Microsoft gets new Windows boss as Start Menu man Parakhin 'to explore new roles'

Microsoft just put Pavan Davuluri in charge of the company's Windows and Surface teams, while Windows exec Mikhail Parakhin is "to explore new roles." This is according to a memo, seen by us, just one week after the Windows giant announced its new AI unit, which will be headed up by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman. This …

[Spazturtle]

Good, the windows division needs a shake up. Windows Germanium is shaping up to be a complete shitshow. Win32 application support was broken in the previews and it took them 4 months to fix, even now the previews are in the worst state I have ever seen Windows. I simply can't see how this is going to be ready for the 2024 H2 launch.

[navarac]

I'm glad I abandoned the advertising & telemetry shit-show that is Windows. Reading between the lines, Windows will become a vehicle for AI - nothing to do with being an OS to enable applications to run. Which means, of course, more adverts and data scalping. Microsoft, I think you've lost the plot.

[Someone Else]

You can't lose what you never had....

[cyberdemon]

Windows Geranium

Sounds like things are really bad in Windows-land.. Win32 app support is broken.. Have you tried Wine?

Actually, running your app in Wine via WSL might even work! That's so awful I could even see MS making this their official way of running legacy Win32 apps

[Thought About IT]

Scrollbars

While Parakhin's at it, I hope he fixes their stupid implementation of scrollbars. The whole point of them is to indicate that there's more to see than is currently visible. Having to scrabble about with the mouse pointer to see if there's a hidden scrollbar completely defeats that point.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Scrollbars

Parakhin's no longer at it. That's the point of the article.

But, yes, the disappearing-scrollbars thing is yet another reason why UI designers will be up against the wall when the revolution comes.

[redwine]

Vertical taskbar in Win11

Vertical taskbar in Win11 - Please please please!

[Dwarf]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

@redwine

Can't you just drag it to where you wanted it, like it used to work in Windows 7 ?

You know, product enhancement and all that ..

Not a Win11 user, so never tried myself.

[redwine]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

No you can't, and that's the issue - I use 3 screens in landscape position and have a single taskbar vertically on the right hand side of the middle screen, it makes no sense to lose a strip across the bottom of the screen.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

To be honest, I'm finding it difficult to think of any significant UI change in any Microsoft product that didn't make things worse. Possibly the worst record in UI design of any organization in history. But at least they're consistent.

[captain veg]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

Turn them to portrait.

-A.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

First: "like you used to work since WIndows 95?"

Second: No. One of the highest feedback items in the feedback hub - which is, of course, ignored by those at M$ who decide.

Third: Why are you commenting if you A: never used it and B: obviously never read any IT news the last three years?

[cyberdemon]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

Sounds like KDE is for you! Put your taskbar anywhere you like... been like that for decades

[sedregj]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

Why stop at one? I also have three start buttons!

[redwine]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

I prefer the simplicity of XFCE :)

[ldo]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

In the Open Source world, you have a choice. This concept is completely alien to those accustomed to the proprietary world. So alien, in fact, that they complain about it and see it as a drawback, not a feature.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

This is also true of proprietary UNIXes. It's not exclusive to Open Source. Mostly it's Microsoft and Apple who want to force you to do everything their way.

[ldo]

Re: also true of proprietary UNIXes

The only proprietary UNIX® still standing is Apple’s macOS, and no, that is not known for offering you a choice.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

Ugh. What's great about Linux is that there's no need for a bloated, misfeature-ridden GUI. KDE is less terrible than GNOME, but more terrible than ... well, pretty much any "X11 and a simple window manager, mostly hosting xterms" alternative.

[aerogems]

The start menu was a completely asinine idea from the very beginning, so to make it great again would first require it being great once, and the sooner it's done away with the better. I'm sure there are examples of better ideas out there, but honestly I haven't seen anything better than the old Windows 3.x Program Manager. You can group apps and whatnot together for the people who insist on doing things the hard way, without the idiotic cascading menu system of the start menu, then you could combine that with the search function that actually started becoming useful in Windows 8 for people who aren't stuck living in the past, and have something far better than the start menu. Shit, even something as lazy as Apple's "Applications" folder on macOS would be an improvement.

This is why I wish the FOSS community would spend less time copying whatever Microsoft and Apple do, and more time trying out weird ideas devs may have. They could potentially sell their idea to Microsoft as the foundation for a UI overhaul. They make money and get recognition, the rest of us get a better UI, it's a win-win.

