[hbn]

> In Windows 11, the taskbar lost some other quite popular features users enjoyed in Windows 10. For example, you can no longer move the taskbar to the top, right, or left.

I have a feeling this is gonna be the big issue for some people. I personally just leave it at the bottom, but there's something to be said that when you have a standard 16:9 monitor, it doesn't make sense to remove that space from the vertical axis when most content is already too wide for that aspect ratio.

[gknoy]

Agreed. Especially on a small screen like a laptop, being able to reclaim the dock space by positioning on the side is VERY useful.

It sounds like the most trivial concern, but this is absolutely the level of configuration that makes one contemplate shell or OS replacement.

[Slippery_John]

I've had the taskbar at the top of the screen for well over ten years. When I want to know the time I look in the top right corner, same as on my mac. Tray icons are also in that same corner, just like on mac. Sure mac dock can't be put up there, but I just use spotlight (as I use the start menu search on windows).

I'm planning on staying on windows 10 until they pry it from my cold, dead hands. I already had reservations before, but breaking my muscle memory like that is the last straw. Though I suppose I'll have to eventually update when software starts only working on it.

[zohch]

> I have a feeling this is gonna be the big issue for some people.

Some users will moan, maybe less than 0.001% will consider moving to a different OS, and things will just continue as it stands. MS knows they have a captive audience with Windows, so they don't have to care what the users want.

In areas where MS does not have a captive audience they are much more competitive and provide much better value.

[voisin]

I wonder why they removed the feature. Microsoft isn’t exactly known for cutting features to achieve a minimalist interface.

[foepys]

They probably rewrote the entire taskbar because reasons and when the deadline neared, they cut features.

I would not rule out the possibility that the team that rewrote the taskbar does not include a single person who wrote the original taskbar and now nobody knows how to get drag and drop to work reliably with all formats.

[chris_j]

I forget where I read it but I heard that this has been a big problem in Microsoft: it's politically easier for a team to get approval to write a whole new feature (to replace an existing one) than it is for an existing team to get approval to spend a significant amount of effort making big changes/improvements. I suppose it makes sense in a lot of ways to work like this but it can lead to situations where a new component doesn't do half the things that the old component used to do. I'd be interested to learn if that really is what happened here.

[ConceptJunkie]

Yes they are. So much of the flexibility of the desktop UI disappeared with Windows 8. It's literally less customizable than Windows 2 was.