All-New Touch-Friendly Taskbar Comes To Latest Windows 11 Preview (arstechnica.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [T]he last couple Windows 11 Insider Preview builds have augmented Windows 11's touchscreen capabilities. The build released to Dev channel users last week included new gestures, changes to how snapping windows works when in tablet mode, and a few other improvements. And a new build released today totally overhauls the taskbar for touchscreens.
Windows 11 in its current form adds more space between icons when you're using your device as a tablet, but the new preview goes further. When you're using apps, the taskbar will shrink to a narrow strip across the bottom of the screen: it's still tall enough to show the clock and your network, sound, and battery status icons, but all your pinned apps and other system tray icons are hidden. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen or closing an app window brings up a new, larger version of the taskbar with larger, more finger-friendly icons and spacing. The taskbar disappears again once you've launched your app. "Windows 11 still doesn't have a dedicated Tablet Mode toggle like Windows 10 did," notes Ars. "Instead, the OS relies on signals from your hardware to enable and disable the tablet-centric UI tweaks."
Windows 11 in its current form adds more space between icons when you're using your device as a tablet, but the new preview goes further. When you're using apps, the taskbar will shrink to a narrow strip across the bottom of the screen: it's still tall enough to show the clock and your network, sound, and battery status icons, but all your pinned apps and other system tray icons are hidden. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen or closing an app window brings up a new, larger version of the taskbar with larger, more finger-friendly icons and spacing. The taskbar disappears again once you've launched your app. "Windows 11 still doesn't have a dedicated Tablet Mode toggle like Windows 10 did," notes Ars. "Instead, the OS relies on signals from your hardware to enable and disable the tablet-centric UI tweaks."
Greasefest (Score:2)
Say, is touchscreen really a feature for most of you? Am I the only one who hates it?
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If Apps for the last 35 years were designed to use a touch screen, I expect it would be more useful.
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touchscreens (ie fecal bacteria dispensers often seen in restaurants) , VR goggles, talking computers.... mostly toys to pander to kids
I'm trying to get some work done here
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touchscreens (ie fecal bacteria dispensers often seen in restaurants) ,
With regards to that, how are they different than door knobs, door handles or your keyboard?
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keyboards need cleaning, yes.
You'll note door keys and door knobs are made of copper alloys such as brass and bronze, they kill bacteria with heavy metal poisoning and destroy viruses (though may take few hours for the viruses such as covid19)
As for restaurants, surely you can see how random people rubbing their fingers on it cause them to fester with fecal bacteria and parasites.
https://www.fatherly.com/news/... [fatherly.com]
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Yes. Maybe consider washing your hands more if your screen is getting greasy. Is a touch screen replacing me typing? No. Do I sit like a weirdo with my laptop out on the train? Also no, because Windows tablets exist. If you prefer a walled garden and a crippled OS then maybe a different product suits your use case instead.
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There is exactly no situation where a touchscreen is more useful than mouse and keyboard.
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I assume you don't use a tablet or a smart phone then? Touchscreens are used on many more devices than just desktop computers and laptops.
I would agree with you though that for all desktops and most laptops (all except dual mode type) a touchscreen is rather useless to have.
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I use a smartphone and hate it.
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I hate touchscreens. I want physical buttons that I can feel, press, and hear like clicky keyboards. I used to think I could type like Data with touchscreens. Nope! I can type fast like a machine gun with model M keyboards!
You want touch - use an iPad (Score:2)
Lets face reality, Windows popularity is based on one important detail. Access to about 40 years of applications. While many of the older ones may no longer be directly compatible with windows, they can still run via emulators (like DOSBOX), which while can run on different platforms, the old Apps requires a full Keyboard, and sometimes a mouse to function properly, with the screens designed for a horizontal layout. Many of these older apps, which had been upgraded over the decades often had minimal chang
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Touch itself isn't bad, I would normally use the touch interface on a laptop for easier scrolling, however the issue is the touch interface creates tradeoffs that disadvantage the use of the mouse, keyboard, and screen real-estate.
Windows 8 was a big offender of this, but what was worse was Windows Server 2012 (without any SP) had the windows 8 UI, which made managing the server miserable. As the server was often headless, and you needed to access it via RDP, which I would have been using a multi-screen w
Re: You want touch - use an iPad (Score:4, Informative)
If you have a touch laptop you might find from time to time it is easy or helpful. Nobody is forcing anyone to use it like an iPad. I never understand why so many people here get so upset by basic touch points in Windows that nobody is ever forced to use
A few reasons.
