Windows 10 Start Menu Wins IDSA Design Award 249
jones_supa writes: Despite some criticism, it turns out that the design of the Windows 10 Start Menu isn't bad at all, as a designer organization has recently decided to give Microsoft its own Digital Design 2015 award for the feature. In a description on their website, IDSA (Industry Designers Society of America) explains that the design of the new menu makes it easy to access files across platforms, as it comes brings together PCs, tablets, and phones. More, the Start Screen and the Start Menu look similar, so it's easy to adapt to the interface that suits best to your device. There are plenty of Start Menu customization options and if you have a look in the Settings screen, you will find plenty of choices to tweak the default look and feel. Live tiles can be removed completely as well.
Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems about as credible as that thing Homer Simpson won for being fat and falling in a hole.
Re: (Score:2)
IDSA: See you only hate it because of how good it is. Like a Porsche.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems about as credible as that thing Homer Simpson won for being fat and falling in a hole.
yes, we now have confirmation that the ISDA is a bumch of clueless morons.
The Windows 10 Start Menu is an abomination that has almost none of the functionality of a real Start Menu (ie, Windows 7 and earlier) and all of the bad things of the Windows 8 Start Screen now crammed into a smaller space.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems about as credible as that thing Homer Simpson won for being fat and falling in a hole.
yes, we now have confirmation that the ISDA is a bumch of clueless morons.
The Windows 10 Start Menu is an abomination that has almost none of the functionality of a real Start Menu (ie, Windows 7 and earlier) and all of the bad things of the Windows 8 Start Screen now crammed into a smaller space.
Bullshit. I haven't had to go to the internet once to find out how to do something on W10, unlike the abomination whack-a- mole administration method of Windows 8. I installed and started using and started supporting all in the same day. Can't ask for much more than that.
And lest ye call me a shill, look up my other posts.
Re: (Score:2)
Seems about as credible as that thing Homer Simpson won for being fat and falling in a hole.
yes, we now have confirmation that the ISDA is a bumch of clueless morons.
The Windows 10 Start Menu is an abomination that has almost none of the functionality of a real Start Menu (ie, Windows 7 and earlier) and all of the bad things of the Windows 8 Start Screen now crammed into a smaller space.
Bullshit. I haven't had to go to the internet once to find out how to do something on W10, unlike the abomination whack-a- mole administration method of Windows 8. I installed and started using and started supporting all in the same day. Can't ask for much more than that.
And lest ye call me a shill, look up my other posts.
So what you are saying is that Windows has finally become borderline usable after a mere 23 years of varying degrees of FUBAR?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
No, what he is saying, is after 15 years of coasting, waiting for Linux to be anywhere near reasonable for the consumer market to use, Microsoft just got tired of waiting and released W10 to put Linux out of it's misery.
It probably had something to do with systemd.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
No, what he is saying, is after 15 years of coasting, waiting for Linux to be anywhere near reasonable for the consumer market to use, Microsoft just got tired of waiting and released W10 to put Linux out of it's misery.
It probably had something to do with systemd.
Um - no. I have OS X, Linux, W7 and W10 now.
Have no plans to abandon any of them.
I like the tools that work best - I don't demand only one tool.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
And yet Android, a Linux OS, is still mega popular. More popular and more used on mobile than Windows ever was on the desktop. This is a post-PC world. Nobody gives a shit about your quaint little desktop computer.
Oh, give it a fucking break.
Do you eat shit anonymous coward? All those flies and dung beetles cannot be wrong. give it a try - it's really popular, so you should do it.
Desktops will always be around for people who actually do work. Not everyone will be a consume stuff only person.
And don't even try the retarded argument that you can serious work on a tablet or phone. You can ride across the country on a tricycle too. Not that anyone would want to do that.
Re: (Score:2)
So what you are saying is that Windows has finally become borderline usable after a mere 23 years of varying degrees of FUBAR?
It's something.
I guess I take different approach. I don't see anything with W10 to make me switch away from my Unix-y OS computers, but give 'em credit, they are moving toward something better. Early, I think that now that Ballmer has left, they are at least listening to people instead of telling people that they have to like whatever shit they sell.
I'll do support for it at any rate.
