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Microsoft Removes 'Sets' Tabbed Windows Feature From Next Release (groovypost.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the still-in-development dept.

The much-anticipated Sets feature has been pulled from the newest Windows 10 Redstone 5 build and there's no word when it will return. As groovyPost reports, "The Sets feature is a tabbed-windows experience that lets you group together different apps on your desktop." It's like having different tabs open in your browser, but for apps and File Explorer. From the report: Details on why it was removed and when it will come back have been vague. Microsoft made the announcement about Sets in [yesterday's] blog post about preview build 17704: "Thank you for your continued support of testing Sets. We continue to receive valuable feedback from you as we develop this feature helping to ensure we deliver the best possible experience once it's ready for release. Starting with this build, we're taking Sets offline to continue making it great. Based on your feedback, some of the things we're focusing on include improvements to the visual design and continuing to better integrate Office and Microsoft Edge into Sets to enhance workflow. If you have been testing Sets, you will no longer see it as of today's build, however, Sets will return in a future WIP flight. Thanks again for your feedback."

21 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Sad they're getting even worse at developing... by greenwow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    software. They can't even add a simple feature to the most commonly used tool on Windows. You'd think at least one team there could be productive considering how siloed they are. My best friend from high school got a job with them when their HQ was in Bellevue (think that was in 1980) and many more people I know have worked there over the years, and they've all complained about things never improving. You'd think by chance some group would figure-out how to make better software then others would copy what they're doing.

    1. Re:Sad they're getting even worse at developing... by The123king · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I fail to see how this is a new development for Microsoft. Everything's been going to shit since about 2007. Microsoft's biggest mistake was not putting their hands up and saying "Windows 8 was a mistake, we're going to bury it, and release a version of Windows that works". Instead, we got Windows 10, which is probably more broken and glitchy than Vista.

      --
      If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
    2. Re:Sad they're getting even worse at developing... by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 3, Informative

      They're under the mistaken impression that they have market dominance and can steer where things go - so they feel capable of disregarding user opinions on things under the assumption "they'll use what they're given." Combine that with the notion that they missed out on the web and never really had a product to begin with (they've always been a shop that muscles or buys out competition with an internal team of developers barely sufficient to stitch together a bunch of disparate code they've acquired - which really puts the GitHub acquisition into perspective if you stop to think about it,) and you end up with a push toward the cloud and getting in on this sweet user data collection industry - especially since the desktop operating system they produced effectively became feature-complete at Windows 7 and they need to get people onto subscriptions to keep any revenue whatsoever flowing in. In all honesty the way things are going once Linux starts seriously (not Ubuntu) catering to desktop users and puts out a development suite comparable to Visual Studio in ease of use they will have actual problems (the one thing they've gotten dead-right over the years is "developers developers developers" - they make shit but they cater to developers so they effectively mastered crowdsourcing before anyone else and locked people in with a community of strong applications which far outstrip any other platform for desktop users in personal or business settings.) Moral of the story: of course they want cheap incompetent H1b's - they have entire buildings full of lawyers, they aren't a software company, they're a sales/marketing/rebranding/M&A company which targets the software industry - they need the bare minimum competency to spaghetti shit together without their developers reaching a point in competency where they become mission critical and start demanding raises.

  2. "much-anticipated" by mcswell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not here, I barely even remember hearing about it, and can't figure out what it would be good for. I am, however, anticipating further improvements to the Windows Linux subsystem.

    1. Re:"much-anticipated" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      > frequently break

      You are correct about that. We buy only Dell since 1997 and keep track of support tickets by service tag. Five years ago we averaged one ticket per laptop just under every three months. IIRC, in 2006 we were at about one ticket every two months with XP so Microsoft was getting better. So far this year with Dell Precision 5520 laptops with Windows 10, we're averaging more than one ticket per laptop per month. We've increased our It staff by 20% but even that isn't enough to keep up with all of the problems with Windows updates.

