Microsoft updates the Windows 11 Start Menu Microsoft has confirmed what some Windows Insiders are already noticing – the Windows 11 Start Menu is getting a revamp and a panel for Phone Link. The revamped Start Menu is probably not what former Windows boss Mikhail Parakhin had in mind when he said "Make Start Menu great again" in 2024, yet it is a step in the right …
Wooosh !!!!
You miss the relevance by parsec or two, much like MS miss the real issues with Win 11 :)
P.S.
With MS nothing is really 'DEAD', it is merely 'Sleeping' ... until yet another person has a 'good' quasi-original idea, just like an idea from years ago BUT painted a different colour and given a different name !!!
:)
My KDE alternative menu is pretty much, but better, version of the Windows 2000 menu. A layout imho logical, compact and dead easy to use.
You clicked on 'Settings' to get settings. Not difficult for even human intelligence. That was the pinnacle. Whether Bronze, Silver or Gold I'll leave to you.
hmmm - there are two settings apps in Manjaro/KDE Plasma.... containing different things which is OK I guess, given that one is for Manjaro the other for KDE.
The law of Sod dictates that the infrequently used setting you are looking for is always in the 'other' settings app, requiring a hunt for that app, a fruitless search through and a return to the first one where the desired setting will instantly become apparent (much like a USB A plug connection workflow).
It was decent. It allowed those of us with little used software that had unhelpful names to find it when we needed it - because we'd grouped it according to function (Windows 3.1 fashion, and it was a sensible concept then, which carried into the Start menu until some fuckwit decided it has to be in an alphabetical and you aren’t allowed to move it).
So my TDMore programme that I use once in a blue moon and would never remember its name is found in a group called "DVD sound and video stuff" and so on.
One of the first things I did when I got this desktop was configure the taskbar, the search box was one of the annoying items I removed. That was 3 years ago and have not seen it since I forgot there ever was a taskbar search box.
Took me a while to find it again, Settings > Personalisation > Taskbar > Search Hide. It stays hidden even after updates (Win 11 pro).
Which speaks volumes as to the utter crapfest that now passes for UI design at Microsoft. Windows, Office, whatever other products are still current in their portfolio - it's pretty much a given that if they've succumbed to the push to provide a "modern" UI, it'll make finding things within the UI harder than it ever used to be in the good old days, such that increasingly people are having to rely on search engines (whether embedded within the product itself, or third party via their favourite browser) just to be able to find things...
MS (and indeed every other company keen to embrace this modernist approach to UI design), the instant you start to formulate the merest notion that it might be a good idea to create an AI assistant to help users find settings, should be the moment in time when you force your entire UI design department to take a giant step backwards from their keyboards/drawing tablets/etc, bang their heads together, and understand that the very essence of a good UI is one that makes it easier for users to interface with your products (the clue is in the name, after all). If their proposed UI designs can't achieve that without adding in crutches like AI search/guidance, then they need to go off and come up with a better design that can achieve it.
I'm curious if the knowledge base will be limited to items in the settings manager or if it'll also include items in the administrative tools panel, control panel, group policy editor, and so on. I admit that when I fire up gpedit.msc, it is usually only after reading instructions on Stack Overflow on how to change some obscure setting.
Unfortunately StackOverflow, SuperUser and StackEchange (all owned by the same company) now require you to enable cookies and JavaScript to view their webpage as of two days ago.
Which is a real pisser as they are usually the top search engine choices for any computer or coding questions which I now have to scroll down or click on the next search page to get answers from other sources
It’s the enshitification of the internet for surveillance capitalism.
Downvote me if you will for being paranoid but my sibling had their laptop infected with a fileless rootkit from a malicious ad while reading an article on a well known and respected news website and my devices web browser doesn’t support uBlockOriigin or NoScript.
"Unfortunately StackOverflow, SuperUser and StackEchange (all owned by the same company) now require you to enable cookies and JavaScript to view their webpage as of two days ago."
I have a second browser set up to forget all cookies etc. on exit. Happily click the "accept" button thinking "and much good may it do you".
But some things slip through: Looking in the Settings/Privacy/Website Privacy Preferences/Manage Data menu, I often see sites mentioned, even after days and weeks, which shouldn't had left a trace.