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit. I haven't had to go to the internet once to find out how to do something on W10, unlike the abomination whack-a- mole administration method of Windows 8.
That's one way to look at it. The other way, the way I look at it: yes, it is much better than 8 and 8.1. It's *almost* back at the usability level of 7.
But at least workable. Hopefully they'll get rid of a few "features" like wifi sense - but i don't want to puke when I use it. Not a very high bar I suppose.
Re: (Score:3)
They are printing that slogan on banners as we speak.
Windows 10: Now Workable!
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
The Windows 10 start menu is actually okay, once you let go of wanting a carefully organized hierarchical menu structure. I realized that I was wasting time keeping the old Windows 7/XP start menu organized, so I stopped and used search and pinned a few favourite apps.
The old start menu is actually quite a bad UI when you have a lot of applications. The menu gets huge and you have to scan through it or remember where things are with muscle memory. You can organize apps into subfolders, but that just wastes your time and when you update an app it will inevitably re-create its start menu entries at the root again.
On Windows 10 there is an alphabetical list, but it's easier to just use search and pin your favourites as tiles. The old start menu has limited room for favourites and they are a simple vertical list. Windows 10 lets you arrange them in groups on a 2D grid, a bit like how people arrange icons on their desktop. You can now uninstall directly from any app icon too, which saves time looking for the uninstaller or opening the separate installed apps window.
I'm not bothering with Classic Start Menu any more, Windows 10 is fine. You can just remove the live tiles and use it as a launcher, much like a phone with organized home screens, or more commonly by simply hitting the Windows key and typing a couple of characters.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like it if you could just have icons or widgets though. I.e. a calendar widget would be nice, along with regular icons that show ACTUAL TEXT, unlike tiles configured to their smallest setting. The tiles are plain fugly, and you're stuck with a choice of "no text" or "too fucking big."
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is the goddamn hierarchy in the first place. If they just offered a simple alphabetical list of applications (NOT folders you have to navigate through first) it would work great. Which is exactly how MAC OSX's application folder works.
I cut my teeth on Commodore and DOS, and do plenty of command-line work these days, but I prefer two quick clicks to launch an application, over having to type part of its name, thanks. It's 2000-fucking-fifteen, if you have to type in order to launch something,
Re: (Score:3)
I may be missing something, but my Win10 start menu still shows folders as, well, folders. Which you can expand if you want to, exactly the way it has been since Vista. It doesn't lump everything that's inside those folders into the top level list. So aside from the tiles (which you can just remove, and then resize the menu to reclaim the wasted space), I don't see what exactly is actually different from Win7, aside from the theming.
UI Designers are the bane of my existence (Score:2, Funny)
Live tiles (Score:5, Interesting)
Shouldn't live tiles be removed/disabled by default since they pose a security risk ?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I find them annoying as hell, and utterly pointless.
But given that Microsoft has tried this live content crap several times before, and had to pull them precisely because they were security exploits ... I was surprised to see them be such a prominent feature of Windows 8.
Not only do I think the widgetification of the desktop is annoying as hell, and nothing I want, I fail to see something which they've deprecated (in XP, Vista, and I believe Windows 7) as a security risk should be deemed safer now. It's a
It's sandboxed (Score:2)
But given that Microsoft has tried this live content crap several times before, and had to pull them precisely because they were security exploits ... I was surprised to see them be such a prominent feature of Windows 8.
Microsoft could safely do this because the Windows Runtime sandbox used by Universal Windows Platform applications is more stringent than the user account separation used by Windows desktop applications.
Re: (Score:3)
Right, because I trust every vendor when they tell me how the new hotness is 100% safe and secure.
We'll see what time and reality bears out.
If it's secure, awesome. If not, well, my cynicism will be well founded.
Over the long term, my cynicism has proven to be established by what happens in reality. So you'll excuse me if I don't simply take that claim on faith.
Microsoft is not someone who I take their security claims at face value, they'll have to earn that over a lot of years, because my distrust is a l
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
What security risk is that? Is there anything specific that live tiles can do that can't be accomplish while the app is running? Are they any less secure than running native apps? What about native apps that leave an old school notification icon running or native apps that install services?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why wouldn't it be a security risk?
