Microsoft Wants Changing Default Apps In Windows To Be Less of a Mess (arstechnica.com) 80
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of the enduring legacies of the '90s browser wars has been an outsize attention to how Microsoft handles default app settings in Windows, especially browser settings. The company plans to make it more straightforward to change your app defaults in future versions of Windows 11, according to a new blog post that outlines a "principled approach to app pinning and app defaults in Windows."
The company's principled approach is a combination of broad, vague platitudes ("we will ensure people who use Windows are in control of changes to their pins and their defaults") and new developer features. A future version of Windows 11 will offer a consistent "deep link URI" for apps so they can send users to the right place in the Settings app for changing app defaults. Microsoft will also add a pop-up notification that should be used when newly installed apps want to pin themselves to your Taskbar, rather than either pinning themselves by default or getting lost somewhere in your Start menu.
These new features will be added to Windows "in the coming months," starting in the Dev channel Windows Insider Preview builds. Though Microsoft frames these changes as a way to make changing default apps easier and more consistent, they also serve as a gentle rebuke to developers who handle things differently.
The company's principled approach is a combination of broad, vague platitudes ("we will ensure people who use Windows are in control of changes to their pins and their defaults") and new developer features. A future version of Windows 11 will offer a consistent "deep link URI" for apps so they can send users to the right place in the Settings app for changing app defaults. Microsoft will also add a pop-up notification that should be used when newly installed apps want to pin themselves to your Taskbar, rather than either pinning themselves by default or getting lost somewhere in your Start menu.
These new features will be added to Windows "in the coming months," starting in the Dev channel Windows Insider Preview builds. Though Microsoft frames these changes as a way to make changing default apps easier and more consistent, they also serve as a gentle rebuke to developers who handle things differently.
Says the company who... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Says the company who... (Score:5, Informative)
This is the company that REMOVES options in each and every release! If the option can be done through obscure registry settings, then Microsoft also gets rid of those if they notice anyone using them.
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> This is the company that REMOVES options in each and every release!
Exactly - they're making it easier for you - more streamlined - by taking away those annoying choices that get people so confused. You have to understand that you are *stupid* - you need Microsoft to help you, because you can't possibly live your life without them. Then you have to realise that Apple make simple UIs that are devoid of clutter - and those are to be emulated, even if designers don't understand how to do so.
There is no way
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This is the company that REMOVES options in each and every release! If the option can be done through obscure registry settings, then Microsoft also gets rid of those if they notice anyone using them.
Perhaps this was one of the "Oops, pissed off one of our biggest corporate customers with our shenanigans. Push out something to make them happy and make it sound like it's good for everyone. Oh, and don't spend too much time on it making sure it's free of security issues; there's plenty of forced-update action to get around those in the longer term. Release to press now!"
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I suspect this is part of that cycle. IE:
* admit there's a problem with the way defaults apps are done
* come up with a new standard solution
* roll it out to great fanfair
* roll out an update... OOPS! Accidentally reset all the defaults. Good thing it's so easy to redo now!
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And I'm sure it won't magically reinstall itself and make itself the default for EVERYTHING after a forced update. Microsoft would never do that.
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My gut says this announcement will be "redefined" during the development cycle to be, "Only Microsoft Apps may be defaults, and if you want something different? Tough." See how easy that is!
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My gut says this announcement will be "redefined" during the development cycle to be, "Only Microsoft Apps may be defaults, and if you want something different? Tough." See how easy that is!
This sounds really familiar.....
*cough*Apple*cough*
Re: Says the company who... (Score:2)
Yeah, Right. Sure.... (Score:5, Funny)
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I used to love finding things to replace all the shitty software that comes with Microsoft operating systems. Every release since Windows 3.11 carries a greater and greater risk of shit not working right.
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Wait what? Bullshit or Dogshit? Can we keep our poop based analogies in line please.
Poopsickle flavors (Score:2)
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Microsoft marketing tactics are like a puppy taking a dump on the floor. Anything to get attention on their mediocre features that never quite live up to their promise or potential. I don't know why that is exactly, but I have grown weary of their half-baked BS in every Windows platform since 3.11.
I thought it was just distraction. You know, cute puppy taking a dump on the floor. Damn them! But, awwwwwww! ;)
chrome offender (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a problem here that when we push a chrome install to the windows boxes, chrome takes over PDF. Then everyone that works with PDFs calls helpdesk because double clicking them is opening a read-only copy in Chrome instead of acrobat pro.
There ought to be protection placed on an extension once an app has claimed it, preventing other apps from just yoinking it without warning or confirmation.
But then yes we have to walk them through fixing the association and getting it back to acrobat, and it's not as intuitive as it should be.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Many companies are using Google infrastructure to configure their network and other permission stuff.