Windows 7 was touch-enabled, did you know that? It was possible to scroll and left/right click with a touch screen, it even supported multi-touch. The on-screen keyboard was usable with a touch screen...it was actually done halfway decently, but it had a purpose far closer to what you're describing - making occasional tasks easy and helpful.
Then, Microsoft tried to force users into an iPad experience on desktops. Instead of a start menu that could fit 48 entries per column and 5 of such columns on a 1920x1080 screen alphabetically, with working search capabilities...Win8 forced a touch-friendly UI onto everyone. There was less information density and less contrast, so there were fewer entries and they were harder to read. We were told "you can just type what you want", but you had to know this was the case; there were no cues for it. For the laptops that weren't getting touch screens, their touchpads had to support edge gestures and multi-touch, enabled by default...but 100% of the calls I got were "how do I stop my computer from being possessed" because there were no markings or visual cues indicating that edge swiping was a thing....although some people got stuck learning quickly because that's where the shut down command was moved!
The issue isn't so much that touch screens are a problem in and of themselves, is that they represent the move away from information density, consistent visual cues, and other components of computer interfaces that had long-since been established. This change wasn't done for the users' benefit - better support for high DPI displays and having a framework for touch-first applications, perhaps with the Tablet UI as an option which could be enabled, would have been a better transition and made touch screens actually desirable...but that's not what's happened.
Windows 10 was at least a somewhat better compromise, with a list that was a bit easier to navigate, more obvious search cues, and better pinning...but that was counterbalanced by search being just the worst - there are zero times when I've clicked Start and intended to do anything other that search the start menu for the application I'm looking to open. There are zero people I support who have desired that functionality...but MS has to pad the Bing numbers somehow, and so searching for an app now does web searches which slows everything down.
Now, Windows 11 is once again removing useful options under the guise of making the experience "easier". I have never seen someone advertise a change as making things "easier" and achieving that goal. The menu is smaller than the Windows 10 menu, doesn't have an option to default to "All Apps", and spends half its area not showing programs and applications. Most of the useful right-click options on the Win10 menu are gone, the taskbar can't be moved, entries can't show full titles, right-click menus have lost their custom entries. ...and ALL OF THIS is to accommodate a tiny minority of people who use touch-enabled monitors on their computer. As an aside, touch screens are much more expensive to replace, much heavier, and in general are much smaller, not just on laptops, but the largest touch-enabled desktop monitor I can find sold by Newegg is 24" and costs $400, nearly triple the price of a standard 24" monitor.
Touch isn't a bad thing, but it's pursuit has been the catalyst of the erosion of useful, consistent functionality. This is certainly something that can be laid squarely at the feet of Microsoft, who clearly hasn't been happy with the idea of either decoupling the UI and letting users pick whether they like the Win7 version or the Win11 version or making it possible to install KDE or GNOME on Windows...but when something becomes easier for touch UIs at the expense of what people actually use on a daily basis, it's hard to avoid seeing both at the same level.
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The industry has split
Yep. It's split three ways. Desktop devices, touch toys, and those hybrid in between devices you magically pretend don't exist or don't work.
Question: Why should I buy an iPad? Maybe I don't want a locked down device with a limited OS just to use a touch interface. Maybe there's many people out there perfectly happy with a laptop which has a removable keyboard and is small and light enough to hold in one hand, yet has enough capabilities to run whatever groupware app is needed to get through the day. /Poste
Desktop systems (Score:2)
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It's almost like Windows runs on more than just your archaic computing relic.*
*If you're going to ignore that laptops and tablets exist, I'll ignore that desktops are at all relevant in 2022, and everyone is happy. ... or equally sad, either way is fine.
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Yea. Almost. It also runs on tablets that do not exists.
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I have no idea what to do with your post. I've read it 5 times, I'm not sure what you were trying to say. Even if it were grammatically correct it would still be a completely ambiguous statement which could be seen as a support of my post or a criticism of it.
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On a desktop Windows 11 computer you would probably have no need to touch the display since Windows wouldn't be in tablet mode (and thus be less touch friendly). As the summary stated, Windows 11 doesn't have a tablet mode switch and relies on hardware triggers. I would be very surprised if a desktop monitor had the hardware triggers that indicated tablet mode should be enabled.
20 year old NTFS long file paths ? Still broke (Score:1)
FFS Microsoft, hire a programmer.
