Microsoft: Moving Windows 11 Taskbar May Never Be An Option Again (bleepingcomputer.com) 210
If you are waiting for Windows 11 side-taskbar support before upgrading to the latest operating system, you may be waiting for a long time, according to a recent Microsoft Ask Me Anything (AMA) session. BleepingComputer reports: As first reported by Neowin, in a recent Microsoft Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, a user asked whether Microsoft would be bringing back the ability to move the sidebar to the sides. The response was not very promising, with Tali Roth, Microsoft's Head of Product, explaining that a small amount of Windows users use the feature and that it is unsure whether the feature will ever be brought back:
"When it comes to something like actually being able to move the taskbar to different locations on the screen, there's a number of challenges with that. When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge. And when you look at the data, while we know there is a set of people that love it that way and, like, really appreciate it, we also recognize that this set of users is really small compared to the set of other folks that are asking for other features. So at the moment we are continuing to focus on things that I hear more pain around. It is one of those things that we are still continuing to look at, and we will keep looking to feedback, but at the moment we do not have a plan or a set date for when we would, or if we would, actually build the side taskbar." You can watch the entire discussion about this feature on YouTube.
"When it comes to something like actually being able to move the taskbar to different locations on the screen, there's a number of challenges with that. When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge. And when you look at the data, while we know there is a set of people that love it that way and, like, really appreciate it, we also recognize that this set of users is really small compared to the set of other folks that are asking for other features. So at the moment we are continuing to focus on things that I hear more pain around. It is one of those things that we are still continuing to look at, and we will keep looking to feedback, but at the moment we do not have a plan or a set date for when we would, or if we would, actually build the side taskbar." You can watch the entire discussion about this feature on YouTube.
Finally, the year of the Linux desktop (Score:3)
Courtesy tanks to m$, more brilliant corporate stategy from our leader in innovation!
If this bleeds into other aspects then yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
Then again we've long since stopped enforcing antitrust law. So Microsoft might just not care about that anymore.
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One of the main strengths of windows is the 80/20 rule. 80% of your users only use 20% of your functionality but it's a different mix for every user. By catering to everybody you create a situation where everybody has that one feature they can't afford to live without. Then again we've long since stopped enforcing antitrust law. So Microsoft might just not care about that anymore.
ah yes Pareto's principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], however, I suspect eventually they're really going to piss off people enough to interest more people into looking other operating systems
monoplies often crumble under their own weight, besides cheating isn't really winning
Re:If this bleeds into other aspects then yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
You know the strength of the command line? The same commands I learnt 40 years ago are still generally available and work the same. I can still fire up VI and make a quick change to a config file or script on even the lowest spec machines over the slowest links. The downside is that a lot of the commands and options are basically hidden and not easy to use unless you know them.
One of the earliest strengths of GUIs was that you can browse around a program's interface and see the commands that are available - and with a well designed OS and user interface design guideline, have programs put things in similar places so that it's easy to find the same corresponding functions across many applications.
One of the problems with the rise of web pages as apps is that this early design rule that different programs should maintain similar interface standards has gone out the window, so each app now has it's most basic commands all over the place in in consistent ways.
Having your operating system itself also follow this trend is basically just stupid, and destroys productivity for everyone as you have to go relearn where all the stuff is you need to get the job done. I really don't want to have to learn yet again where exactly they have hidden away the network interface configuration tools or how to get to partition management or policy settings again.
I have a lot of other more interesting things I want to use my time for.
Re:If this bleeds into other aspects then yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Wish I had mod points today - that's spot on. The continual shifting about, and general hiding, of menu commands "just because" is utternly pathetic. idiot coders/"designers" who don't even know how to properly use a properly deciding to change things and breaking everyone's workflows.
And don't get me started on the morons who've started removing command shortcuts. Thankfully ye olde DOS/Bash commands still work.
"Modern" computer UI design is utter, effete, unhelpful garbage that makes getting things done harder - not easier.
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Then again we've long since stopped enforcing antitrust law. So Microsoft might just not care about that anymore.
I didn't realize antitrust laws gave us the vertical sidebar.
