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Microsoft Asks Users To Call Windows 10 Devs About ALT+TAB Feature (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bleeping Computer: Microsoft has started to display notifications in the Windows 10 Action Center asking users to have a phone call with Microsoft developers and provide direct feedback about the ALT+TAB feature in Windows. While using a Windows 10 Insider build today, I was shown a Feedback Hub notification stating that "Microsoft wants to hear your opinions! To set up a phone call with Windows engineers, go to: http://www.aka.ms/alttab." This link then redirects to a web page at https://ux.microsoft.com/?AltTab. It is not known if this is only being shown to Windows Insiders users at this time.
When users visit this link they will be shown a Microsoft User Research page stating that a Windows 10 product team is looking to "understand our customer needs" and would like to have an anonymous 5-10 minute phone call with the user. In this particular case, the phone call will be with Microsoft engineers to discuss how users use the ALT+TAB feature to switch between apps. Microsoft states they are performing these calls in order to get a better understanding of how a feature is being used while they are in development. According to the web site, Windows engineers will be available on 3/11/2019 between 11:15 AM and 1:00 PM PST and on 3/12/2019 between 9:30 AM and 11:30 AM PST to schedule a call. The page goes on to say that users can expect a 5-10 minute call, but that it could last longer if there is more to discuss. They also state that the calls are not being recorded, are anonymous, and the content of the call will not be stored.
When users visit this link they will be shown a Microsoft User Research page stating that a Windows 10 product team is looking to "understand our customer needs" and would like to have an anonymous 5-10 minute phone call with the user. In this particular case, the phone call will be with Microsoft engineers to discuss how users use the ALT+TAB feature to switch between apps. Microsoft states they are performing these calls in order to get a better understanding of how a feature is being used while they are in development. According to the web site, Windows engineers will be available on 3/11/2019 between 11:15 AM and 1:00 PM PST and on 3/12/2019 between 9:30 AM and 11:30 AM PST to schedule a call. The page goes on to say that users can expect a 5-10 minute call, but that it could last longer if there is more to discuss. They also state that the calls are not being recorded, are anonymous, and the content of the call will not be stored.
Users don't need more than 640k... oh, yes they do. Whoops!
Users don't need the Start Button... oh, yes they do. Whoops!
and now
Users don't need ALT-TAB... get your FSCKING hands off of my interface Microsoft!!!
I use that combo at least 100 times a day. And Ctrl-Tab for web browser tab switching.
Another favorite: Window+arrow keys is awesome for resizing and moving windows (the 50% of screen shift is nice to put two programs on one screen).
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Shows all opens windows and cycles through them, add shift to go backwards. It already does exactly what you need and works fine. I wonder how far they can go with fucking up such a simple, functional solution.
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As primarily a linux/mac user, i find the alt+tab (and its equivalents) quite crude and ineffective when you're running a large number of applications (having to cycle through a large number of applications one by one)...
I generally have multiple virtual workspaces which are each setup for a specific purpose (usually multiple apps laid out in each) and then switch directly to the numbered workspace that i require.
When i've seen people heavily using alt+tab it's usually on systems where a very small number of applications are in use (maybe 3-4), they are running maximized and the user is switching between them. From my desk right now i can see another user doing this with a browser, a mail client and a spreadsheet.
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Leave it the fuck alone
Alt-tab is a UI thing Windows did right. It's a feature that was lacking from contemporary Macs, and was first added by a freeware extension about the System 7 era before being ripped off wholesale in System 7.5 (from memory) and I also remember the Apple lot openly acknowledging where it had come from.
My feedback on it? My feedback would be instantaneously suspicious and the phone call would consist of me repeating over and over "for gawd's sake leave it alone and don't faff".
"Oops, looks like we missed something, there's a highly useful feature there we haven't removed or screwed with yet!"