I guess more and more websites don't rely just on cookies, there must be some other way to brand you. (For the record, Cache and LocalStorage cleanup are enabled in Cookie Autodelete)
Exactly - as long as you can still use it. They had somehing working but decided they needed a new "Settings" application with less functionalities and those existing scattered around with little logic. So the solition is "bring back the Control Panel"? No, of course now is "let's make it AI based!!!". Hope an AI fires them as soon as possible.
<< No, of course now is "let's make it AI based!!!" >>
Because that brain dead idiot Satya Nadella, has only the letters A and I stuck in his pathetic brain. The rest of the alphabet, he's forgotten. These 2 letters MUST be shoe-horned into every line of code that the Interns he employs, writes. It will all end in tears, I reckon.
So rather than actually make the settings easy to find - like the control panel of old - MS in its infinite fuck-wittedness has decided that it will keep the settings hidden and spread out all over the place and enable the user to use *#%^ing co-pilot to find the one you want??!!
What kind of stupid, rancid dribbling mind came up with that “idea” (I use the term loosely)
They really are taking the piss. Thank fuck I only have to suffer any MS shite at work - though I’m trying to get away from it there too
>According to Microsoft, one of the most common frustrations is "finding and changing settings on your PC."
In fairness, that is one of the most common frustrations. Although my suggestions for addressing it would have been to (1) stop adding functions nobody wants, (2) stop changing the settings GUI with every version.
Oh, and (3) fire whoever came up with setting screens that are mostly negative space with a few settings here and there. I've just opened the screen settings; it's a grand total of 2 buttons, 5 combo boxes, 3 check boxes, and the monitor arrangement thingy, and yet somehow I have to scroll to see them all. At fullscreen 4k. While three quarters of the screen is empty space. That's insane.
Oh, and (3) fire whoever came up with setting screens that are mostly negative space with a few settings here and there.
I imagine the justification for that is touchscreens - fat fingers and the likes of a 12" Surface tablet requires that the controls be spaced out rather more than a mouse user might like. I do actually appreciate that on my own 2-in-1, although other annoyances of Windows as a tablet OS do tend to balance out such positives.
With so many screens being touchscreens these days, how is the OS to tell which you prefer? (Yes, it could actually check which input device(s) you are using, I suppose, but then for the great unwashed that could mean the UI changing frequently. Personally, I use a touch interface so infrequently, I often forget entirely that ,mu company issued laptop even has a touch screen and am occasionally surprised when "stuff happens" if I accidentally touch the screen. My phone, on the other hand, is entirely touch oriented and I'm comfortable with that. Horse for courses and I genuinely can't think of a single reason to have a touch screen on my laptop that would make it more useful in any of my workflows. My hands are on the keyboard and only move to the mouse when that is more useful or there's no other option. When you sit in front of a computer much of the time, you learn to use it properly and efficiently and that means minimising the number of input methods, especially learning keyboard short-cuts rather than reaching for a mouse or stretching out and tapping a screen. It seem to me that many users only ever want to learn the minimum required to operate the thing and MS are pandering to those people.
And yes, I know I've banged on about this before, but even today I STILL saw a user in her mid 30's reaching for the mouse to click in the password box after typing in her username. She grew up with computers her entire life and has probably only ever used Windows and has never learned (or didn't want to learn) how to TAB/Alt-TAB between form fields). God help her if anyone ever mentions any more "advanced" keyboardism to her. She'd probably back off, fearing the "black magic".
"Plus of course it's absolutely trivial to determine whether a window is on a touchscreen or not, and lay it out appropriately."
Agreed. Except, as I said above, my company laptop is a touch sdreen but I DO NOT WANT it laid out in a form suitable for a touchscreen because I don't use it that way. The problem isn't detecting a touchscreen, it's identifying whether the user WANTS it in that layout or having a setting the so the user can choose. :-)
My Lenovo Yoga 2 in 1 does that. If I fold back or remove the KB it asks me if I want to go to tablet mode. Sometimes I do. Mostly it works fine for me as a tablet in normal mode, tbh. Probably because that touch form factor is great for handhelds,. like a phone or small tablet, but not as great for a laptop sized tablet.