Re:Finally, the year of the Linux desktop (Score:5, Interesting)
The minute Linux can support 100% of all games will be the minute I switch.
Re:Finally, the year of the Linux desktop (Score:5, Interesting)
That's also the reason I can't switch to Windows 11. Doesn't support 100% of games.
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Windows supports less Windows games than Linux does ...
reflow is hard for apps? (Score:5, Insightful)
What bizarre reasoning. And totally non sequitur. Windows and applications adapt to different screen sizes all the time. Even portrait displays. What's there to adapt to with a taskbar on the side?
Understand the environment? What is she talking about?
What complete rubbish.
Re:reflow is hard for apps? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's been ages since I've done any Windows GUI programming, so I don't really know either. I always thought the Windows framework's job was to handle all of that for you. The applications got messages from the framework, and while you could probably find the root window and draw on it, it was not something most applications would do. I recall this goofy little Halloween executable from the late 90s that would go all over your screen. I suppose that grabbed the root window and rendered to it, but it was
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On Windows the OS handles window sizing for most apps. If you maximise an app then it is Windows that sets the window dimensions, not the app itself. That's why moving the old taskbar to the side or the top works just fine.
They seem to be saying that the issue is their new taskbar and the apps which integrate with it all assume that it is in the default position, and they can't be bothered to fix them. It's a common business decision - only a relatively small number of users want it, and most of them won't
Re:reflow is hard for apps? (Score:4, Insightful)
When positioning a new window or programmatically moving/resizing a window, you need to be aware of actual monitor geometry. The two ways applications usually get this wrong are assuming the desktop is a rectangle, and ignoring space used by toolbars.
The former happens when you have multiple monitors and adjust their positions so the desktop isn't rectangular. For example suppose you have a landscape monitor on the left and a portrait monitor on the right with the bottom edges aligned. The desktop is a sort of crude "J" shape, and there's a "missing" area at the top left. If an application blindly assumes that the desktop is a rectangle and positions a new window near the top left (0,0) position, the title bar will not be visible. The only way to move it into view will be with keyboard controls, assuming it has an application menu with standard shortcuts (Alt+Space, M, arrow keys, Enter). Otherwise you're completely out of luck.
When you're positioning a window, you can ask Windows for the monitor it's closest to, then get the info for that monitor which includes a "work rectangle" - the desktop area excluding any permanently visible toolbars like the taskbar. You can then use this info to ensure you don't position the window behind a toolbar, split across monitors, outside the desktop, or whatever. For example, here's the code the popular emulator MAME uses to achieve this on Windows [github.com].
This isn't a new problem. Windows has had permanent toolbars since Windows 95, and MacOS had the menu bar from its very first release. Developers should be used to dealing with it by now. I think part of the reason MS made the taskbar default to the bottom was to make it so unaware legacy applications positioning windows at the top left of the screen wouldn't be obscured by it. But it's been almost 30 years now, there's no excuse for developers any more.
This excuse doesn't hold water though. You still need to query the monitor info when positioning a window to ensure it's visible and not obscured. Badly behaved applications will still put windows out-of-bounds. I really don't know why MS have now decided that the taskbar must go at the bottom, especially as the proliferation of widescreen monitors means vertical space is at a premium.
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But multiple monitors aren't necessarily positioned side-by-side. It's common to have monitors positioned above each other with VESA mounts. Then the issues you're saying would affect taskbar on the side suddenly affect taskbar at the bottom. Under Windows 7, it only ever displayed one taskbar on the user-designated primary monitor. Windows 10 displays one task bar per monitor, and they can be positioned and configured differently per monitor (e.g. I have the taskbar on the left on this notebook's built
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What is it applications get wrong?
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Ie the problem is terrible developers who don't have a clue how to set up a valid viewport.
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I can understand that happening if a window is trying to restore itself to its former coordinates when the app starts up. But other than that, why on earth is an application trying to place it's own window arbitrarily on the screen? For all its many quirks X11 got this right decades ago by granting the window manager the right to place windows and only letting apps make suggestions.
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And yet full screen works with the task bar on the bottom. So I still don't think it's bizarre. Too bad Windows has such a bad case of NIH that they never learned from X11.
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I mean to say I still think it's bizarre.
