[_a1_]

> When I hit the start menu, it’s because I want to launch an application. I don’t need to see the rest of the desktop. So why is the Start menu by default only occupying a small portion of the screen, and wasting the remaining space?

Hilarious.

I mean, I fully agree with the author on that. But since the author is not tied to a Windows ecosystem, he doesn't know that a full-screen start menu actually happened on Windows 8, and it was nearly boycotted by Windows userbase because of the fact that it occupies full screen space. Users demanded to have a Windows95-style start menu, and MS had to redesign it.

Why it's so important for Windows users to have a Windows95-style menu, is beyond me.

There you have it :D

[hadrien01]

He does, he links to the following footnote: "Windows 8 was the best version of Windows. And that’s just a fact."

[_a1_]

You're right, I missed that.

[CivBase]

I run many applications on my computer at once and I often find myself opening the start menu to launch an application while keeping an eye on another window in the background. The hierarchical organization and text-with-icons style of the classic start menu also feels less overwhelming to me than the flat organization and icons-with-text style of the Windows 8 menu.

But I also think these are minor issues and the backlash against the menu in Windows 8 was over-the-top. At the end of the day, I think the real reason people were mad is that it just looked very different from previous menus, which made casual users uncomfortable. Which is kind of funny seeing as it's very similar to the app menus used by macOS, iOS, and Android.

[benplumley]

My complaint with the Windows 8 start menu wasn't that it took up the whole screen, it was that it took up the whole screen to show _the same number of items_ or fewer than the 95-style start menu. And half of them were ads.

A full-screen start menu with the same information density as the 95-style start menu, possibly with a pane for programs and a pane for explorer, is something I'd happily try out.

[hulitu]

> Why it's so important for Windows users to have a Windows95-style menu, is beyond me.

Because there is no other mechanism to start an installed program except maybe by navigating with windows explorer and double clicking the exe or typing the full path in cmd.exe.

[WorldMaker]

1) Add shortcuts to the Desktop [1] (since 95)

2) Win+R Run dialog [2] (since 95)

3) Pin to the Taskbar [3] (since Vista)

4) Windows key and type [4] (since Vista)

5) PowerToys Run (new; optional addon from GitHub Microsoft/PowerToys; mentioned in article), and similar tools from third party vendors

[1] So many Installers since '95 still do this by default. I've seen so many Windows users that that's how they launch everything, from a super cluttered Desktop that constantly rearrange. It's partly why I turn off the Desktop entirely, as I personally don't have an interest in managing that cluttered mess.

[2] Not something I'd recommend today, but a lot of people have ingrained muscle memory going all the way back to '95. It has an interesting search heuristic and you don't always need to type a full path. Plus it has autocomplete when you do need to type a full path.

[3] I keep a lot of important things pinned. Pins are also great because they give you automatic global shortcuts for free. Win+{N} where N is between 1 and 9 (inc.) and is the number of the pin in taskbar order.

[4] Searches all installed apps, enter to launch. Arrow keys to navigate if multiple suggestions. Quick, fast, convenient.

Microsoft said when building Windows 8 most of their telemetry showed "no one" actually used the Start Menu to launch apps and people either fell into bucket [1] or bucket [3 + 4] (me), with a few stodgy outliers in the bucket [1 + 2] camp. The full screen Start Menu acts the way most Desktop-heavy users work (hiding all Windows until they could see the Desktop to launch their next app, whether by one of the Minimize All Windows shortcuts or the actual Win+D Desktop shortcut), and helped bring down the amount of auto-installed clutter for those of us in the [3 + 4] camp that didn't want to manage the Desktop as it has been since '95.

As a fun lesson in telemetry, because Vista and 7's telemetry for app launching "mechanism" was opt-in, apparently the people that actually used the Start Menu as a Menu mostly failed to ever opt-in. The vocal anger of that very crowd at Windows 8 is a large part of why Windows 10 moved to a more opt-out telemetry model to avoid the sorts of assumptions that happened in Windows 8. (The irony shouldn't be lost that many of the same people that hated Windows 8 for ignoring their use cases are the same that hate telemetry in general. It shouldn't be that shocking that Microsoft doesn't cater to your use cases if they can't gather telemetry to know that you exist. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

[dragonwriter]

> It shouldn't be that shocking that Microsoft doesn't cater to your use cases if they can't gather telemetry to know that you exist.

User research isn't limited to, and existed before, telemetry. Telemetry, if used, should be an additional channel of user research, not an excuse to be lazy.

[WorldMaker]

User Research isn't omniscient by any means and has the same opt-in biases. (More so, even, because most User Research wants to be done in lab environments and that raises the bar from "press check-box for passive data gathering" to "can physically get to lab for testing". Even the middle ground of "surveys" still has a time/attention/patience bar to hurdle that telemetry does not.)

Microsoft certainly used both Telemetry and lots of User Research in the Windows 8 development process, and clearly had many of the same blind spots in both. The point remains that opting into telemetry is still the lowest bar to hop as a user to getting your "voice" heard (as aggregate statistics).