The problem is always this - starting with Windows 8 MS became obsessed with touch interfaces, and kept on even if it killed Windows phone and Windows 11 is not a tablet OS as well. And even if it was, Windows would need a two-personalities UI adapting to the current input interface, not showing one down the user throat.
But I'm believeing there is another reason. Those interfaces are simpled and easier to code. And I'm sure Nadella is now using a lots of lame and dumb developers because they are cheaper. They couldn't design and implement the old ones.
"According to Microsoft, one of the most common frustrations is 'finding and changing settings on your PC.' "
You left out the most obvious cause for said frustration - morons in Microsoft who keep changing where the settings are and which ones the deem us lowly users to fiddle with. Just leave the effing things alone!
If it ain't broke DON'T FIX IT!
In the early days of WIN2k and XP the settings for ODBC were right in the control panel, even in WIN7.
But, oh no. Try to find them in WIN11. There in the administrative tool set and you have to log on to that account now to set up something that's been around for 30 years and never has been a security concern.
Now, but it used to not be hard to find what you wanted. It used to be laid out so clearly in Win7, which was the pinnacle for Windows. Ever since 7, it's been on a downhill slide and with 11, the slide has taken us deep in a pile of horseshit. I'm just glad I no longer need to worry about it, aside from taxes and for that I may just bite the bullet and use Librefox.
>> Phone Link [...] provides easy access to calls, messages, and device information
SInce MS abandoned the cell phone business, they were missing on all of this delicious, delicious data. But now they found a way to syphon it even from iPhones, and beam it to the mothership.
I really have to commend them for the effort
Why does the operating system need to provide a phone link anyway? If I wanted a phone link I'd install one. Admittedly I think my Mac does have a phone link program of sorts, which allows me to control my phone on the laptop, but you need to have the phone with you in order to uinlock it and accept the connection, so that seems pointless too. Why can't operating systems just be that, an operating system?
Agreed. I have one special need for a link from the phone to the PC, to enable texting using the PC and its real keyboard rather than the phones screen, which I am not able to use well. Google Messages for Web does that well enough for my Android phone. Google also has an app for texting to and from Google Voice numbers, and my VoIP provider supports an app that again mirrors the phone's text messages on a web page. The rest of the phone keeps to itself, albeit with a lot of help from DuckDuckGo, which blocks trackers in the apps.
Texting is the particularly useful one, but I find that some messages mysterious never appear on the computer, even when they are a continuation of a thread where some have appeared. Not sure what the cause is (someone using a third party app for sending them)? It's also useful for copying photos off the phone. I don't let it have access to the calls functionality at all. This is Android.
Fruity phones and fruity computers do talk to each other well, and the whole phone interface can be viewed and interacted with in the computer's screen. Just don't try getting an Android phone to talk to a fruity computer! Even basic tasks sucn as copying files off the phone is a load of hassle, and anything more complicated simply doesn't work.
>Even basic tasks sucn as copying files off the phone is a load of hassle
I just email files to myself these days because my ability to do it "properly" is determined by the latest updates that have either robbed or given me back functionality and I got pissed off with that nonsense.
I know my way around a PC using a keyboard/trackball (or mouse) - most things are automatic/no think.
I am however a complete clutz with a mobile phone, partly due to poor eyesight. I use it basically for phone calls and occasionally for maps. And photos. I wish it had been on the Win 10 menu 'cause then I might have found it ages (as opposed to months) ago.
I fairly often link my phone to my PC - wouldn't use any MS provided software for it though. Scrcpy lets me copy/paste between my Linux desktop and the phone, and use my rather nice keyboard to type longer messages on my phone (which for some reason seems to be lacking an AT keyboard socket.)
I'd like to be able to easily -- like trivially -- open a remote desktop on my phone, over USB or WiFi, so that I can do phone stuff without the pain of a (relatively) tiny screen and virtual keyboard.
When I'm out and about the ability to do computer-y stuff, especially online, using a device that I can whip of of a pocket is compelling. When I'm back home I'd like to be able to operate the same device using a proper screen, keyboard and mouse, if only to configure the damn thing and install software on it.
I guess I must be odd, or this would be standard.
-A.
Not odd at all, it's just that far too many people have got used to the idea that stabbing at a greasy little hard-to-hold slab of easily broken glass is an acceptable user interface.
