Windows 11 Tests Taskbar Icons That Scale Up and Down Like On a Mac (theverge.com) 57
Microsoft is testing a new Windows 11 feature that resizes taskbar icons dynamically like on macOS, with options to shrink icons when the taskbar is full or keep them small at all times. The Verge reports: If you're on the beta, under Taskbar settings - Taskbar behaviors, you can now select options under Show smaller taskbar buttons: Always, Never, or When taskbar is full. The third option will scale down icons so that they all can fit and not get hidden away in a second menu. The behavior appears to be similar to macOS where icons on the dock get smaller as more applications or minimized windows are added. Microsoft is also testing an update to the Start menu. "Now, it has a larger layout that includes the ability to hide the recommended recent apps and can show all of your apps on the page," reports The Verge.
ok, but still no toolbar (Score:5, Insightful)
How about adding features that people want first? Who has requested this? You took away the ability to have a second row of icons on the taskbar and also the ability to have tool bars. These are very useful features that have existed for 25 years and for whatever reason you now think is useless.
Not everything needs to be added under menus upon menus. Adding 2-3 more clicks to get something done isn't productive. I'm not talking about just the taskbar here, but this seems to be the MS way. Add more red tape and hide things within menus upon menus to make them more difficult to find.
Ok, I'm done with my Windows 11 rant.
Re: ok, but still no toolbar (Score:3)
Microsoft just copies Apple now for the most useless features.
Looks fancy but decreases productivity.
Windows UI has gone downhill in every version since Windows 7.
Re: ok, but still no toolbar (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows 7 sucked ass unless you turned off all the bells and whistles and made it look like Windows 95.
I don't care. I've had Linux as my daily driver for close to 25 years and most of what I do I do in the terminal.
Now get off my lawn.
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Windows 2000 style, not Windows 95.
But they removed that option on later versions which really sucked, especially those borderless windows that have cause the closure of the wrong window way too many times with countless hours of work lost just by having to re-open the window that was improperly closed.
The "flat" style introduced is an UI that looks like Windows 2.0...
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Windows 7 sucked ass unless you turned off all the bells and whistles and made it look like Windows 95.
Even on my series of potatoes the eye candy of Windows 7 has never consumed appreciable resources (even on a single core atom netbook it's negligible) and 7 was hands down the most professional looking Windows of all time.
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Honestly, this is stealing app behavior from long ago, I've had to do SVG graphics (Scalable Vector Graphics) for years, lol. All the Apps I support have to use them, thanks ImageMagick.
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but this seems to be the MS way.
Actually this isn't the MS way, it's the widely expected industry way. The idea of putting every setting front and centre implies that every setting has equal importance and is equally sought after. Every additional piece of info on a screen is something you need to process even if to see if it is ignorable.
Windows 11 has what you want. It's called "God Mode". Google Windows 11 God Mode if you want every thing to be available to you front and centre in one big folder. For the rest of the world we not only a
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Interesting claim. But do you have anything to back it up? Like say terabytes of customer telemetry from millions of machines around the world?
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Bring back multi-line / columns task bar (Score:3)
Single is never going to be useful. I have too many programs or tabs open for the Win11 Taskbar, and it can't be expanded, unlike Win10. I always kept it to 2 linear at least, sometimes 3.
Shrinking the icons is only going to make it worse for me, due to macular degeneration.
This is an accessibility issue. UI/UX guys at MS need to get a clue.
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Mac user here... I don't use that scale up/down thing because I want to see the thing I'm aiming at. I've looked over enough people's shoulders waving their mouse up and down the task bar looking for whatever icon they want to know it's an anti-pattern to use the scaling thing.
Either have excellent eyesight and have small icons, or be like most people and use bigger icons. Not exactly rocket science, but apparently entirely beyond the UI/UX department at Microsoft (who seem to have too many people for the w
Seriously? (Score:1)
Why are we trying to mimic a platform that doesn't sell as well as Windows?
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Windows is Software.
The other platform is Hardware, coming with an OS, and software.