[redwine]

Gnome pops up a little app-launcher list and a search bar when you press the win-key, the focus is put to the search bar so you can just start typing to search.

[Andrew Hodgkinson]

Yes, the idea was readily available from Apple, since Spotlight - on Cmd+Space - has done that since 2005 (the Gnome equivalent that is Gnome Shell first appearing AIUI in a 2008 hackathon, then being released as part of Gnome 3 in 2009).

So - Cmd+Space, start typing a letter or three of the application name, hit Return.

[Terry 6]

Using search is a remarkably stupid way to launch programmes unless the user has a small number of them that they use regularly, or they all have memorable names.

There are an awful lot of programmes out there. And a good many have stupid and unhelpful, let alone unmemorable names. So using search to find a programme that you use very rarely, and has a weird name is going to be a rather poor experience. I have "Freac", "TDmore", "Openshot", "Krita" and a whole bunch more. I group them in the Win10 Start menu according to function ( because I know how- MS made it pretty difficult) so if I want a DVD copying programmes, say, I know where to look. Yes a Win 3.x programme manager would be fine. Because Win 3.x's devs knew the value of grouping programmes according to function.

But until search can use some of that imaginary AI to find me the video editing software that I use twice a year- and offer me a choice if I have more than one- it's of very limited value.

[aerogems]

I swear, every time this topic comes up, someone like you always posts the same rare edge case type example that just doesn't make sense. "I use some app once every couple dozen blue moons, so I have to make life more difficult for myself the entire rest of the time!" So what it takes you a few extra seconds to find an app you yourself admit you might use only twice a year. By your own admission you use it so rarely it shouldn't really matter; it's more than made up for by making your life easier the remaining 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the time.

The examples you give just means that there needs to be some additional metadata to help find things via search without knowing the specific app name. So, take a DVD burning app, to use your example. There could be some search terms associated with it like "DVD" "burning" and so on. Presumably this could be embedded right into the executable and then the search indexer could pick it up as it scans the file. Windows already has some metadata embedded into executables, so all they'd need to do is expand it, maybe even let users add their own search terms. Then, those two times a year you might need some app, one of those times you just need to make sure to add the metadata search terms if they don't already exist. Seems like a much better solution than making life unnecessarily difficult just for those extreme outliers even among edge cases.

[Anonymous Coward]

how does it make it harder for you, you can still start typing and search to your hearts content.

it's not a fucking binary choice, computers can do 2 things at once.

[aerogems]

Nice attempt at changing the subject. You have an answer to the question or not?

[Terry 6]

That's just nonsense. Nothing I've said precluded using search to launch a programme.

But eliminating a menu does preclude finding a little used programme that has a strange or unmemorable name (which is soemthing that happens, however much you think it's an "edge case" though without any evidence I suspect).Despite your slightly strange idea that the search would locate programmes via metadata instead. A kludge if ever there was one. And if you've received the same response previously, then maybe it's time you reevaluated your assumptions.Starting with the one that clicking on a search box and typing a name is somehow so much better than clicking on a menu's icon and visually scanning for a programme group.If you live your life by the command line that makes perfectly good sense. Mst people don't. It's why we have a GUI. Otherwise we'd still be using MSDos ( or equivalent).

[aerogems]

You literally said it happens "maybe twice a year." If that's not an edge case to you, WTF is? And don't go trying to change the subject. When you do something maybe twice a year, how does it make sense to make life harder than it needs to be the remaining 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the time? If I need to update my resume/CV twice a year, I'm not going to get all bent out of shape because I had to stop and think for a couple of seconds about where I store that file. It's twice a bloody fucking year!

Should I presume that, because you attempted to change the subject, you have no response to that?

[Terry 6]

This might need to be explained to you in simple terms for you.

*Using a certain programme might be what you call an "edge case". That a range of people might have a range of programmes that they may use- respectively-from time to time is not

*Finding those programmes by a visual inspection of an organised list may make life harder for you- that does not mean it does so for anyone else. Maybe you are the "edge case" because most people do want a GUI.

*Your example of locating your CV is a very poor and illogical "straw man" argument - shameful. You only have one CV, you know what it is and you know where you store your documents. But strangely named programmes that give no clue to their function are a totally different matter.

*No one is changing any subject. You fail to understand that others have a different way of working to yours.

