The Weird History of the Microsoft Windows Start Button 270
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.
Um excuse me? (Score:3, Interesting)
What's that thing over there on the Mac's menu bar?
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MenuChoice and HAM (1992) (Score:5, Informative)
System 7, introduced in 1991, had an Apple menu, which held shortcuts (called "aliases") to applications. Third-party extensions such as MenuChoice [lowendmac.com] 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.
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I was kinda surprised Microsoft didn't get sued. It was pure Mac without the finesse.
Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992) (Score:5, Informative)
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. [wikipedia.org]
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Did you sleep through the 1990s?
Yeah, I kinda did. I was working the night shift the whole time. And now I remember something about them kissing and making up in '97... I was watching the Bulls then, well, not then, it was August..
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It's so much easier not to say anything.
Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992) (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm a PC and looking like a Mac was my idea."
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And then offstage a Xerox representive coughs, walks onstage, announces who he is, punches each one in turn, and storms off, pissed.
If you are referring to the Research that Apple PURCHASED from Xerox PARC [obamapacman.com], then I can't see his justificaton to punch "Apple".
FORD (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
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First introduced in September 1992, it was a Start Menu-like interface for Windows 3.x, only without the Start button itself. A right-click on the desktop would bring up the menu, optionally with nested folders. If Apple had any patents on the functionality, they should have nipped the menu-style interface in the butt long before Win95. By the time Microsoft got a hold of it, it wa
Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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The other absolutely amazing thing they introduced in Windows 95 was the shortcut.
By forcing people to use them, you allowed any combination of multiple links to the same file in any location on your system. It made it so much easier for people to accept a concept like the Start Menu, while the actual programs were stored elsewhere.
It also had the upside of not making it easy to delete or lose files when clicking on or dragging items in the GUI.
Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992) (Score:5, Informative)
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) (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise known as soft links or symbolic links, which DEC and RDOS have had since 1978.
and in Unix even before that
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Otherwise known as soft links or symbolic links, which DEC and RDOS have had since 1978.
No, not the same thing (though similar in purpose). A shortcut is a file whose content is parsed by the software/OS to determine the location of the target, while a symbolic/soft link is a filesystem object that points to target.
One type is more elegant for most purposes (imo), and the other is/was heavily used by Windows.
Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992) (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not the same thing (though similar in purpose). A shortcut is a file whose content is parsed by the software/OS to determine the location of the target, while a symbolic/soft link is a filesystem object that points to target.
Ah, so Windows 95 shortcuts weren't copying Unix, it was copying Mac OS aliases. Which were introduced in System 7, in 1991. Except that aliases still worked even if the target was renamed or moved to a different location, while shortcuts break.
Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992) (Score:5, Informative)
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 [freedesktop.org] files.
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The closest thing to symlinks on *NIX systems
And, of course, I meant 'to shortcuts' there.
Re:MenuChoice and HAM (1992) (Score:5, Informative)
This is a consequence of how the two OSes started out. MacOS was coded from the start as a GUI, so logically the desktop is the root of your filesystem. Windows was originally a shell running on DOS. So all your files were stored in the DOS filesystem, and originally the desktop just had shortcuts to your program and data files. (OS X complicated this somewhat since it is now a GUI running on top of a modified version of BSD Unix.)
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Whereas in Windows your desktop has your shortcuts, and the Start menu lists the apps installed in the filesystem.
No.
This is a consequence of how the two OSes started out. MacOS was coded from the start as a GUI, so logically the desktop is the root of your filesystem. Windows was originally a shell running on DOS. So all your files were stored in the DOS filesystem, and originally the desktop just had shortcuts to your program and data files.
OK, also no.
On the mac, the desktop was always for doing work. On the PC, the desktop didn't exist until Windows 95 (ignoring non-Windows operating systems) because in Windows 3.1 it was just a place to store icons of running programs. It wasn't a desktop as we know it, where you can put anything, like on the Mac. On the mac, the desktop was useful before the OS even had shortcuts, known as aliases. You could drag stuff there from your hard drive, and the system would remember that those icons were suppo
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The Start Menu never ever ever contained every application on the system. It only ever included ones that either MS thought would be good there, or else that Application vendors thought would be good there. (Yes, vendors provide many little apps in their packages that they don't put in there.).
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I've fascinated that a "rocket scientist" would have problems dealing with the Win 3.1 "desktop". Sure, it wasn't great but it wasn't that hard to deal with.
The only intuitive interface is the nipple (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The only intuitive interface is the nipple (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The only intuitive interface is the nipple (Score:5, Funny)
You need to teach your baby to use the nipple, too [google.com].
I wonder how many of these nipple-challanged babies grow up and go to work for Microsoft.