You can push your private certificate for your in-house https proxy that decrypts and sniff everything to Google and when user logs in to chrome, your private certificate is automatically installed and trusted by chrome.
This is only one example, there are many other features available.
Not saying I recommend it at all but it's actually what's going on in the field.
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> Have you tried exporting the registry settings responsible for the pdf association and doing a silent importing at the end of the install script?
Have you tried turning it off and back on again?
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> Have you tried exporting the registry settings responsible for the pdf association and doing a silent importing at the end of the install script?
Have you tried turning it off and back on again?
A reboot naturally comes after any deployment, so of course! ;)
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Have you tried exporting the registry settings responsible for the pdf association and doing a silent importing at the end of the install script?
First thing that popped to my mind.
Not to be off-topic but I have to mention the laugh I got because it's so relevant.
I speed-misread it as "exploiting the registry settings". Ahh, the Windows Way(tm)(sm)
Re:chrome offender (Score:5, Informative)
Does your organization not implement Active Directory and/or Group Policy Objects? I think this was a problem for my users until the third person told me it was an issue and I made a GPO to fix it. I get that most Slashdot users aren't actually Windows admins but seriously this is just a single policy change.
Re:chrome offender (Score:4, Informative)
Its only a quick thing if you are already somewhat versed.
They have had opportunities to unabstract and refactor. Instead they've added abstraction after abstraction. Managing extensions is complicated and is also not presented meaningfully to the user, and its because of all the abstractions details involved.
You are talking about Group Policy for what should be a checkbox right next to the extension: [_] dont allow other apps to change this
I expect every install to now UAP-ask "Would you like this program to open XYZ documents?" for every extension. I expect another abstraction layer instead of a ground up re-abstract based on the premise that the user is the only authority that allows changes to file associations, so lets make that user authority part easy, convenient, and without complicated abstraction baggage like "group policy"
Re: chrome offender (Score:2)
If you manage a windows domain, you should be well versed in group policy settings, otherwise youâ(TM)re in the wrong job.
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Google itself actually provides GPOs that should be in place for an organization pushing Chrome to client systems.
https://support.google.com/chr... [google.com]
On an individual system, you're right, it should be up to the end user. If you're in the position of pushing software out, there should be a Common Operating Environment so the end user isn't getting any choices at all. Everything is exactly the way IT management says it should be. I'm the only IT person for a lot of small business customers and if I didn't have
Chrome keeps taking over my video files in macOS! (Score:2)
Chrome keeps taking over my video files (MP4 & WEBM) in macOS. I told macOS Big Sur v11.7.4 to always open in VLC v3.0.18 app. It's so annoying! How do I make not open them in Chrome anymore? :(
Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon. :)
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We have a problem here that when we push a chrome install to the windows boxes, chrome takes over PDF.
No. You have a problem that your IT team is incompetent. There are multiple ways to manage what takes over PDF, both through windows in controlling of default files and through Chrome through controlling of the setting for content.
Hire someone who knows the basics of Group Policy or software management.
Re:chrome offender (Score:4)
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PDF *should* be a read-only format. The ability to change them, allow dangerous scripting, DRM, and other dreck, are the worst design decisions that Adobe foisted on us.
For me, I set Firefox as the PDF viewer. But it always reverts to Adobe Reader after rebooting. If Adobe Reader is uninstalled, it always reverts to Edge after rebooting! I am not sure what does this - IT does something so that Adobe is always reinstalled within an hour of two of me uninstalling it, so maybe they have some misguided scrip
Translation (Score:3)
It's not as if every Windows update doesn't try to put Bing and Edge back where no-one wants it already.
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There's a nifty add on in the Chrome Web Store that you can install on your personal machine called "Chrometana" that redirects all searches on Bing to an arbitrary search service of your choosing and can optionally take over Windows Internet searches as well. This can be installed on Edge.
You can also install something like ueli (https://ueli.app), a Spotlight work-alike, if you like that style of search better than the stupid way it works on current versions of Windows.
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Translation from Doublespeak: We want to make it harder for you to change away from out apps.
It's not as if every Windows update doesn't try to put Bing and Edge back where no-one wants it already.
I found the source code. Every update has a function called "reapplyMakeMoneyOintment()". No exceptions. No pun intended. ;)
MS is dim (Score:2)
Speaking of Windows annoyances, doesn't the scroll bar in Windows 10 seem way too dim? It's light-gray on white.They should get sued via ADA laws. Sure, it darkens if you hover the mouse over it, but you have to find it *before* you hover. Am I the only one who finds this highly annoying? Is geezer-hood kicking in?