On Linux scrcpy does what you want with an Android phone (mine has to be plugged in via USB but I believe others can be connected via WiFi.) Doesn't require any extra software on the phone.
Rustdesk should also work (and probably more easily) - I've only used it with the phone as a client rather than the desktop but I'm sure it works both ways.
It's not massively different to the Pro version, and where it does differ there are workarounds for most of what you might want to do.
It does contain a proliferation of useless crap which you need to remove, but the same crap is now on the Pro and Enterprise versions too, so they need just as much cleaning up and configuring.
From the article:
Notepad also gets an update – and will now allow users to generate text from a prompt, thus taking the application further and further from the original simplicity of the text editor.
Micros~1 keeps making 3rd party applications (in this case, Notepad++) more and more attractive.
I don't know why the fuck they think it's a good idea to piss around with notepad. Most 'normal' users won't ever use it at all, and its main users (advanced users, system admins, and programmers) will find the changes annoying. I use it mainly for editing batch files, Powershell scripts and the like and I really don't want it buggering around with things or auto-saving.
I do that with it.
And I frequently use it in a more "ordinary user" fashion. To paste a note or something simple like a URL or email address that I want to save from within my log-in and still have available (in a shared folder ) to refer to in another one. Firing up WORD (or Writer) is far too much of a sledgehammer for a single phrase.
Use case- information in an email that was sent to the family address which is read in that user account/on that PC is needed when I log in to my own account, or a different PC even, so I leave myself a note in the shared folder.
Yes I could forward the whole email, or use WORD, or OneNote even. But why would I need to? It literally just needs a "Notepad" .
And using notepad anything you copy and paste ends up as plain text (WTF is it with Windows text copy/paste that also copies/pastes any formatting of the source??).
I use notepad as a handy sanitizer for copy / paste text in addition to editing simple text files such as .ps, .sql, .css etc. ... where I don't want the distraction of a "clever" editor trying to mess about with what I type.
@tiggity "WTF is it with Windows text copy/paste that also copies/pastes any formatting of the source??"
That is not down to Windows it's how the applications implement copy/paste. An application's (Notepad) implementation of copy may only serialise plain text to the clipboard or may also serialise text and formatting to the clipboard. Then clipboard has 2 copies a plain text copy and text and formatting copy.
An application's (Notepad) implementation of paste may only serialise plain text from the clipboard then it will paste the plain text version from the clipboard, or if it can also serialise text and formatting then that's the version serialised from the clipboard and pasted.
I had been previewing early windows releases for quite some time. With the latest release it demanded I configure Phone Link every time I restarted my desktop. This was despite the fact that I hade disabled Phone Link in the settings. I suspect that Microsoft wanted access to your texts for AI purposes so it could compete with Gemini on an equal footing. I don't care.
Can I have the task bar on the left and organise my apps on the start menu like Win 10?
No?
Go forth and reproduce with your Win11, it's still a pile of dog poo as an operating system.
Connect my iphone with all my work and personal contacts to a M$ device?
You'll have to rip the phone from my decomposing corpse.
Yes, you can have your task bar on the left. Or top. Or right. Or if you just meant the start button at the far left instead of near the middle and varying depending open apps, you can do that too like in all Windows from '95 on up (or down, as the case may be :-)) There's not much you can do with the start menu though, other than right-click/remove all the cruft that expands outwards from it, like all the pre-populated and mostly useless "live tiles" without 3rd party tools.
There's an advert running around on certain sites I frequent that is basically advertising a product that works like a terminal, but has AI in it.
Their advert basically revolves around the concept that the user asked them to do something, so it loaded up their SSH daemon configuration, suggested the changes to make and applied them to the configuration and restarted the service without much user interaction.
And all I ever think of when I see that is "Yes, just give AI access to change critical settings on your computer as an unrestricted privileged user automatically, what could go wrong?"
This is basically the same thing, but for Windows.
How about this? An intuitive menu system where I don't have to bounce in and out of 30 menus to discover the option I want, and where "more options" aren't hidden away behind a dozen different types of link / advanced / more... etc. options, where some options don't bounce you out into 30-year-old control panel menus to make the change because it's STILL not possible to change things like protocol bindings or extra DNS addresses through the "new" menus, a primitive search that's limited purely to the textual descriptions of those items, and giving the user a damn chance and some pointers on where things are or should be? Too easy?