It's a widget which grabs content from the internet. It was insecure when it was "Live Desktop" in XP, it was insecure when it was "Gadgets" in Vista and Windows 7.
Microsoft claims the apps are more secure, but honestly, who really knows?
My assumption is, like all new stuff, it's probably got holes nobody has identified or admitted to knowing about.
They keep trying to have these things, and then they subsequently discover they've got giant security holes in them. I just
Re: (Score:2)
Why wouldn't everything be a security risk?
You could basically say the same thing about any new feature. "We don't know if it's secure yet, so we just shouldn't use it" is a ridiculous way go about life. If we all took that view, we wouldn't be able to add new features for anything.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the reason MS says this is because the tiles have the same amount of access as the applications. If your application has admin access it can do admin when tile information is requested by the OS. So the live tiles themselves don't do anything. The call to get the rendering is where all the code is executed and it's no different than running the app itself.
Re: (Score:3)
You seem to be under the assumption that there's actually some code running behind those tiles. There's not. Unlike Android widgets or Vista/Win7 gadgets, tiles are passive in a sense that they don't pull data, data is pushed onto them. It can be done by a background task within an app (in which case the tile is basically just another rendering surface), or it can be a push notification. Either way, the communication is one-way - the app, directly or indirectly, tells Windows what should be displayed on the
Re: (Score:2)
What security risk is that? Is there anything specific that live tiles can do that can't be accomplish while the app is running?
Display a slideshow of your pr0n stash to anyone walking past the machine?
They're just more stupid hipster shit.
Re: (Score:3)
In the same way that Oracle always ticks the little install crapware in your browser checkbox for you when you update Java.
I only update Java by downloading the offline installer. No crapware there.
I use Linux but I like Win 10 (Score:3)
Re:I use Linux but I like Win 10 (Score:5, Insightful)
Where as as soon as I finished installing windows 10 I typed "Why is windows 10 so ugly" into google. Perhaps I really am getting old but this is how I use my desktop and start menu. I put short cuts to the programs I use all the time on my desktop. I put shortcuts in the task bar to programs I use continuously. And I use the start menu to browse everything else. I find the windows 10 start menu unintuitive. But perhaps that is because I haven't used windows 8 at all so I missed a generation of training.
The other thing I was a little confused about is the app store thing. If I install the VLC app from the app store wtf am I actually getting? I'm assuming I'm getting some random winRT thing and not "proper" VLC. But there is nothing there that explains it. God damn I'm getting old.
Re: (Score:3)
If you think installing apps from the store is confusing, try installing the exact same app from the web and the store.
I installed the Kindle app from the store and the Windows Kindle program from the web. They are two completely different apps. The one in the store is build for mobile (i.e. tablets and phones, touch menus, etc.) and the other is built as a desktop app (mouse/keyboard menus, full screen, etc.).
I would recommend that if you have a Windows tablet or touchscreen laptop, and you use touch a l
Re: (Score:2)
You should have tried that search on Bing instead. Then the top hit would have been "Why is Mac OS so ugly?" or "Why is Android so ugly"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally (Score:5, Funny)
Meaningless award (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice that Microsoft is finally considering good GUI design.
Just because some design association threw a meaningless award at Microsoft's way-too-late attempt to fix their stupid decisions in Windows 8 doesn't mean they are "finally considering good GUI design". Let's see how good it is when the General Public gets their hands on it. Their recent track record has been less than brilliant to say the least so I'm pretty confident they haven't had some sort of design epiphany. Basically it looks to me that they got their ass handed to them over Windows 8 and they're scrambling to fix something that they never should have broken in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
IMHO they tried to make a unified interface for all form factors and they've f
Opinions are always divided (Score:2)
If you read the forums and the news pieces with comments, you'll see opinions are really divided:
Opinions are almost always divided. Some people think Windows 8 is great even though the consensus seems to be that it's crap. (I agree with the consensus opinion for the record) I agree that Microsoft is trying to make a single unified interface which isn't a dumb idea in principle but hard to pull off in practice. I haven't tried Win10 yet so I'm reserving judgement but I haven't been impressed with their design decisions so far so I'm not optimistic. Of course every other version of Windows is crap
Re: Finally (Score:2)
My first thought was: I wonder how much this award cost MS?