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Couldn't the window manager offset the windows according to where the taskbar is placed?
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Not to mention that all that "reflow" work has been done... the feature was in Windows 10... and 7...
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Not necessarily. They may be masking their own incompetence. For Windows 11 they remade the taskbar from the ground up (because that always works well /s), and they may have completely overseen the use case where the desktop size varies with the location of the taskbar.
I.e. Whine whine, we need to program shit and don't want to whine.
Dear Microsoft, (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stop dicking with Windows. Everyone uses it because they are familiar with it and it's compatible with all the business stuff. We don't need or want a pretty UI overhaul. UI toys are NOT the reason 99% of the people use Windows. The devil we know is better than a reworked devil. Tune and perfect what you have already; there's plenty of work to do, I can spend a year ranting about MS oddities that need attention. Boot the UI re-designers and marketers out the door, you don't need them now; you need bug fixers.
Re:Dear Microsoft, (Score:5, Insightful)
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The 'aero crap' just makes it more aesthetically pleasing with minimal overhead. It's non intrusive at all, and there is no reason to disable it.
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Re:Dear Microsoft, (Score:5, Insightful)
They're trying to push the fucking "touch interfaces" again.
They failed with Windows 8 a decade ago when "tablets" were relevant. And they want to fail at it again.
I'm holding to windows 10 for my windows needs for now, the same way I held to 7 while that bullshit Windows 8 was around.
Re:Dear Microsoft, (Score:4, Insightful)
Or... their US developers are just idiots. (All those changes and they can't move teh window "destroy" button further from the unmaximize button? Who in their right mind puts an irreversible button next to a commonly used one? I remember that being discussed in UI design decades ago
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Exactly. Locked-in exclusive games are the reason we use Windows, not the UI.
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This is what happens when you do what they describe as "data-driven" decision making but you misinterpret the data. I'm sure most people leave the taskbar at the bottom not because they explicitly want it there but because they don't care where it is. The people who move it, likely a very niche group, move it because they do care where it goes. So you've just alienated the only people who actually care where it goes.
Tinylimp Windaz (Score:2)
Small amount (Score:5, Funny)
I could list a few features used by a small amount of users. Like the broken Search, widgets, weather, notifications, new new start menu, basically, everything on the task bar.
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What? (Score:2)
When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge.
The Taskbar is basically just a window, presumably with a layout, which should be able to handle horz/vert orientation. The only special thing needed is a way for this windows to coordinate with the screen so the screen size / boundaries can be updated based on the window placement. In the simplest case, the taskbar/app buttons don't even have to be reoriented for vertical display...
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What is it that apps have to deal with, exactly? I don't understand at all. The placement of the start menu at most changes the size of the area where the desktop windows can be drawn. How's that any different from a screen with a different aspect ratio? Boggles my mind that Windows struggles with something so basic.
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What is it that apps have to deal with, exactly? I don't understand at all. The placement of the start menu at most changes the size of the area where the desktop windows can be drawn. How's that any different from a screen with a different aspect ratio? Boggles my mind that Windows struggles with something so basic.
It's been standard just about forever that any problems that Windows has is always the fault of everyone else.
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Apps have had problems with non-standard taskbar placement for decades. I don't know how much of the problem is with how it worked, vs app devs not bothering to do it correctly. I think MS is just tired of dealing with the problem.
Guessing it has to do with improper ownership/control of the taskbar buttons and their contents. They should belong completely to the Taskbar with APIs apps can use to request updates to the button contents with the Taskbar responsible for handling that (and APIs for Taskbar->app messages), but I'm guessing MS has allowed the apps to control their buttons directly, causing trouble...
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It just updates! (Score:2)
Re:It just updates! (Score:4, Funny)
Can't they just make it work without constant updates?
No, not really. Most of the updates are to fix the mistakes they made in previous updates.
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We apologise for the fault in the previous update.
Those responsible have been sacked.
"work that all of the apps have to do"? (Score:3)
work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge
Not meaning to gaslight the dude, but isn't the same work done each time you resize a window?
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Some apps probably assume the taskbar is at the bottom of the screen instead of checking.