It seems nowadays that we spent 20 years employing UI/UX experts who shouldn't be allowed near a children's book let alone a major OS running billions of people's lives, forced their ridiculous recommendations down everyone's throat, never finished the transition, and now we're disappointed in the result so we think that throwing AI at it will magically solve the fact that... "Settings" is no longer an ordered, alphabetical heirarchy of major elements (e.g. Audio, Network, etc.), free of 3rd-party shite, under which you can find the setting you want within a few sensibly-named tabs, and which contain ALL THE SETTINGS YOU'LL EVER NEED and lets you change them right there rather than bouncing you off to another location.
The only time I use Settings on a personal computer (after the initial painful days of configuring a fresh machine to turn off all the stuff that's apparently now "essential") is to enable Bluetooth. I believe the expectation is that you just leave it on all the time. Because to get there, I have to go through Settings, find "Devices" (despite going through Bluetooth & Devices, there is no Bluetooth option in the next menu, only a dozen options including Devices) to - if I'm lucky - find a setting among several links to Microsoft help, unrelated dialogs, etc. to enable a Bluetooth icon in the taskbar, that then acts like the 00's version of Bluetooth settings to actually let me do stuff that the Settings menu doesn't let me do. And despite the assertion in the "Help" pages at the bottom of that Settings dialog (which loads into Edge regardless of your settings, and then tells you that you can enable Bluetooth from that menu)... there is no such option in Windows 11 on that page.
Sorry, but at this point I would literally PAY MONEY for someone to just put that stuff back into a Control Panel lookalike. If I'm going to have to be half in Settings and all the actually useful stuff hidden away in legacy .cpl apps... just let me pay to go back to how it was when I could find a setting on my own without search, AI or online help dialogs that lie because.... we just made things intuitive.
CMD.EXE
Control<enter>
Control panel
You soon learn the ones you need.
That is how you are supposed ot do it, isn't it?
Like turning off is CMD.EXE shutdown enter since they hid the buttons.
Actually the button issue was shown to me to be quite simple, was red in 7 and before, later on grey, my work PC has never been shut down by the buttons, always command lines.
BTW Red in Mint, as it should be
one of the most common frustrations is "finding and changing settings on your PC."
Just bring back the good old control panel, it worked fine, you could find every settings you ever wanted (and more) from there.
Ok, I know, it's not completely gone under W11, you can still get it through a command or two... But that Settings thingie is an utter mess and in many case you can't find the very specific settingh you need to modify to make something work.
"According to Microsoft, one of the most common frustrations is "finding and changing settings on your PC."
The MOST common frustration is ==>> Microsoft <<== ... and the constant changes that NEVER improve things BUT always make things worse !!!
It is a major indictment of the team responsible for UI design IF the settings are so randomly distributed that they cannot be collected together and rationalised into a NEW settings app/window and the ONLY solution is to use a AI front-end to search for the setting you need !!!
Rather than 1 or 2 clicks you now need to Search for the setting you need ... IF you cannot describe what you are looking for correctly you will, of course, never find it !!!
This is supposed to be a MODERN OS !!!
Even SCO UNIX was never this bad !!!
:)
It's not the only solution. What's wrong with a simple keyword search? They're just desperate to get payback on their AI investments and this is one more thing to needlessly shoehorn AI into. AI is not essential here, it's simply sn obvious follow-the-money decision.
It's not perfect, but has been around since XP (I think). Most common user stuff is present and search in the folder corner works. This isn't what I want, but it is much closer to what I need than what Windows settings have become. It's easier than the new start menu too! Bonus points for using less energy than AI, it's instantly fast, nothing changes on its own, and it does nothing that it isn't told to do.
1. Create a new folder on the desktop
2. Name it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
3. See a list of settings, organized, with descriptions
The real problem with windows 11 start menu:
- hit start button
- type the first few letters of the name of the app
- wait for a couple of seconds
Why god, why? A laptop with an i7 processor, 16 gigs of ram, an ssd and a handful of apps installed. That shit should equal to a no op and appear instantly. I know it's a minor gripe, but it really shows no one in Redmond is doing user centric testing
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