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixing 8 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
More important, iOS and Android established that users are completely happy using different UIs on different types of devices, Windows or Chrome on the laptop, iOS or Android on their phone, some hideous barely usable travesty on their smartTV... and so on.
Methinks the value of the Win10 on everything is massively less than Microsoft needs.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know what IT departments opinions are of the spyware features in the OS. I'm sure they can find a way to configure it to their liking.
If they have the "enterprise" version they can disable the snooping features that people currently know about. Everyone else gets the MS knows best and knows all versions that make these decisions for you. But the Win 10 start menu is less horrible than the Win 8 journey down the rabbit hole.
"Designers" are getting on my nerves (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting REALLY tired of "designers" making pointless, needless and often-as-not counterproductive changes to user interfaces. I'm particularly sick of the game of hide the menu which is particularly in vogue lately. Good design is about making things useful first and beautiful second and it seems we have a lot of self anointed UX "experts" who have that backwards. We seem to have too many art school graduates claiming to be "designers" even though they clearly have no particular skill at user interface design.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue is people want different things. "Older" users who grew up on Macintosh, UNIX, Win 3.1 etc are used to menus being at the top, a central place for all applications, and the command line.
Much younger users grew up with "apps" and websites looking like apps, which is the hamburger menu (that's the real name) in the top-left, expanders, jQuery carousal, etc. What's natural to them isn't natural to you, and vice-versa.
In the end it's about sales, and "new and pretty" sells, and the changes aren't all
Re: (Score:2)
I really don't see younger users "clamouring" for anything. If anything they are far more adaptable to the point where they don't even acknowledge the existence of distinct platforms. You don't really have to pander to them at all.
It's certainly retarded to do so for a desktop platform that's being marginalized by those same tablets whose primary strength is business desktops and legacy applications.
it's like taking the one branch remaining on an dying tree and sawing it off while you're sitting on it.
Craming a touch interface on a PC badly (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is people want different things.
Wrong. The problem is that Microsoft tried to cram a touch based interface onto a keyboard/mouse based system where it was wildly inappropriate. It has nothing to do with expectations and EVERYTHING to do with usability. Age and experience of the user is irrelevant to the problem. I'm perfectly comfortable getting used to a new interface despite being relatively older but Windows 8 just makes NO sense on a PC. All the interface conventions are for a touch based tablet which does not and never will work well with a mouse/keyboard.
In the end it's about sales, and "new and pretty" sells, and the changes aren't all that big of a leap for the younger crowd. It is what it is, adapter or die.
Microsoft gets virtually all their Windows sales through OEM channels where there is minimal or no choice in operating system. This wasn't users wanting new and pretty, it was Microsoft trying to integrate two different interfaces so they could get in the game for tablets and mobile devices. And they blew it. They didn't allow for the fact that the requirements of a PC are different than those of a tablet. Any system that wants to have both touch and keyboard/mouse input will need to be designed with that in mind from the ground up. You cannot take one or the other and cram them together. Microsoft didn't learn their lesson from their earlier attempts for tablet PCs where they attempted to put some touch features on a bog standard PC. Windows XP wasn't designed for that. Then they went 100% to the other extreme with Windows 8 and took a tablet interface and tried to cram it onto a PC which (predictably) didn't work either.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm perfectly comfortable getting used to a new interface despite being relatively older but Windows 8 just makes NO sense on a PC. All the interface conventions are for a touch based tablet which does not and never will work well with a mouse/keyboard.
And it makes even less sense on a server OS. WTF, Server 2012??
Re: (Score:2)
The irony is that if you read the Metro design document, Microsoft tells you to make sure that everything is discoverable. Show a value and make a click that allows you to set the range where that value sends an alert. Stuff like that. Make things discoverable at first glance.
They said this while simultaneously releasing Windows 8, where NOTHING is discoverable.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm getting REALLY tired of "designers" making pointless, needless and often-as-not counterproductive changes to user interfaces.
I really, really dislike the current "designers" trend of placing very light grey letters on a white background. I'm sure that style wins design awards for looking hip and cool, but it is less than readable. Much less than readable.