Or perhaps they are referring to needing to implement those legacy APIs in their built-from-scratch taskbar to get some legacy apps working properly.
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You might be right, but I know that you have to go out of your way to do it wrong. The average app isn't expected to CARE where the taskbar is. You call createwindow(ex) with some sensible numbers and initial positioning is handled for you and you need your WM_RESIZE to receive information about what's happening to your window outside of your control. But what gets me is that Microsoft are plenty willing to outright break back compat with apps as and when they feel like it. I have had MANY programs over the
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Agreed.
The overwhelming majority of apps don't have any reason to do anything more than request the current size of their window. And of those that actually do have a reason to know the size of the desktop (mostly various desktop utilities), the recommended API function to retrieve that information already subtracts the taskbar and provides the "usable" desktop dimensions. Though in fairness, with the taskbar at the top or left of the screen you also need to have requested the offset to the top left corner
Gui design (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern monitors are stupid wide, but not very tall. Most of the time my screen has miles of white space in the vertical direction. I will gladly give up lots of space on the sides of the monitor. Do not dare take some of the few precious lines of text or rows of excel from me for your stupid task bar. And I don't want a hidden taskbar.
Rotate? (Score:2)
> I will gladly give up lots of space on the sides of the monitor. Do not dare take some of the few precious lines of text or rows of excel from me for your stupid task bar.
Ever tried rotating the monitor so all that lovely space is vertical?
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> Modern monitors are stupid wide, but not very tall.
That's why portrait mode [freecodecamp.org] exists.
> Most of the time my screen has miles of white space in the vertical direction.
These stupid new "forum" sites [blizzard.com] also waste ~50% horizontal space.
> Do not dare take some of the few precious lines of text or rows of excel from me for your stupid task bar. And I don't want a hidden taskbar.
Amen! Save Our (vertical) Space! Microsoft is slowly trying to Apple.
Microsoft: "WE know what's best for you."
Me: NO, you don't.
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But if I turn my monitor 90 doesn't that mean the UI needs to "reflow". MS' whole argument of not allowing the taskbar on the side also disqualifies rotating your monitor. (Or different resolutions).
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Install ExplorerPatcher. Fixed!
https://github.com/valinet/Exp... [github.com]
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I'm happy with my Sceptre Curved 40" Nebula monitor. It's humongous and has a nice tall display.
19" high x 34" wide (40" diagonally), it's like a movie screen, plenty of room top-to-bottom and side-to-side.
Windows 11 UI SUUUUUCCCCKKKSSS!!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
I accidentally bought a machine with Windows 11 on it.
Windows 11 wants to be a Mac UI, but it sucks!
For example, I can't drag stuff from the Windows 11 bar in the bottom middle to the desktop and make a shortcut. I can't drag shortcuts from the desktop to the windows 11 bar. What the heck are Apps? They can't be moved anywhere? And what about Windows 11 S mode? WTF? Who designed this thing. The first time you try to setup Windows 11 for grandma and can't drag Spider Solitaire to the desktop Grandma ain't gonna be happy.
Attention Microsoft. Put the windows start button back in the corner. If I can't drag shortcuts between the Windows 11 start bar and desktop you are doing it wrong.
The interface is an absolute mess and looks like it was developed by people working in a pandemic over zoom.
Re: Windows 11 UI SUUUUUCCCCKKKSSS!!!!! (Score:2)
You can move the start menu to the corner.
And you don't need to drag stuff to the taskbar. Anything you want a quick shortcut for, just pin it there. Much better than desktop shortcuts.
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Agreed, except for grandma who wants her shortcut for mail and solitaire exactly where they were on the old computer.
Seriously MS why? It's not even a good copy of the Mac UI.
The amount of headache the W11 is going to cause older people and boomers will be limitless.
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If you have overlapping windows and the drop area of the target window is covered, what you do, and have done for almost 3 decades on Windows, is drag-and-hover over the taskbar tag, and the program will pop up to the top.
You can't do this with windows 11. Either Ctrl-C Ctrl-V the files, or take the time to make sure your windows don't overlap, and perform the drag and drop "correctly".
It's stupid.
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I accidentally bought a machine with Windows 11 on it.