    2. Re:"much-anticipated" by Rob+Y. · · Score: 2

      I think the KDE Linux desktop has had the ability to group windows from different apps into a tabbed set for many years. I tried it once, and saw no practical use for it. I don't even know if that feature is still there.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
  3. Re:What could it be by BoogieChile · · Score: 2

    If only somebody could invent something to manage all your programs...

  4. Re:The Taskbar by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 2

    I'd prefer a window manager which functions like visual studio to anything else. Automatic docking in arbitrary locations would save so much space and time, and eliminate the need for the taskbar entirely.

  5. MicroIncompetents by sproketboy · · Score: 2

    MicroIncompetents can't implement an obvious feature from the 90's since their devs are Visual Beginners. Fucking sad

  6. Re:Anticipated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    by who? any time I see a client with a windows 10 workstation. I shake my head and say "to bad you should have stayed with windows 7 pro"

    Just my 2 cents ;)

    10's UI is fine, for the most part. It is not all that different from 7 with some minor changes. Windows 10 has a few features that annoy me though.

    1. Advertisements/crapware/junk. Don't include crap. Don't put little things to interact with the user for stupid reasons.
    2. Telemetry.
    3. Cloud drive storage by default.
    4. Microsoft logins by default.
    5. Metro stuff, which has a separate configuration as near as I can tell. Just fix theming. Any time you have a foreground color, for whatever reason, you should have a background color specifiable. (That is an old complaint.)
    6. Search internet by default. Cortana by default.
    7. Get hardware manufacturers to make ssds with rock solid super fast hardware encryption with business class security. Seriously, just that alone would vastly improve performance. (Maybe its out there somewhere, but my company evidently doesn't have it.)

  7. Re:Anticipated by ArchieBunker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My biggest gripe is updates going on in the background and thrashing the hard drive for a few hours.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  8. Stop changing the UI by joe_frisch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Stop, please just stop.

    Don't move buttons around. Don't add weird auto-width-changing scroll bars. I don't care how much time all these things might in theory save in the future, but if you change the UI too frequently, all that is lost to the reduction in efficiency when people try to figure out how to do the things that they used to do.

    1. Re:Stop changing the UI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nah, if they stopped doing this sort of pointless deckchair shuffling and focussed on the OS core we'd have, what, XP++? I mean sure the reliability would be vastly improved over anything we have now, it would be blisteringly fast from decades of optimisation, security would be better, and all of the settings would still be neatly filed away in control panel rather than vomitted all over the damn place, but it wouldn't be shiny, synergistic, dynamic, reactive, proactive, leading edge, bleeding edge or even at the coal-face... and we all know that that's what really matters.

    2. Re:Stop changing the UI by Merk42 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Stop, please just stop.

      Don't move buttons around. Don't add weird auto-width-changing scroll bars.

      But enough about Ubuntu...

    3. Re:Stop changing the UI by joe_frisch · · Score: 2

      "bringing the same UI into applications".... eg *changing* applications. Its probably a fine idea - but its a change and that means that for a while things will be slower because my work flow will change. By the time I'm familiar with the new scheme, there will be yet another.

      Yes I can disable it, but like the ribbon it will eventually become universal.

      There is a fantastic Arthur C Clarke story: Superiority. Discusses this issue better that I can.

    4. Re:Stop changing the UI by iampiti · · Score: 2

      At least, previously they only changed the UI between major versions, but since it seems there won't be any more major versions we can get changes in the UI whenever Microsoft feels like it.

  9. Re:Anticipated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is some grade A bullshit. Even if you are 'significantly better' you come off as a pompous ass when you mock them.

  10. True Innovation by bobbuck · · Score: 2

    This is truly innovative copying of screens from the Amiga Workbench circa 1985. Good job, Microsoft!

  11. Re:MDI reborn. by amalcolm · · Score: 2

    Multi-document interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
  12. After 20 years ... by OneSizeFitsNoone · · Score: 2

    20 years after Linux did, M$ still can't understand the concept of virtual desktops.

  13. Why I use Linux Mint by HalAtWork · · Score: 2

    Part of their mission is a familiar and consistent UI. So far it's been great and hassle free.

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