Why is it modern software companies are obsessed with 'improving' features that already work perfectly well? It's not just Microsoft, but Mozilla, Google and most others. They're 'improving' the life out of their software. Their 'improvements' are generally significantly inferior to the original implementation, and commercial software has been moving backwards for the last 15 years. It used to be that you could just install Windows 2000 and use it, but with Windows 10 you have to apply about 100 registry hacks, and even then it's garbage. Firefox is trash compared to version 3.0 and the UI simply doesn't work. As for Google, they couldn't produce a decent UI to save their lives.
The problem seems to be the rise of the UX designer, and while interfaces were previously created by developers, they're now made by people who believe themselves to be highly creative and innovative, and believe they can do a better job then the developers that preceded them. However, their confidence is greatly misplaced, and these UX designers have destroyed modern commercial software, rendering it completely worthless.
All of the software I use now is FOSS, not so much because I planned it that way, but because each time a company destroyed the UI of their product, I've moved to a free alternative with a functioning UI. Now I'm on all FOSS because UX designers have so thoroughly destroyed commercial software. When I see articles like this it makes me glad I bailed out.
Given their consistently bizarre positions on things like ribbons, the start menu, etc. there's no telling what particular brand of LSD they've been eating lately wherein they believe that alt-tab isn't the most important key combination in windows (arguably up there with ctrl-alt-del, which used to reliably lock the screen, now it does...something else not helpful).
There are a few sacred key combinations that just work, and they shouldn't ever fucking touch:
ctrl-alt-del -> (with an option for task manager before screen blank & login)
alt-tab -> select background applications in order of what was last recently used, continuously pressing alt allows you to continue to go through applications until you find the right one
ctrl-c - Copy highlighted text
ctrl-v - Paste text from clipboard
ctrl-z - Undo (pressed 10 times in a row, uninstalls the OS and reverts back to Windows 2000, the last time they had the OS UI more or less correct)'
alt-f4 - Kill this shit immediately
There are others, but there are wear marks on my keyboard here.
...and you have no idea how your customers use a key feature in Windows 10?
Way to fail there, Microsoft.
MS using the Insiders program to try to gather more information about how people are using Windows...well yes of course. I understand that MS = BAD and all that but this is exactly what they should be doing, isn't it?
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Less important, but alt-enter "used to" be the command for games to full screen.
Now with UWP, it's Winkey+shift+enter. ....Why?
Answer: "To give them the results they wanted"
Let's hope they get a "Brexit" vote.
No sig today...
I called the number. Got a guy with an Indian accent telling me he worked for Microsoft and there was something wrong with my computer, and he needed remote access to it in order to fix it. What should I do?
In the era of DOS applications, F3 was the nearly universal key for exiting the program, and returning to the DOS prompt. This was pretty ubiquitous, except for WordPerfect, which for some reason used F7, and never had an on-screen legend to tell you how to exit. The F1 key was also the universal key for Help.
Since the implementation of GUIs beginning with Windows, the F3 function key has had no effect, or does something other than Exiting.
In the era of DOS applications, F3 was the nearly universal key for exiting the program, and returning to the DOS prompt.
It was actually a holdover from the mainframe/3270 days, when F3 (PF3 in IBM parlance) was universally used to exit a running program.
What's stupid is that they come with new and arguably more powerful shortcut systems, but who the fuck knows what they are without obvious documentation/hints?
Worse is when they take away the originals for work-alikes (even better ones) but still don't make the new ones known.
They could even make an appy app that serves both as documentation and a way to change/add these keyboard commands back to what they used to be.
None of this satisfies UI designers, though. Most UI alterations never achieve whatever utopia their designers want and they know if they don't engage in authoritarianism to promote them (cut off the old ones), they definitely won't go anywhere. They're just fascists hiding behind human factors research.
Oh man, now I remember the keyboards at school had this cardboard cutout that fit over the function keys with an explanation of what ctrl/alt/shift/combo thereof along with each function key did in WordPerfect. I think ... Shift-F7 was Save, wasn't it?
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