I GoogleBing'd around and found registry hacks, but they disappear upon reboot or Windows update cycles. You can set Windows to a "high contrast" mode, but that buggers up other things.
WTF were t
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Microsoft is unusually careful of ADA issues.
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Microsoft is unusually careful of ADA issues.
Where are the settings to assist those with mental disability issues? Hmm? Microsoft, you're gonna get sued! Again. Today. For the 23'rd time.
P.S. Is the inability to operate on a daily basis without diverting attention to Facebook every 20 minutes or less considered a disability? Cuz it would have been back in my teens-twenties. Wait, never mind. Rudimentary trees of "Chat" ware were barely becoming a usable thing back then. I give up.
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I'm haven't done any correlations, but I suspect that my eye twitches much more often after I use Windows. I wonder if there's a class action suit in this.
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I'm haven't done any correlations, but I suspect that my eye twitches much more often after I use Windows. I wonder if there's a class action suit in this.
Wait a second... Just another... Hold on. There is now. [link redacted by /.]
Seriously, though, I believe it's harder on my eyes to adapt to the automatic brightness increase/decrease based on the white balance. My eyes have to adapt to the strain to make out medium brightness and re-train the strain to deal with the brightening based on a few more pixels of white appearing. Cool idea, bad physical response taken into account with implementation.
Re:MS is dim (Score:4, Informative)
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as well as no way to change the title bar colour to a different colour than the menu --- leading to many attempts to move a window failing because it's hard to see the title bar since it's the same colour as the menu bar below. Also what's with the alt tab not showing anything useful at all, especially when you have a few windows open with the same foldername but in different parts of the file system ?
You have to get with the times, man. Win-Tab and look at the window names, not the graphics. Only look at the graphics when you're not doing the aforementioned and trying to be more efficient.
activateCatch22()
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it's exactly the window names im looking at. This is the problem. it no longer show the full path, even truncated. Win 11 is designed for people who only use 3 apps at once.
Wow. Remembering the old days when installing through "the installer", you could choose "Full" or "Compact" etc. Perhaps the newer 11 install should allow the option for "procedural work", "balanced work", and "ADD/XTreme Multitasking" install. Not to mention the option to change things without going into the registry and having it undone every few days. I was joking with you, BTW, in case you missed that. I am not good with expressing humor without body language cues. ;)
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ADA laws are happy with the high contrast mode setting that will absolutely fix it. If that's not an actual disability that you have, you probably just have a cheap screen with the brightness set so high it washes the entire upper range out to white.
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> ADA laws are happy with the high contrast mode setting that will absolutely fix it.
It may fix that *particular* thing, but makes other things confusing and/or difficult to read. It's whack-a-mole.
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They should get sued via ADA laws.
Oh I hope so. I like watching idiot users separated from their money. I mean it's not like Windows provides an entire mode dedicated for people with disabilities which does precisely what you want.... oh wait it does.
Even the dumbest lawyer in the world would tell you that you have no case to sue.
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I addressed the high-contrast mode elsewhere.
> Even the dumbest lawyer in the world would tell you that you have no case to sue.
I agree the high-contrast mode gives MS plausible deniability. It's proof "they tried", and thus there would be no punitive damages, making the case too small for most lawyers to bother with.
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I very much agree. I have carpal tunnel syndrome, and have decided that the scroll wheel makes matters worse. Since I'm sure it's impossible to decide to stop using it on one's own (try it!) I disabled it in the registry, which still allows me to use it as a 3rd button. I then searched for and applied all the settings I could find to make the scrollbars full-size and stay on the screen. It works well in traditional Win32 apps, but doesn't work well in the Windows 10-style apps. Teams is one of the worst (in
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Speaking of Windows annoyances, doesn't the scroll bar in Windows 10 seem way too dim? It's light-gray on white.They should get sued via ADA laws. Sure, it darkens if you hover the mouse over it, but you have to find it *before* you hover. Am I the only one who finds this highly annoying? Is geezer-hood kicking in?
I GoogleBing'd around and found registry hacks, but they disappear upon reboot or Windows update cycles. You can set Windows to a "high contrast" mode, but that buggers up other things.
WTF were they thinking? Is this a left-over from the goddam Pastel Fad that made Bootstrap dim also?
Git off my high-contrast lawn, you hazy fad-brats!
Geezer-hood. I'm with ya. Fuck this damn whipper-snapper of an OS and all it stands for. And falls for. And makes you fall for. I'm too weak to lift this machine and throw it into a wall to punish this OS or else.... ...and the shrinking of the bar to a tiny 20-pixel-wide and almost invisible and impossible to grab under other conditions... Arp.. Argh.. Heart attack setting in now!