Oh, and don't expect any further responses from me. Because you have nothing worth responding to, beyond what I have already written.On this topic or frankly any others if I remember your name, because you either can't discuss in good faith or don't understand another's viewpoint.

[yetanotheraoc]

There could be...

`There could be some search terms associated with it like "DVD" "burning" and so on.`

Sure, there could be. Maybe there already is, even on Windows, but I never looked for it.

How I do search on Windows: Open up Firefox, use search engine for "windows dvd burning", read about my various options, use the Start Menu (not Windows search) to find the app. Done.

My personal experience is that Windows search can't find the nose on its own face. Not sure why you like it so much, but doesn't matter, you're not convincing me to use it.

[aerogems]

Re: There could be...

You really should try it. It sucked up until Windows 8, I'll definitely grant you that, and Windows 8 tended to hide it, but it's actually become fairly useful since then. In Windows 11 (probably 10, but I forget now) you can even search for things in the settings app. So instead of going to Settings>>System>>Display to change the resolution, you can hit "Win+S" type in "res" and it's the second search option. Type in "reso" and it's the first option. It takes you right to that part of the settings app. I still sometimes find myself falling back on old habits, but investing the time and effort to try to learn new habits was well worth it. Especially for some of those more esoteric settings I don't change very often.

Besides, I thought El Reg was populated with a bunch of old grizzled Linux hacks. How the fuck can you call yourself that if you don't know how to use a command line!? Plenty of things on Linux are just so much faster and easier using the command line, especially if you set up command aliases. One of the first things I would tend to do with new Linux installs is set up command aliases for dealing with tar.gz and tar.z tarballs. Then it's "alias tarball.tar.gz" to extract everything.

[captain veg]

Re: There could be...

> So instead of going to Settings>>System>>Display to change the resolution, you can hit "Win+S" type in "res" and it's the second search option.

And this why it will never be the year of Windows on the desktop.

-A.

[aerogems]

Re: There could be...

More precious little snowflakes I see. They can downvote, but they can't actually formulate a counter argument. So far, the best counter examples anyone has ever been able to come up with are unicorn level examples where it might come up once or twice a year, and that's by their own admission. Everything else is just, "Waaaah! I don't wanna change!" Which, I'm perfectly willing to accept if, but at least have the fucking balls to say it. Don't insult other people's intelligence by coming up with these pathetic excuses for reasons, when it's clear even you don't believe them.

Seems like all the so-called Linux users around here are just Linux users in name. There's nothing special about running Linux over Windows if you know about as much about Linux as Windows users do about it. Get over yourself. Get back to me when you've had to manually edit config files, or actually compiled your own custom kernel and configured the bootloader to use it. Until you do things like that, you're just a bunch of wannabe posers who haven't learned as much about Linux as I've likely forgotten and have no right trying to claim any kind of superiority to Windows users.

[captain veg]

Re: There could be...

"they can't actually formulate a counter argument. So far, the best counter examples ..."

So can they, or can they not, formulate a counter example?

"Amongst our weaponry... are such elements as fear, surprise .... I'll come in again."

-A.

[aerogems]

Re: There could be...

The answer to your question was in the part of the sentence you chose not to quote.

"They can downvote, but they can't actually formulate a counter argument."

[captain veg]

Re: There could be...

Yes.

How does that change anything?

-A.

[TheWeetabix]

Re: There could be...

If a person has one or two dozen programs or files, they only use once, or twice a year, for the sake of example at tax time or year end, that’s an average of once every couple weeks, that also happens to be about as often as I open my word processor, are either of those are corner case or an edge case for you? They sure aren’t for me. It stuns me how you seem to be consciously ignoring that particular corner of the argument.

[TheWeetabix]

Re: There could be...

That’s probably because Microsoft’s nose is firmly up OpenAI's arse at the moment…

[Mike 137]

The actual necessity

"This is why I wish the FOSS community would spend [...] more time trying out weird ideas devs may have"

What we, the users, actually need are not the results of devs' weird ideas (that's what's led to the mess we're in), but the results of the sound application of ergonomics, which is not a "suck it and see" approach but a real branch of engineering with a body of first principles established by rigorous research. But of course IT as a whole is still not a real engineering discipline, so it's probably rather hopeful to expect UI designers to lead the way.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: The actual necessity

the results of devs' weird ideas (that's what's led to the mess we're in)

I don't believe that's the case, because I've met and talked to people who worked on Windows UX at Microsoft.