Re: The only intuitive interface is the nipple (Score:3)
You are talking about a bottle, we are talking about a human nipple. They might seem functionally equivalent to you, but not for the baby. They go for human ones like magnets - at least my two ones did. But maybe its inherited - i do not care much about bottles with bits of silicon either, but female bosom is an entirely different cup of tea so to speak.
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> They go for human ones like magnets
Well, who doesn't? :)
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Out of my five children, only one 'intuitively' took to breastfeeding. With the first one my wife badly wanted to try breastfeeding, but our son just simply would not latch on. The hospital even brought in the local lactation consultant (who's very existence speaks volumes) but no latch-on.
Re:The only intuitive interface is the nipple (Score:5, Funny)
The only intuitive interface is the nipple and it will be forever great.
... for those who don't scroll much.
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Right, because nothing screams extreme sexual exhaustion like going to a nerd site to declare your loyalty to the 'clit mouse'.
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Frankly, if it's any of the above I'll switch to Linux in a heartbeat.
Re:The only intuitive interface is the nipple (Score:5, Funny)
Nipples are like remote controlled cars.
They're intended for kids, but it's always the dads who end up playing with them.
wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows 3.1 wasn't complicated at all. What kind of moron thinks otherwise??
Re:wtf? (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 3.1 wasn't complicated at all. What kind of moron thinks otherwise??
A Boeing propulsion scientist.
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But now imagine if all your computer interaction before Win 3.1 had been on the command line?
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> But now imagine if all your computer interaction before Win 3.1 had been on the command line?
Well, it was not. Young'ums might think we're talking about the Paleozoic, but a lot of things already had happened before Windows.
Menus already existed in many forms and fashions, games had "Options" screens and purported different paradigms for interaction. I vaguely remember games with scenes in which a desktop would have elements (photos, notes, etc.).
What didn't exist back then was interaction -- and even
Re:wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
He most likely has a PhD in his field. He is the master of that one specific area. Everything else is foreign and complicated to him.
Or... (Score:3)
Somebody should have showed him how to use Program Manager.
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An academic: Someone educated beyond their intelligence.
That joke aside, one does have to learn to use a tool. The Start menu made it easier to use the tool.
Re:wtf? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Windows 3.1 wasn't complicated at all. What kind of moron thinks otherwise??
I'm guessing it's the same person who provoked a study into whether the instructions for using a condom required a college degree.
What nobody realized is that Boeing pawned a janitor off as a scientist and Microsoft didn't catch on. Having used their products, I can honestly see that happening.
Difficulty (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [msdn.com] and one about the taskbar [msdn.com].
Re:Difficulty (Score:5, Insightful)
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True, being an expert in one field doesn't make you an expert in all fields, but it does state quite clearly that the person is an educated and intelligent person. The defense the programmers were using was that the OS was easy to understand for intelligent people, and that only idiots would have trouble. When an intelligent person had trouble, that defense fell apart.
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Educated? Perhaps. Intelligent? I have serious questions.
Any computer requires some training to use, or at least the willingness to experiment. In the Windows 3.1 era, this meant training people how to use a mouse to click on little pictures (i.e. icons) or words (e.g. buttons or menus). If you tried a similar experiment with a person from that era, only using the tablets of today, you'd have much the same problem since they wouldn't recognize how you interact with the system.
Actually, compared to the s
Re:Difficulty (Score:5, Insightful)
Being an astrophysicist doesn't make you at all qualified to use a VCR. (Wait, who uses VCRs anymore?! I haven't touched one in almost two decades!) But it *does* mean that we're not talking about an idiot. And if you're trying to target your product to be usable for the average joe, and an astrophysicist can't figure it out, you can assume that you missed your target.
Re:Difficulty (Score:4, Informative)
On the contrary. If you read the article, nobody said being a Boing propulsion scientist makes him all-knowing. The statement was as a response to a programmer's exclamation that "our customers are morons!". The fact that he was a propulsion scientist is a strong indication that he was not a moron, thus making it reasonable to have a look to see if perhaps it wasn't the users there was a problem with.
The goal of the project was to make Windows "discoverable", in essence making it possible for the average person to figure out the most important things without attending a training course. A reasonable requirement for a commercial consumer product. The user tests demonstrated that Windows 3.1 wasn't discoverable.
Somewhat less intuitive (Score:2)
Start to stop on Super NES (Score:5, Informative)
On the Nintendo Entertainment System, players pressed the controller's Start button to pause (that is, stop) the game. By the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, many games were adding a quit option to the pause menu, so Start to stop was becoming believable.
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The button is like toggling on/off or braking, same system is found on cassette decks/cd players with play/pause.
Very simple and intuitive.
Re:Somewhat less intuitive (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes a good joke, but it's not really that unintuitive, you're basically saying Start Shutdown.