Windows 11 wants to be a Mac UI, but it sucks!.
I had to set up a W11 computer recently, It's no Mac.
But suck, it does.
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Attention Microsoft. Put the windows start button back in the corner. If I can't drag shortcuts between the Windows 11 start bar and desktop you are doing it wrong.
They aren't doing it wrong, they are releasing it early. There's a difference. MS completely re-wrote the taskbar and then shipped long before all the features that it had were incorporated. Welcome to SaaS, your features will slowly be re-added as time goes on.
No doubt by the time they've made it functional again the code is just as bloated as it was when they decided it was unmaintainable in the first place.
Also you can move the start menu to the bottom left. If you can't then stop being an anti-vaxxer an
Pain (Score:2)
After 30 years, Windows is still a pain to use. Imagine if they had focused on getting rid of all the pain points from the beginning.
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After 30 years, Windows is still a pain to use. Imagine if they had focused on getting rid of all the pain points from the beginning.
I imagine their sadist erm developers have laugh filled meetings on the crap they foist on the users.
As if what the users want matters to MS (Score:3)
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This is really bad! (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost all the managers are on smart phones, never do any serious coding and they don't create any content. Most of the public and most of the managers are content consumers, not content creators. They don't understand our needs/.
Not ideal for wide screens (Score:3)
I also remember meeting a gnome developer at a fedora conference and I told him how I appreciated getting rid of the bottom bar from gnome 2 to save space.
I thought more people did this, but apparently not
Metrics kills again (Score:2)
And when you look at the data,
In other words, after sucking up all the metrics of usage, because a small subset of people who use your product might make your shitty programmers earn their pay, you're discontinuing this option.
Metrics kills again.
Re:Metrics kills again (Score:4, Interesting)
The funny thing is, that the #1 feature request on the Windows 11 Feedback app has been... the ability to move the taskbar to the side. And it's the #1 upvoted feature request, by a large margin. So this MS spokestoad is full of it, or to put it bluntly, flat out lying.
Since it is impossible to move the Win11 taskbar to the side, how in the heck can telemetry have anything to say about it?
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But only people that care about these things will use the feedback app. I've never used the feedback app since Windows is not my main driver and has always been an afterthought for just about anything useful to do with a computer. What the product manager is saying is that they took a sample of all the Windows 10/11 installs, saw that the majority didn't change their default settings and said "obviously nobody wants it"
Windows 11 UI is garbage (Score:2)
I have Windows 11 on one computer. As an OS, it is indistinguishable from Windows 10. The UI however is complete garbage, any convenience you might be accustomed to in the Windows UI is now either an icon or missing (possibly hidden under another option). Microsoft is telling me that I'm too dumb to read words and that shit looking icons are better.
Hey Microsoft, the Windows UI should be intuitive and should GET OUT OF THE WAY instead of throwing up barriers to productivity. I don't want your shit UI that f
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I have Windows 11 on one computer. As an OS, it is indistinguishable from Windows 10. The UI however is complete garbage, any convenience you might be accustomed to in the Windows UI is now either an icon or missing (possibly hidden under another option). Microsoft is telling me that I'm too dumb to read words and that shit looking icons are better.
Hey Microsoft, the Windows UI should be intuitive and should GET OUT OF THE WAY instead of throwing up barriers to productivity. I don't want your shit UI that feels limiting. Stop wasting time and make something useful. The giant public beta that is Windows 11 is only embarrassing you.
But here is the thing - will you stop using it? in most cases, the answer is no. So it doesn't really matter what customers think. They'll grouse a little, but their next computer will have a Microsoft OS on it.
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While I do think you will be correct in your statement, I also hear more grumbling from more users than before when Windows 7 turned into Windows 8/8.1/10.
Maybe, I'm projecting, but that is my current impression. Here I had a Windows 8 laptop (with only meager resources) that migrated to 10, then all networking got hosed because of manufacturer dropping support and had to try Linux (Pop!_OS v20.04). Worked flawlessly with 0 tweaking.
A nice thing to generate background noise when I was working from home on m
Microsoft Heading Toward Programing Dark Ages (Score:2)
Wait, I can't uncombine windows either? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, further down in the article it says that "Unfortunately, another Windows 10 taskbar feature is sorely missed, which is the ability to uncombine open windows for the same program."