.
I wonder if the design awards ever take into account functionality, or is it all prettiness and form for them?
Re: (Score:2)
Try changing an IP address on Windows 8. Every option kept taking me to the connections screen (full sized window) with the only option being to disable the ethernet adapter. Finally did find it but that is a major design fail.
Alternatively use a third-pary start menu (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't like the start menu and prefer the old Windows 7 style start menu, then there are alternatives.
http://www.classicshell.net/
There are also other alternatives, like Start8 and whatever.
Third party menu apps should NEVER be needed (Score:2)
If you don't like the start menu and prefer the old Windows 7 style start menu, then there are alternatives.
Yes there are and that is the clearest indication that the interface sucks. There should be no need for a third party application to make the default interface useable. I had to buy a few machines with Windows 8 on them for work and I absolutely loathe the interface. Might be fine on a tablet (haven't tried) but on a PC with a keyboard and mouse it is just horrid. The UX people at Microsoft that let that monstrosity out the door should never be able to find work in "design" again. Dumbest design decisi
Re:Third party menu apps should NEVER be needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying that because there are alternatives, that the interface sucks? Maybe it's just that people have different preferences. Linux distros often (or used to) come with 4 or 5 different window managers, and all were extremely different in how they went about managing the UI. When this happens in Linux, it's awesome, look at all the choice we have. When this happens in Windows, it's because Microsoft is stupid, and the interface they created sucks.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I know that, and I do use an alternative.
https://www.enlightenment.org/... [enlightenment.org]
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.enlightenment.org/... [enlightenment.org]
Start 10 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Wait for the next 10-K filing (Score:2)
Shit wins awards (Score:3)
This reminds me of how the DualShock won some supposedly important award, even though it's among the worst gamepads ever, and its design issues are glaring for anyone with half a brain.
Re: (Score:2)
Both remind me of the examples of bad design in Donald Norman's classic textbook on usability design: The Design of Everyday Things [wikipedia.org].
Each example got the note "probably won an award".
Re: (Score:2)
You piqued my curiosity. What is bad about the DualShock? I thought it was pretty nice. What is flawed?
Had no idea it won an award, though. They make awards for controllers? heh What is it called? THE THUMBY AWARD? :-P
Re: (Score:2)
What makes the Dualshock 2 a bad controller, is 3 issues:
1. The shell is designed for a stickless version, and the grip is as well. This means you can never get a good grip on it, because the handles are non existing, and there is nothing to wrap your hand around
2. The PS1 dualshock controller had extended handles, because adding analogs did take up valueable grip space. The extended handles was lost in all successive versions
3. And there is minor wear/tech problems on it. Notable faults includes the deadzo
Re: (Score:2)
Ah... the Dualshock 2 was the one from the PS2... I actually skipped that system (I got the Dreamcast instead), so I guess I missed the pain. heh ;-)
Design award for something that horrible? (Score:4, Interesting)
Place me in a mental institution if you like, but I actually preferred the start screen. At least the start screen acknowledged that the new way of presenting programs as live tiles is hugely space inefficient and needs to take up the entire screen. Indeed, enlarging the start menu was the first thing I did. Then I made the mistake of using all apps. Once again, this is a feature that can use full screen due to the enlarged icons. The problem is that Windows 10 only allows you to enlarge it in one dimension. After a bit more fussing around, I simply gave up.
The new start menu may be great for some people. For me, it felt like a patchwork of features that were poorly thought out. Even though the start screen was much hated, at least it was relatively well thought out. The Windows 7 start menu was well thought out, and had the benefit of well over a decade of refinements. Taking the ideas from two well thought out ideas does not necessarily make a third well thought out idea. On the contrary, it has a huge potential to make a mess. At least Microsoft lived up to that potential.
Re: (Score:2)
I had no idea you could scroll the shitty start screen on Windows 8. Not one single hint lets you know, not an arrow or scroll bar or anything. I installed Office on a new Win 8 box and couldn't locate any of the icons. Started googling and found there is actually a knowledge base article letting people know the menu scrolls. Again a design fail.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, it was one of the first settings I changed when I started using Windows 10 because it just makes much more sense to have the start menu cover the entire screen and make use of the extra space since you can't interact with anything else that may be open on the desktop while the start menu is open anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
Even though the start screen was much hated, at least it was relatively well thought out.