Let MS sell PCs/Laptops, then see how far they go ...
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I once bought a Mac and had to turn off taskbar icon scaling within the first hour. MacOS invokes amateur hour so many times it's laughable.
Some examples of things that Microsoft can copy from MacOS to make the user experience on par:
- minor updates that block the user and take over 30 minutes
- popups that stay in your face until you click that teeny tiny little x in the corner
- constants reminders to use their own cloud offerings for your documents
- scanning your hard drive for forbidden pictures or movies
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...that doesn't sell as well as Windows?
Very few people have Windows because they want Windows. They have it due to Microsoft's monopoly abuse dating as far back as the 1980s.
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While this is true, the Mac OS dock is poop.
NeXTStep had it down. Menu in the top right, buttons descending from it, the main function buttons are always in the same place and app icons appear in a row below that.
When OS X came out, they both completely ruined it and took away the ability to move it. Now you can configure it to any screen edge with the prefs, but you still can't put it where it belongs or turn off that zooming bullshit without plist editing AFAIK. (I haven't run Mac OS since it was still OS
or so they say (Score:2)
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"
(full quote: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness" - possibly Oscar Wide, but that's occasionally disputed)
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He might have quoted it from somewhere, but I am certain he said/wrote it.
Great (Score:2)
These are the "features" that are important, in the opinion of the "best" software companies.
Small wonder I moved away from those long time ago and won't look back.
Soo.. Cairo graphics? (Score:2)
I wrote my own icon scaler in Java in the 90's, for use in the browser. Not a new idea.
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And so has Windows. What makes you think the idea that they are adding scaling on one part of the OS means that they didn't have it invented in another before?
By the way Vista introduced this in its first Beta, 20 years ago.
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and the article.
Begone pedantic troll! You shall not pass!
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SGI had scalable vector graphics icons in the mid 90s.
I just want the quicklaunch bar back. (Score:2)
I am on Win10 and use quick launch. I read that it's gone in 11. Howabout bringing back things that are actually useful?
Oh, interesting focus on problems (Score:1)
Two days ago, the recent windows update was "forced" on me. Could not longer click: wait an hour.
Bonus point: the two keys for adjusting screen brightness work again. I mean: the keys always worked as "function keys", but I could not adjust the brightness, neither via keys, nor via settings in settings.
And now they make growing / resizing icons in the task bar?
Wow, since the update the task bar is not popping up anymore!!! I have to hit the windows key to make it pop up. How retarded is that?
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Two days ago, the recent windows update was "forced" on me. Could not longer click: wait an hour.
Bonus point: the two keys for adjusting screen brightness work again. I mean: the keys always worked as "function keys", but I could not adjust the brightness, neither via keys, nor via settings in settings.
And now they make growing / resizing icons in the task bar?
Wow, since the update the task bar is not popping up anymore!!! I have to hit the windows key to make it pop up. How retarded is that?
That's probably their solution to the "problem" of having the taskbar come up over your work for literally every stupid-ass Teams/Outlook/whatever notification instead of just popping the notification in the corner like a sane OS would, and then the taskbar remains there until you click out of whatever you're working in, go to the notifying app, and do whatever it is you have to do to pat it on the head and call it a good boy for annoying the shit out of you. I don't think Microsoft understands what auto-hi
Dumbass Microsoft New Hires (Score:5, Insightful)
Taskbar on the left of the screen please you idiots. When I have a dozen development apps opened I want to see the title bar names, not just fucking icons because sometimes I have multiple of the same app open doing different things.
Morons at Microsoft now.
Deprecating PowerShell in favor of retarded Python where white spaces matter. Everything is going GraphQL now also requiring non-defined json or yaml textual object structures.
Dumbassery of the highest degree.
Forcing new computers to use UEFI and TPM 2.0 for more DRM lockin.
ummm... (Score:3)
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WTF Microsoft?! Bring back the option to snap taskbar to other edges of the screen, please?
LOL, they literally can not. Due to organization structure and the way money is counted, it would cost millions of dollars to add that functionality into the newly written "taskbar". That feature is gone forever.