That said, I don't know how Microsoft has bungled and continues to bungle the Windows UI so badly. I merely have some evidence that "devs' weird ideas" is not solely, or as far as I can tell even primarily, responsible for it.

[captain veg]

Re: I've met and talked to people who worked on Windows UX at Microsoft.

UX (in Windows or otherwise).

Superficially it looks like it might have something to do with usability.

It doesn't.

-A.

[aerogems]

Re: The actual necessity

I would disagree. I'm not proposing that we use Random Dev #532's idea, I'm saying throw shit out there and see what works. If you've got an idea for how to create a better UI/UX, I'm all for hearing about it. However, FOSS devs have both the time and expertise to implement different ideas. Commercial companies like Apple and Microsoft are always going to play it safe because they have to keep investors happy. That's why we've been stuck with the same shitty, illogical, desktop metaphor for the last 30+ years. No one has ever taken the time to really stop and think about how we actually use computers and then design something around that. Microsoft actually did this, once, when they created Windows Mobile (or was it Phone, I forget) 7. They took a step back and really thought about how to design an interface around a touch screen, whereas Apple and Google just took the lazy approach and shoehorned the same basic desktop bullshit onto a phone and tablet. Unfortunately it was far too late and Apple and Google had already stitched up the market, but Windows Phone 7 and 8 devices were really nice to use from a UI/UX POV.

In an ideal world, with infinite time and resources, you could get a company to do something like you propose, but in this world... we've had 30+ years of stagnation. A suck it and see approach may not be ideal, but it seems to be the best we've got to even have a chance of actually advancing UI/UX design.

[aerogems]

Re: The actual necessity

I love you too Jellied Eel! The fact that your life is so devoid of meaning you have to cyberstalk me and downvote literally every post I make really helps me realize that, no matter how bad I may think things are in my life, they aren't so bad I have to resort to cyberstalking and downvoting for some kind of petty revenge for pointing out what an idiot you are. Keep fighting the good fight lil' buddy!

[Mark #255]

I'm looking at the Win10 start menu. It has an alphabetic list of programs (some in folders), it has a configurable space where you can group stuff to your heart's content, and if you start typing it searches for you.

The annoying thing about search is that it's hard to confine the search space to the PC (and they keep changing the sodding registry key), but, having just used a Windows 7 PC the other week, the Windows 10 start menu is much improved.

[Michael Wojcik]

I'll agree the Start Menu has always been crap (but is more crap now than it was in, say, Vista and 7). But Program Manager was also crap. I'll give you that it was more customizable, though.

When I was at IBM in the late '80s, one of my co-workers, annoyed at Win2/Win3's Program Manager, wrote his own replacement. It was hugely better, though TBH I don't recall a lot of details.

[aerogems]

Oh, sure, the Program Manager was crap, no question. However, the start button/menu was a huge step backwards from a UI/UX POV. I'm not saying just revert back to Program Manager and call it a day, it's just a proposed starting point. A starting point that frees us from a couple decades of idiotic design.

I'm guessing you've long since lost contact with that coworker, but I'd love it if they ever found their old code, if it made its way onto Github or somewhere similar where people could play around with it. If they have a better Program Manager than Program Manager, that's an even better place to start from.

[captain veg]

Re: The start menu was a completely asinine idea from the very beginning

Yes. We have all become used to it, however, so it has the force of idiom.

When I first saw Windows 95 my first thought was how much it looked like OS/2 version 2. Except that it (OS/2) had Workplace Shell rather than Start menu. Superficially, apart from putting minimised apps in their own folder, and the then revolutionary idea of using the right mouse button to reveal object properties, WPS was quite like a much prettier Windows 3.x,.

Later, in a new job, I had the pleasure of migrating from Windows 3.1 to 95. It was fairly uneventful, but, once up and running, W95 objected to the large number of entries I now had in my Start menu. Well, in Windows 3 I could, and did, group them in Program Manager folders. You decided to make them all first-level menu items. Don't complain to me.

-A.

[Mike 137]

"Start Menu man Parakhin"

One day it might dawn on M$ that screen real estate is valuable. The current huge, largely empty "start menu" and dialog boxes are the absolute antithesis of ergonomic design (as is the ghastly "ribbon"). What users need is a simple compact interface that doesn't intrude itself between them and the job they're trying to get done, which should be entitled to the maximum available uninterrupted screen space. But I suspect I'm wasting my breath on the giant toy shop that M$ has become.