I'm surprised that isn't getting more attention. That would make my taskbar functionally unusable. I have too many breadcrumb windows open during the course of my day and nesting similar instances of a program all one one taskbar icon makes it incredibly difficult to tell at a glance what is where.
I'm going to be really annoyed if this isn't fixed (or a workaround available) by the time Win11 is forced on me through work.
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Install ExplorerPatcher. Fixed!
https://github.com/valinet/Exp... [github.com]
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I'm surprised that isn't getting more attention.
I'm not. The hover overlay and virtual desktops from a workflow are far superior to splattering every instance of ever open window on the taskbar. I think most people have moved on from the Windows XP way of doing things.
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It's turning one action into 2:
old version: click the item you want.
new: move mouse to application you want, hover, wait for windows to show up, hope you can decipher which window you need, click that one.
It's not a preference, the new way is objectively worse.
Just let us slide it over to the left (Score:2)
I don't want my taskbar centered. I want it left-justified, able to grow as I pin more things to it.
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You can do that now in Taskbar Settings.
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Can't believe they lost their way (Score:2)
Can't believe they lost their way. This is the company that got us with XP and used to be such a threat.
They used to be hard to stop using once upon a time and now it seems they are a major has-been. Kind of like seeing an Adult who was "powerful" when you were a kid is really just a major wannabe-loser in a very sad situation kind of way.
Installed for Windows 11 for 36 Long Hours (Score:2)
ExplorerPatcher (Score:2)
I just installed ExplorerPatcher and that fixed the Taskbar problem. Can now dock it to the left-hand side.
Didn't. break. a. single. thing.
Did a small registry hack to bring back the file explorer context menu as well.
Other than requiring to do those two things, Windows 11 is fine.
In other words... (Score:3)
"When it comes to something like actually being able to move the taskbar to different locations on the screen, there's a number of challenges with that."
The linux folks seem to have puzzled it out. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but you had it working too.
"When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge."
Yes, but...linux got it working somehow. I can put taskbars wherever I want, as many of them as needed.
Microsoft: "And when you look at the data, while we know there is a set of people that love it that way and, like, really appreciate it, we also recognize that this set of users is really small compared to the set of other folks that are asking for other features. So at the moment we are continuing to focus on things that I hear more pain around. It is one of those things that we are still continuing to look at, and we will keep looking to feedback, but at the moment we do not have a plan or a set date for when we would, or if we would, actually build the side taskbar."
TRANSLATION: "Fuck you."
They know people love it, and their response is "No."
What's the problem? Hasn't side taskbar been aroun (Score:2)
Priorities (Score:2)
Let me get this straight... moving the taskbar completely screws up the workflow and is a huge technical issue, so... that's why Windows 11 moved the task bar and screwed up everyone's workflow.
It never ceases to amaze me how many millions of man-hours of work goes into designing an operating system, but the biggest technical challenge and largest maintenance cost the company faces is where a button is located and what color it is.
Fuck UX. It's the worst thing to happen to the computer industry since I sta
Darn (Score:2)
The one thing that would have brought me back to Microsoft. Oh well.
Can one at least switch to the normal Windows GUI? (Score:2)
... so one can have the "Program Manager" back.
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Bottom taskbar is an inefficient layout (Score:2)
It therefore makes sense to place a taskbar on the left or right for efficient screen use.
Since I'm a right handed single monitor user I have my Win10 taskbar on the right.
This has just killed Win11 as an upgrade path for me.
Adios Microsoft.
Re: Pretty weird to want the taskbar on the side (Score:2)
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It's not a more efficient use of space though. Text is horizontal, and so maps to the taskbar being horizontal. The taskbar takes, what, maybe 5% of the screen? Maybe even more like 2.5%. When you make it vertical it's going to take far more, maybe as much as 10%.
Sure, screens are wider now, but so what? What is everyone doing where that space is wasted? IDEs use that space efficiently, as do office programs, browsers, art and modeling programs, etc.
If you only have 5 or 6 open applications, it makes far mo