I disagree pretty strongly. I mean, you shared your opinion, which is fair, and I'm just giving mine back in return, no disrespect intended.
But first, I find the whole Metro/Modern design to have been a bit misguided. It looked very nice, in my opinion, and it was smart to make bigger buttons that were touch-friendly for Windows tablets, but as many people will argue, I don't think it made sense on the desktop. But
No accounting for taste (Score:2, Troll)
Or, is it a matter of shills giving an award to the people they are shilling for?
Visit the world of *nix. There are start menus galore. Take your pick. Someone actually gave Microsoft an award for theirs? Phhhhtt.......
Try browsing for an app (Score:2)
Try browsing for a specific app that is not in tiles or recents. It's a mess, and the list has tiny width and long scroll down, while the menu has huge space it could use for that when it's obvious the user is browsing installed apps.
Once Again, We're Beta Testing for MS (Score:4, Informative)
Since I have several machines to play with at home, I decided to go ahead with the *cough* upgrade *cough* on one of them. Here are the problems I've encountered in just a couple hours of usage.
1. Windows Explorer has been replaced with MS Edge. I often VPN into work, and attempted to do so with Edge, but had no luck. The good news is that Explorer still exists somewhere on the system. From Edge, there's an option to open one of your favorites in Explorer, and I was able to pin explorer to my bottom bar to avoid having to launch edge. MS seems to have hidden Explorer...it doesn't show up in the list of all apps.
2. iPad no longer charges from USB ports. Other devices, like my Garmin GPS watch does. The iPad still syncs up with iTunes, but refuses to charge.
3. My Nvidia graphics driver crashes occasionally, but relaunches. I am running the latest driver, and they claim they're working on it.
Re: (Score:3)
Since I have several machines to play with at home, I decided to go ahead with the *cough* upgrade *cough* on one of them. Here are the problems I've encountered in just a couple hours of usage.
1. Windows Explorer has been replaced with MS Edge.
No, you mean Internet Explorer has been replaced with MS Edge. Windows Explorer is the file manager, which has been renamed to File Explorer, and like everything else in Windows 10 they've made a number of stupid, pointless changes that make it just a little worse
The good news is that Explorer still exists somewhere on the system. From Edge, there's an option to open one of your favorites in Explorer, and I was able to pin explorer to my bottom bar to avoid having to launch edge. MS seems to have hidden Explorer...it doesn't show up in the list of all apps.
This is one of the big problems with the Window 8 and 10 UI. Some things don't show up in the list of all apps. So for example, you have to know to navigate your way to [C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer] where you will find Internet Exp
Re: (Score:2)
Since I have several machines to play with at home, I decided to go ahead with the *cough* upgrade *cough* on one of them. Here are the problems I've encountered in just a couple hours of usage.
1. Windows Explorer has been replaced with MS Edge.
No, you mean Internet Explorer has been replaced with MS Edge. Windows Explorer is the file manager, which has been renamed to File Explorer, and like everything else in Windows 10 they've made a number of stupid, pointless changes that make it just a little worse
Yet another example of how stupid it is to call your file manager and Internet browser almost the same thing. I have had to get into the habit of telling users to open a "computer window" because everyone thinks an Explorer window is the Internet browser.
Re: (Score:2)
It's probably to do with smaller notebooks and their lack of a numpad... I had one user that failed to log in a number of times and it turned out that they had last changed their password on a notebook where numlock was turned on at login and some of the alpha keys got remapped.
-R C
Re: (Score:2)
Windows has done this at least since Windows 2000. Yes, it's annoying. I imagine it's because Windows can't actually
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, I would never have thought to look for a browser under accessories, though I should have looked under the program files.
This IS Bizarro world! (Score:2)
Yesterday Kim Jong Un was awarded a peace prize for "peace, justice and humanity."
Today Microsoft gets a design award for releasing a UI ever slightly less crappy than Windows 8s, and nowhere near as good as Windows 7.
We somehow ended up on htraE (aka Bizarro World) this week.
Re: (Score:2)
So when is Be Cruel To Animals Week?