Fix printers as well (Score:3)
Managing printers in W11 is an abomination. What used to be a straight-forward, easy process. Everything in one location with one menu to rule them all.
Now it's guess work and hide and seek to find what you hope you need. Multiple entries which lack basic functionality, processes moved to disparate places or removed all together, lack of anything resembling a logical layout.
I'm still waiting 12 days from now when Microsoft comes out and says, "April fools!" and pushes out one giant update which reverts all the stupidity they've done and allows people to use their machines without having to jump through hoops.
It's quite clear they need to fire thousands of people if they believe their OS is in any way suitable for public consumption. It's as if they had a design committe who never heard of usability.
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It's quite clear they need to fire thousands of people
Actually they need to hire thousands. Your complaint like many are about the fact that they haven't *finished* the changes they were making. Ground up rebuild with functionality from the early 00s. It'll take 10 years to get back to everything in one place like in Windows 7.
if they believe their OS is in any way suitable for public consumption.
And yet millions upon millions of people just use it. I agree the printer thing is a PITA, but that's a one off problem that has zero impact in day to day use (unless you use a different printer every day). Welcome to the "minimum viable
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Managing printers in W11 is an abomination....It's as if they had a design committee who never heard of usability.
Exactly this! ...almost.
I think it's almost the other way around: they had a 'usability committee' who saw the epitome of usability as "the iPhone settings screen" and sought to emulate it, without anyone else daring to sit them down and show them even a handful of common use cases, to say nothing of telling them 'no'.
Printer drivers tend to have their own independent UI, because different printers have different settings. From the sort of web registration that allows users to e-mail their printers, to reso
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In the early days I think usability was bad because it was developers designing the UI, and there wasn't really a separate job for a UI/UX/Usability specialist. But after a few decades you'd think they'd consider hiring one.
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The Mac has slid downhill in the last few years. Overall I don't think Apple likes Macs very much anymore, they get treated as solely a development platform for iOS.
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Printer management in all Windows versions have been abhorrent.
Just an excuse (Score:2)
This is just an excuse to reset the default browser to Edge.
âoeWe changed how it works so we need to reset all the settingsâ
Iâ(TM)d expect this to happen every so often to keep the usage stats on Edge artificially high.
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iPhone
Settings > General > Keyboards > Smart Punctuation - Turn it off.
Need better browser co-existence (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why the hell would you even need that?
Windows SHOULD just open every damn link that points to a website in my currently set default web browser, whatever the hell it happens to be. I have a default browser set for a damn reason, I want to use THAT browser for anything to do with the web!
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I don't think I need it but it would be convenient. I use Firefox with noScript and Chrome naked. I generally browse with Firefox but noScript sometimes becomes a royal pain so I then fire up Chrome. If I could right-click on a link to select the browser I wanted used, I'd have less clicks to make.
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It's what I do at home. Chrome is the "unsecure" browser, required to use many enterprise apps that refuse to work if any script is blocked. At work I use Edge as the unsecure browser, mostly trying it out for a bit, but now too lazy to migrate back to Chrome. I tried the Edge at home with W11 but after awhile it got so obnoxious with ads, ads, ads, ads, ads, ads, ads, bacon, eggs, and ads. Even after going through all the settings, and at a point where I thought the ads were gone, then one update later
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What? Why! What links are you talking about, are you talking about within a browser you want to open another browser? Are you high?
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Because if you are a web developer you might want to see what your page(s) look like in different browsers?
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principled (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft and principled in the same sentence,
spare us.
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Their principles have always been 1) money 2) power 3) backstabbing. They have been very principled about that.
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Microsoft and principled in the same sentence,
spare us.
They are principled! Their principles just don't align with yours.
Requirement (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Microsoft,
this is the most important part of setting file associations: When I manually associate a file extension with an app, don't change that setting. Ever. No, I don't want your crappy Paint/Photos/whatever it's called this week to hijack my images every time there's a Windows update. I have a perfectly good program installed for that. No, I don't want to hear about "new features" either. It could be God's gift to image editing, I don't care.
Now they could also... (Score:2)
...fix the broken "New... (choose filetype)" system to work.
I mean, I don't want most of the items created there, and I want to add my own programs formats to the list, but it's impossible and doesn't work as intended.
They created the problem. (Score:2)
Physician heal thyself.
default apps is a clusterfck (Score:2)
I just spent an entire day fixing how email gets invoked.
The root of their problem is that they only show the user the "friendly name" of the app, but when two or more apps have the same "friendly name" you are screwed because you can't tell them apart, for example if you have two different versions of the same app. Then they added a hash value so you can't actually fix it in the registry.
Microsoft Edge (Score:1)