) executable that all had different -game flags, for launching different mods. Many of them also had different icons, if the mod came with its own icon. You can't do that with symlinks.

The closest thing to symlinks on *NIX systems is .desktop files.

"to this very day..."

[PopeRatzo]

and he came up with the Start button, for which he holds the patent today.

Oh, how I hate our patent system.

This tells you everything...

[Dutch Gun]

This tells you everything you need to know about UX designers:

It's something that gives Danny Oran, the ex-Microsoft interface designer who holds the patents for the Windows 95 Start menu and taskbar, mixed feelings.

"In some ways, it's a little disappointing the same stuff is in there," Oran says.

It's a simple, intuitive interface element that everyone who uses a PC can easily figure out how to use. Yeah, terrible tragedy, that. It's so old and crusty now, right? Who cares if people are, you know, actually getting shit done with their PC. We need some hip, new paradigm that people have to re-learn all over again.

Seriously, what the hell? Stop screwing up interfaces that are functional and familiar! I wonder if the designer of the automobile's steering wheel would have "mixed feelings" about that interface still being used in cars nearly a century later?

Re:The only intuitive interface is the nipple

[Anonymous Coward]

Nipples are like remote controlled cars.
They're intended for kids, but it's always the dads who end up playing with them.

FORD

[sycodon]

I rented a Ford Focus. It has all these screens, keypads and shit.

There was one very large button labeled Radio. I pressed it and nothing happened. Turns out that you had the press the much smaller button only labeled Vol to turn the radio on. Then there were these button on the center console, right in the middle and above the volume button. Unlabeled. Left to tune down, right to tun up...right? Nope. It control the "feature selection" on a screen on the dash. Tuning buttons were much smaller and in the upper right and only labeled with a left arrow and right arrow.

Then I looked down by the shifter. There, was a placard that said, "Powered by Microsoft".