Award for menu that limits you to 512 programs? (Score:5, Informative)
What sort of morons put an arbitrary limit [microsoft.com] on the number of items your menu has?
Apparently there is a fix in the pipeline, but it's a bit stupid to have released this with a known issue that should be a simple fix. In this day and age, there is simply no excuse for an arbitrary limit on the number of items in your start menu. I easily have 1500 unique items (Microsoft being one of the worst offenders of dumping lots of useless entries into my start menu) in my Start Menu->Programs folders, so it's likely something important will be displaced by some application's web URL or an uninstall link.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
512!?!?! That just shows how the start menu has been abused since Windows 98. Microsoft can redesign the start menu / start screen / quick launch bar / pin to taskbar 100 different ways, but they can never sole the problem of stupid installers that create:
FooCorp Software\
FooCorp Software\Foo\
FooCorp Software\Foo\Launch Foo
FooCorp Software\Foo\Uninstall Foo
FooCorp Software\Foo\Readme.txt
FooCorp Software\Foo\Other great offers from FooCorp
512 ought to be plenty, if it weren't for this kind of garbage.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, Microsoft themselves are plenty guilty of this:
=========[Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2012]==========
Blend for Visual Studio 2012
Microsoft Feedback Client
Microsoft Help Viewer
Microsoft Test Manager
PowerPoint Storyboarding
Visual Studio 2012
=========[Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2012->Microsoft Visual Studio SDK]==========
**WEB** Download Visual Studio Visualization and Modeling SDK
Re: (Score:3)
Well, for starters, the problem is 512 TOTAL apps, regardless of folder structure. The Start Menu also doesn't support more than one folder level, which in itself is rather dumb. It seems like whoever was in charge of architecting the Start Menu couldn't figure out how to organize the data internally to represent a multi-level tree, though it's a basic pattern every developer should be able to handle.
The limits aren't imposed by the registry (but thanks for playing), and Microsoft has a fix in the pipeline
Start screen? (Score:2)
Some say it’s awesome, others hate it and want the Start screen back
No. No they don't.
IDSA? (Score:5, Funny)
It Doesn't Suck Anymore?
Vendor lock-in (Score:2)
'...the new menu makes it easy to access files across platforms, as it brings together [Windows] PCs, tablets, and phones...'
The criteria for the award is that that the interface is effective at locking users into Windows hardware devices they don't want? Did it make the desktop interface better? No. It just compels you to buy other Windows devices.
Why? (Score:3)
I have used Windows 10 for a couple of weeks, and so far the Start Menu the way it's shipped is more of a hindrance. The Start Menu becomes somewhat usable once you remove all or most of those tiles from it, remove all the defaults, and then add a bit of your own customizations. The end result is not much different from Windows 7. Why should Windows 10 get any big awards for it. Who is funding IDSA right now?
Classic Shell (Score:2)
Classic Shell [classicshell.net] just works and it still works on Windows 10 even as a release candidate.
IDSA Design Awards. (Score:2)
The IDSDA's origins can be traced back to the legendary industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. The geek is only kidding himself if he thinks these awards are not to be taken seriously.
The best designed products of 2015 [businessinsider.com]
Works well across platforms... (Score:2)
Better than 8, but... (Score:2)
Still no cigar. And to make matters worse, if you had classic start menu installed... it removes it.
No good deed. (Score:2)
Awards are a sham anyway. To award Microsoft for fixing the monstrosity known as Metro is like naming the 1960 Ford Comet Car of the Year because it's not an Edsel.
Re: (Score:2)
Great analogy! Wish I had some points today. :-)
Re:Good for them. (Score:5, Insightful)
amen. And if anyone has followed the tutorials about disabling Cortana to get rid of the "all your keypresses are sent to Bing for.. processing", you'll find that it still sends all your data to Bing anyway.
You have to block it in the firewall [arstechnica.com] to get the behaviour what normal people would expect.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
EVERYONE ON THE HATE TRAIN!
Maybe, but Microsoft doesn't have to keep shoveling coal into the engine...
Re: (Score:3)
In that case I apologise.
You sir, just broke the Internet. An apology on Slashdot? Next people will start feeding homeless kittens.