[Youngone]

Re: "Start Menu man Parakhin"

Vast amounts of empty space seems to be part of Microsoft's design philosophy.

[captain veg]

Re: "Start Menu man Parakhin"

Absolutely. Anyone who needs more than a single pixel separation is just a waste of space.

A very long time ago I reprogrammed my Tatung Einstein (a fine, but overlooked 8-bit micro) to stuff two characters into each display cell. This needed an 8x3 bitmap matrix, which turned out to be enough to display ASCII characters adequately, if not prettily. In consequence I could display on-screen 64 characters in a line, which, with left and right margins, was about enough to produce acceptable hard copy on the 80-column printers of the time.

We used to call that WYSIWYG.

I still create UIs, when allowed, unsupervised, with minimal spacing, even though I use 4K screens (and insist that everyone should too).

-A.

[Atomic Duetto]

Re: "Start Menu man Parakhin"

I did this very thing on a Commodore 64. Taught myself a bit of assembler and got it to work (two characters, one eight block byte). Was very, very slow and looked pants, but hey.. it worked! From memory lowercase was easier to read, given the characters were only 3bits wide (one bit kerning).

[martinusher]

Exploring New Roles.....

Isn't that a polite way of saying "was made redundant"?

[ITMA]

Re: Exploring New Roles.....

I think the relevant "management speak" is:

Heading up a new task force, of which they are the only member, the objective of which is to find a new job.

[ldo]

Re: Exploring New Roles.....

“Helping the Employment Police with their enquiries”.

[Anonymous Coward]

This could go either way

Maybe window gets slightly better under a crusty veneer of LLM stupidity that can hopefully be turned off.

Maybe the monkeys have been replaced with clowns and it's now all clowns, all the way down. The new surface hardware has been pretty decent, but I have no idea what the new guys philosophy for the OS is. At least he comes from the engineering SIDE of the company. The question is can he force aside the zombie marketroids that have seized control of the UI and user experience of windows.

They are endlessly promoting the focus group hell they created, and trying to spread it to other organizations, because their main skill is marketing and self promotion, not product design.

Ideas like invisible controls that don't appear on screen unless you already know where they are and mouse over them, endlessly F*ing with the taskbar and start menus, and the genius hotkey changes the trapped users in the start menu with no visual queue how to escape. Hopefully a member of the surface team can iron some of the pointless agony out. But hope is cheap and doesn't last long on it's own.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This could go either way

don't get me started,

which demented fucker decided windows edges would not have any sort of outline so they merge into the windows they are overlaying and is almost impossible to grab the edge to resize as you need to be pixel perfect on a 3840 x 2160 screen.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

"Experiences"

"Experiences" in Microsoft speak translates to "Horrors" for the end users

[Anonymous Coward]

Start Button........................

Is anyone else here simply AMAZED that this horror is a legacy of Steve Sinofsky and the Windows 8 s**tshow........

.....and Sinofsky has been gone for ELEVEN YEARS........

More proof that thoroughly bad design ends up having nine lives????

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Start Button........................

More like proof that no matter how long you polish the turd, it is still....... a turd

[aerogems]

Re: Start Button........................

The start button came around with Windows95. To Sinofsky's credit he at least tried to do something different. It failed miserably, but at least he tried. Honestly though, after about the 1 week I allowed myself to bitch about things with Win 8, I adapted quickly enough. It wasn't hard, just annoying.

When I see comments in stories like this one, I'm reminded of an old therapist trick. Say you want to learn a new language, programming, spoken, whatever. You tell your therapist you're too old since you're in your 40s. The therapists asks you how old you'll be in 2-years, and you say 42. The therapist then asks you how old you'll be in 2-years if you don't start learning that new language. You have a finite amount of mental energy to spend on things. You can choose to spend some of that energy complaining or you can choose to spend that same energy adapting to the new reality. It's fine to give yourself a brief window to get the complaining out of your system, but at a certain point it becomes counterproductive. Say you are stranded on the side of the road in the dead of winter. You can sit there cursing your lot in life, probably freeze to death in the process, or you can start walking and try to reach a place where you can call for help. The choice is ultimately yours to make.

[teneriffe trail]

Re: Start Button........................

Therapist. OK that explains a lot.

[DCdave]

It wouldn't surprise me if...

...the current Microsoft regime decided they didn't need Windows at all, given how important Azure is to them now. Even AI is seen as a way to drive more cloud, which obviously should be Azure.