This is in the exact same way that in Linux "shutdown now" doesn't actually shutdown now, it just begins the shutdown now. Computers don't cleanly turn off instantly, shutdown is a process that you start.
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Well, in Windows 95/98/ME, the start button was misnamed, it should have been "Try" or "Attempt to" (but no guarantee, YMMV).
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Especially because those were the days when any error in a Windows app would cause Windows itself to terminate by "dumping to DOS." You would never know what caused the termination, since there was no longer a Windows environment in which to display the message, just that cryptic little blinking C:>.
Had I thought to buy a share of Apple when that happened instead of beating my head on the desk like everyone else, I would be a brazillionaire now.
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Prior art (Score:2, Interesting)
RISC OS
Didn't the Apple Menu precede this? (Score:2)
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Actually, they weren't there by default. Only Control Panels were there by default. Of course, all it was doing was showing the contents of the "Apple Menu Items" folder in the System Folder, so you could put an alias to whatever you wanted in there and it would work fine.
On the other hand, Windows 95 = Macintosh '89 [redlightrunner.com]. So there's that.
Win95 original "meme" (Score:5, Funny)
32 bit extensions and a graphical shell [on top of] a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
single multi-function menu button (Score:2)
TFA is a good article, but The "Start Button" was really a non-innovative, pedestrian multi-function, customizable menu button.
I always marvel that people write thinkpieces about "The Start Button" like it was some big tech innovation.
The "Start Button" was, essentially, just like any other "Menu" option in computing every used, it just used a different word. And to that end, ontologically speaking, "Start" was one of the most patronizing, over-simplified, dumbed down choices they could have made and still
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Soul Asylum wouldn't sell them the rights to 'Misery'.
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But "Start" was the only obvious choice after Microsoft paid off The Rolling Stones to use Start Me Up in their advertising.
"It makes a grown man cry"
Very fitting choice.
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> Start Me Up
Part of the lyrics:
"You make a grown man cry"
Another part of the lyrics [azlyrics.com]:
"You make a dead man cum".
You're welcome.
"to this very day..." (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, how I hate our patent system.
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Oh, how I hate our patent system.
Wait, we agree on something?!? ;-)
Re:"to this very day..." (Score:5, Insightful)
He invented a place on your computer desktop that you can click with a mouse and it will open a menu.
Genius, I tell you. Who would have ever thought something like that was possible?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It's not just a button, but a button that shows a hierarchy of programs. That's new, and innovative and useful to a lot of non-computer users (i.e. users who had not used DOS or computers before).
For which he holds the patent today (Score:2)
... only in broken jurisdictions that recognize software patents.
simple ideas aren't obvious? (Score:3)
Simple ideas are obvious. The key problem is that certain fields attracts certain types of people, and certain types of people have certain traits.
The start menu would have been obvious and intuitive to anyone who has ever dealt with people and people interactions. Sign-makers, psychologists, and pretty much everyone in the medical profession who attempts to understand how people work would have found the start menu incredibly obvious.
Now the modern form over function UX crowd with their hipster indecipherable logos (3 dots for action, 3 lines for menu?) may be heading the wrong direction, but in a more general sense engineers have shown time and time again that on the whole we don't understand how people interact with things.
Re:simple ideas aren't obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the modern form over function UX crowd with their hipster indecipherable logos (3 dots for action, 3 lines for menu?) may be heading the wrong direction
To be fair... the largest smartphones are still tiny compared to the screen of any desktop computer. Also, your input is far less precise than keyboard and mouse. You have to make some sacrifices to design an interface suitable for that hardware.
But then came Windows 8, trying to put a mobile interface on the desktop. Now that was just idiotic.
Skinner Operant Conditioning (Score:2, Funny)
In a Skinner box, the lab rat pushes a button and gets a food pellet ... Or, an electric shock... With WinX, pressing the start button has never caused the computer to dispense food, but often the user is shocked by the results ...
This tells you everything... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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I remember it felt amazingly intuitive (coupled with taskbar) coming from HP-UX/SGI/win3 with their big panels, opaque minimized icons, win9 had even status on some background apps.
Very nice, even today.
A behaviorist, it figures (Score:2)
that explains all the nasty shocks and having to press the mouse button repeatedly to get a random reward.
Win95 start button animation (Score:3)
Wait what? There's a patent on putting your (Score:2)
programs in a menu?
If you're going to have a graphical user interface that's organized with menus, how is it not fucking obvious that the programs will be in a menu?