Bye bye.
How about quick launch plus readable taskbar on th (Score:2)
If you can read the title of the open task,
you can tell what you're doing.
If you have a quick launch, you can find what you are looking for every time.
If it is on the left, you don't have to scroll browser windows as much, and things just work better.
But hey, microsoft is down with making unusable garbage now.
Windows 95 osr2 with IE4 I think could do this. Win 98 SE could for sure... KDE4 could do even better than that and later KDE5 could too, KDE6 is not as good as 5 or 4 but blows away windows and mac.
I would be happy if they would fix the icons (Score:1)
Fire them (Score:2)
There are obviously many executives and decision makers at Microsoft who use Macs and want to turn Windows into a MacOS. They don't understand that their users use Windows because they don't want the Apple stuff.
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They don't understand that their users use Windows because they don't want the Apple stuff.
No one who has experience with a range of operating systems chooses to use Windows, they are forced to do so. Of course, most people don't actually have such experience, because they were forced to use Windows.
All replaced (Score:1)
M$ seems to completely ignore what people want.
Here's a crazy suggestion . . . (Score:3)
I wish they would stop trying to FORCE into Edge! (Score:1)
Why? (Score:3)
What purpose does this serve? It's nothing but another unnecessary annoyance. How about we stop touching things just because.
Here's an idea: fix the broken double-click problem. That is more important. At this point I've gotten used to clicking something once then hitting the Enter key to act as a double-click.
Here's an even better idea. Put copy/paste back on the right-click menu. Front and center, not buried in another sub-menu.
Where's DOGE when you need it to do something useful? There's a whole bunch of useless people at Microsoft who should be shown the door if this latest "upgrade" is all they have to do to justify their exitence.
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Here's an idea: fix the broken double-click problem.
How about double-click and drag? Office apps lag and fuck it up.
Re: Why? (Score:1)
âoefix the broken double-click problemâ
I was convinced I was doing something wrong, that Windows suddenly stopped allowing a slight movement of the cursor between clicks or something until I read your post.
or... just give us win 10 functionality? (Score:2)
They HAD a solution for too many buttons, the expandable taskbar. For some reason they killed it in win11 and have actively blocked utilities that have sought to restore it.
Windows 11 is the last version of windows... (Score:5, Insightful)
... for me.
I only use Windows at work because it's what they use. I just received a new computer Monday with Windows 11 because my old one couldn't be upgraded (ironically, I received the old one when they upgraded from 7 to 10 for the same reason.) This time it's taken me all week to get it configured into a somewhat usable state. I can't stand the tall task bar. It's strange that they want to remove "wasted" space in other areas where it's actually useful (like title bars that clearly delineate where to grab to move the window), while at the same time growing the taskbar to take nearly twice as much screen real estate as it did in 10, despite it working fine there.
I've already told the company that when they roll out windows 12 that will be my sign to retire. I'm not going through this again.
irrelevant - just replace the startmenu/taskbar (Score:1)
OK, let's get this out there... (Score:2)
I enjoy a 3440x1440 widescreen monitor. It's fabulous. It causes much trouble, and inspires much mischief.
Opening Word, or Excel, or even one of the innumerable Windows image manipulation programs, Windows and/or the app are compelled to open in a very wide window. Despite official Microsoft denials, this happens even if the document was last closed in a narrower window. Why? Because, according to Microsoft, if the screen is that wide, I MUST want to use a wide screen, and so I MUST want to use MORE screen
All terrible product managers (Score:2)
add features that no one asked for. It's a tech-world infection.
All I want is what I had (Score:1)
The start menu with sizeable tiles would be a nice feature to get back. That and the expandable start menu. It was so convenient. I could put all my apps on there and get to them easily. Now there are a limited number of spaces, and those groups where I have to click twice to get the program I want aren't great.
UI is not OS (Score:2)
The UI needs to be cut loose from the OS.
Microsofts Attacks on the Taskbar Continue (Score:2)
Wow such invention (Score:2)
I look forward to the eventual release of Win11 (Score:2)