Done with MS WIN (Score:2)
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Neither will anyone else using a mouse and keyboard, congratulations on being basic.
Can you move the taskbar? (Score:2)
In my infinite wisdom i allowed my newest Windows machine, an ultrabook, to upgrade from Windows 10 to 11. Now, I'm apparently stuck with a taskbar which won't move. I'm so frustrated. It's just a total waste of vertical space to have it fixed across the bottom when it could be on the side. Either this is a total middle finger to its users, or the developers never really use Windows on a single screen. I'm leaning toward the latter. My office desktop has multiple portrait monitors, so were I to be stuck wit
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Losing space sucks, even horizontal space on a landscape-oriented monitor (I'm looking at you slashdot, with your excessive white space to the right of the comments)
For my tasks, landscape is much more useful than portrait and I don't mind losing a little vertical space. Having said that, I do have my (Windows 10) taskbar auto-hiding.
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You can revert for.. 4 weeks? Something like that.
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The problem is 16:9 displays. For some things a 4:3 display is much better.
Hi! I'm the new Windows 11! (Score:2)
I just LOVE it when you touch my taskbar... Ohhh, you naughty boy!
jeez don't they ever get bored fiddling with (Score:2)
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Once again, the most important question when a new Windows "feature" gets introduced is: how do you turn it off?
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The start menu was a mild novelty 25 or so years ago but now it's just something that many people must use to get on with their daily lives.
I see you're a coder who does what you're told rather than the ideas person or the innovator which comes up with actual solutions to problems. Hint: The start menu was great 25 years ago. 25 years ago I didn't hold a windows "PC" in my left hand while standing on the subway.
Just be happy that the changes that are completely irrelevant to you but an actual god send for those who do use them are context sensitive and that they don't impact your life one bit, and don't let your ludditness dictate the future of
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So you're using a windows phone?
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No. Windows phones don't run a desktop OS, try again.
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The start menu was a mild novelty 25 or so years ago but now it's just something that many people must use to get on with their daily lives.
I see you're a coder who does what you're told rather than the ideas person or the innovator which comes up with actual solutions to problems. Hint: The start menu was great 25 years ago. 25 years ago I didn't hold a windows "PC" in my left hand while standing on the subway.
Just be happy that the changes that are completely irrelevant to you but an actual god send for those who do use them are context sensitive and that they don't impact your life one bit, and don't let your ludditness dictate the future of technology for the rest of us.
I applaud the "innovators" who made the start menu easier to use on your handheld Windows device. What I (and most others) don't like is when said innovation is made the default everywhere, which makes it harder for those of us who use Windows devices that don't fit in our hands.
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What I (and most others) don't like is when said innovation is made the default everywhere,
So what you're saying is you're complaining about something that isn't happening is that it? Windows's touch functionality is context sensitive. Has been since they backed off after the Windows 8 abortion. You don't get *any* of what's being talked about because it's disabled by default if you use your computer with a mouse and keyboard.
Nothing has gotten harder about Windows, in fact the UI elements you use have remained basically unchanged in size and location for 2 decades (except for the abortion that w
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On the contrary, I switched from windows to linux nearly 10 years ago, for both work development and home use.
So you have no idea what you're talking about and no skin in the game. Got it.
I'm talking about all the power users who just need to get all their office based activities done, which is really windows primary demographic.
Well this change doesn't affect them in the slightest unless they try to use their desktop PC with a pen or finger.
The point I'm trying to make is that microsoft is so abysmal at innovation on windows (or pretty much anything) that shouting about a tweak to the start menu is pretty much a joke.
Sorry, but on behalf of the people not stuck in the realm of Windows belongs on the desktop, please stick with your Linux and leave the rest of us alone. How dare you come in and pretend to support people who aren't affected by a change on a system you don't even use and propose to remove a change that would have a po
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Boot loader is locked down (Score:2)
How can I install Window on my iPad or Android tablet? Don't tell me I have to buy a 5 year old Atom tablet.
But can you put it on the side? (Score:2)
So let's see if I've got this right (Score:2)
It's affected by gestures. Snappers also. And a tablet makes it get bigger and thicker. Sometimes it shrinks away until it's teeny-tiny. Swiping on it, though, will make it get bigger and, to quote Microsoft, "more finger-friendly". Also, it disappears again once you've launched your app.
So is Microsoft telling us Windows 11 has a grower, not a shower?
Keep F'N With The Taskbar, Assholes! (Score:2)