Chicago (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe I missed it, but there appeared to be no references to Windows Chicago at all? The article makes it seem like the START button just appeared out of thin air, not a series of trial and error over time. Check out this document which highlights the evolutionary processes that happened between Windows 3.1 and 95
http://oyvind.servehttp.com/wi... [servehttp.com]
Re:Major change? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
The total change from the Windows 3.1 Start button to the subsequent Start buttons was making the Start menu a 2-column menu, putting the contents of the former Programs menu in the left pane and putting the rest of the Start menu items in the right pane. That's it. Oh, and making the initial view not show all the Programs items but only a subset, with an extra item at the bottom to show everything in the same form as it was under the Programs menu.
As for Win3.1 being complicated, every secretary I knew managed to get a handle on it within a few days so it couldn't have been that complicated. The only people I know of who couldn't figure out Win3.1 are the ones who to this day need repeated reminders of how to get to anything that's not directly on their desktop, so methinks the problem doesn't lie in Windows.
Um. You know that Windows 3.1 didn't actually have a Start Button, right?
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Windows 3.1 did not have a "Start" menu. Windows 3.1 had the "Programs" folder, on an otherwise blank desktop.
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Windows 3.1 had "Main", "Acessories", "Games", "Start up", "Application" and then any folders you made up. Kind of like an iOS or Android but better.
Damn, I kind of miss it! Add either a Windows 7-like taskbar on the bottom, or window changing similar to Gnome 3 to make up for the shortcomings.
Also, good old times when you didn't need a GTK2/GTK3 theme expert to create a theme for you, instead you changed the color scheme and wallpaper (or wallpaper "motif"!)
Good freeware games and "multimedia" games like M
Re:Major change? No. (Score:5, Funny)
You double clicked on a game icon and it launched within two seconds
Well...either that, or you got a message saying that you needed to lower/raise the bit depth of your display, enable/disable some memory manager, or something similar. I kind of missed Windows 3.1 too, until I started playing with it in a VM and kept running into all the antiquated bits that I'd forgotten about...then it would make one of the classic "ding" sounds, and I'd forgive it in a wash of nostalgia.
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Nostalgia? I've been trying to save my final thesis paper for years:
Abort, Retry, Fail? R ....
Abort, Retry, Fail? R
Abort, Retry, Fail? R
Abort, Retry, Fail? R
Abort, Retry, Fail? R
*cries*
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Yep... but remember trying to teach old folks the concept of the "double-click"? And the pain of trying and failing to keep the pointer steady between the first click and the second click, or else you accidentally flick all your precious icons and folders onto the trash? Yeah.
It's amazing that Android and iOS home screens essentially look the same as the Win3.1 desktop... they just finally got rid of the silly double-click. And suddenly it works for grandmas. Huzzah.
Re:Major change? No. (Score:4, Interesting)
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PROGMAN.EXE! They kept it in with every Windows release until XP SP1. If you really want to take a look at it again, here [no-ip.org] are is some instructions.
Re:Major change? No. (Score:5, Informative)
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Windows 3.1 did not have a "Start" menu. Windows 3.1 had the "Programs" folder, on an otherwise blank desktop.
A lot like an iPhone. No widgets, nothing complicated, just a bunch of icons.
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Pretty much this. I sort of like the idea of a start menu, but I admit I prefer using hotkeys to Win-t a terminal or Win-e a file explorer or Win-r and run prompt.
The funny thing is that the iOS and Android home screens work a lot more like the Win3.1 interface. And I have to admit I was pretty lost the first time I loaded an Android emulator without having been introduced to the 'swipe'.
/ former Boeing engineer
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Yeah, I'm thinking of the change from the Win95 Start menu to the Win7 one. Program Manager, however, acted pretty much as the Start button, you opened it and then navigated folders fairly logically (you wanted an application, you opened the Applications folder and looked there). The applications you used all the time you copied to the desktop so you'd have them at your fingertips. Which, I've noticed, is still how people handle common applications, with "copy it to the taskbar" a close second and the two "
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Which, I've noticed, is still how people handle common applications, with "copy it to the taskbar" a close second and the two "pin" options vying for a distant third.
I run Linux, Fedora 22 using the XFCE desktop. My "panel", which I call the "taskbar" is at the bottom, as the Goddess intended. On that taskbar just to the left of the buttons showing my running applications/windows, are 4 quick launch buttons for my most commonly used applications, in the usual place for quick launch buttons. At the far right of the taskbar is the clock, the notification area is to the left of the clock. I use a specific theme for window decorations where the window title bars are blu
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Re:It's not weird at all. (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody was facing a problem. He thought about the problem.
He looked at System 7
He proposed a solution. It worked.
Re:Rocket Surgery (Score:5, Funny)
I used to work at Boeing. Some of those people are still looking for the 'Any' key.
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Maybe he wasn't familiar with computers or GUI computers. Whether it's command line, GUI or programming languages, communicating with computers still requires learning a language which non-computer users don't know.
Rocket science has nothing to do with GUI interfaces. How would this scientist go about launching the word processor? Explore many paths by clicking on random things?