[matsemann]

> W11 taskbar is missing several key pieces of functionality which have incentivised new users to get into Feedback Hub and cast votes. By far the biggest and most controversial submission is about having multiple documents open in the same app.

Actually the same reason for me to give feedback during W11 beta. Liked the beta as it gave me access to WSLg, but the productivity loss of the taskbar being useless made me roll back to Win10 last week. "Just give it time", even 6 months and I still missed the taskbar actually functioning. Same reason I gave up my Mac (or, one of them).

[ptx]

It's different (IMHO better) on Mac, even though it looks superficially similar.

On Mac, there is conceptually a two-level hierarchy of apps and windows. Every app maintains its own stack of windows. You can switch between apps with a single click (or keyboard command) and then switch between windows in that app's window stack if you want to bring a different one to the top. So a single click och keypress lets you switch between any pair of windows that are topmost in their respective apps. (There is also a keyboard shortcut to switch windows within an app.)

On Windows, you can't switch to apps (only to windows) but the windows are grouped by app into a hierarchical menu, so every time you switch window from the taskbar it takes two clicks and you are forced to hunt through a list of thumbnails.

[politician]

You sound like you know what you’re talking about, so perhaps you could explain something that I just can’t figure out.

I use multiple desktops and run almost every app in full screen. Oftentimes when I focus a window on a secondary desktop that isn’t fullscreen (like a Finder window), then click on the Dock icon of a full screen app, MacOS will focus the primary desktop instead of the desktop with the full screen app.

Do you ever experience this behavior? Is there a better way to switch between apps?

[Tempest1981]

Third-party util: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

[ptx]

The last version I used was 10.4, which didn't have full screen apps, so I don't know. Sorry.

[zamalek]

> Mac

We have to use Macs at my new job, for compliance reasons. What a shitshow of UX. How on earth is anyone supposed to know to use snowflake-click to switch between app instances? That isn't "strictly [better] than Win 11" (per the article), because at least the method in Win 11 is discoverable (there's also the well behaving alt+tab, and win-number). You have to use snowflake-C + snowflake-V, unlike every other OS in existence. This not only screws with muscle memory, but it's genuinely uncomfortable for such a common action (especially on their keyboard).

Windows 10 was the peak. After that, Microsoft seems to have joined Apple's race to the bottom. The Linux desktop is the last bastion of sanity.

[nitrogen]

MacOS has a very powerful built-in shortcut changing system that appears to date all the way back to NextStep based on some of the names of prefs and plists to change.

But, every Electron app and productivity website hard-codes the old Mac shortcuts based on naive platform detection instead of using native OS inputs, so the muscle memory conflict is even worse.

To anyone who just "doesn't get" this complaint, which is a lot of people I have met, it's like riding a bike your whole life to the point of being able to do downhill mountain terrain races, and then switching to a bike with the steering reversed, while wearing image distorting glasses. Except it's worse, because it feels more like someone chopped off your fingers and reattached them in random places.

It is literally nauseating, because when you are so deeply familiar with a complex tool it becomes an extension of your proprioception, and the tool misbehaving feels like you've been poisoned.

[rbreaves]

I agree with nitrogen. And why would I want the OS level copy/paste to conflict with my terminal commands? Zamalek I think you are not realizing how much worse of a UX that would be when the terminal wants to use Ctrl & the GUI apps can use "snowflake" as you put it lol. Separates out the duties perfectly well.

Also to free up Win key combos more you can either disable it entirely via regedit, which I do not recommend - or explicitly disable certain letters individually by putting them into a string in regedit. This then frees it up for better remapping under any remapper, including mine kinto.sh.

``` Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] "DisabledHotkeys"="B"

``` restart explorer.

[zamalek]

I did know about this, but I can't get any terminal to respect the modifier key switch (including Apple's own). The modifier key confusion is now following me into Windows and Linux. I deeply hate MacOS.

[oblio]

Wait, that doesn't sound right. You can't have multiple Word documents open at the same time in Windows 11?

[premun]

You can, but there is just one icon to represent the group of windows of that given app. It's visually hard to tell when there's more than one and impossible to tell how many (there is a little border suggesting there's more).

But it gets worse. If you have only 1 window with some app open (browser, terminal..), and this window has two tabs inside, clicking on the taskbar icon representing this window won't bring the window up. It will first bring up these small previews above the taskbar for every tab that you then have to click again (pick any) and then finally you get the window brought up. This is horrible because when you have tabs side by side in the window (terminal example), it doesn't matter which tab you choose as the same window pops up showing both tabs anyway. However you have to click twice (or hover for a bit to get the previews and then click again).

Congratulations to "Windows" version where switching "windows" is painful.

FWIW, I'm a Microsoft employee (not in Windows org) and I complain about "never combine" in any feedback forms we get. Maybe it will make a difference somewhere. (opinions are my own)

[rjbwork]

YIKES! This is literally the one and only setting I change right when I install Windows. I'm glad I found out it's totally unsupported before I went and took the plunge on 11. I guess I'll either skip 11 or wait for the update that fixes some of this jank.

[cjbgkagh]

The new design philosophy is ‘more familiar to on those unfamiliar with Windows’ I.e. Apple users. It also means they’re not interested in hearing how it used to work as you’re the exact opposite of who they’re trying to target.

[temac]

> The new design philosophy is ‘more familiar to on those unfamiliar with Windows’ I.e. Apple users.

If they really wanted to that then:

* too bad they only copied one superficial aspect without the others needed for it to make sense

* there is actually no reason to remove the option for the sane behavior, only the default has to be kind of Mac like

[s-lambert]

This sounds similar to the behaviour of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 (which always felt weird). If you have two tabs open in IE, they appear as two separate windows when clicking the icon in the taskbar. Edge behaves as expected where two tabs -> one window -> one click but it seems like they just regressed as a whole for Windows 11.

[jodrellblank]

Edge on Windows 10 shows up once per window in the taskbar, but once per tab in the Alt-Tab switcher.

[iamevn]

Probably referring to this behavior from TFA:

> Previously you could choose to “never combine” apps so you had one-click access to each document. Now you are required to use two mouse actions to open each.

If you have "foo.txt" and "bar.txt" open in, say, notepad, you get one notepad icon on your taskbar that you click on once to open the list of windows and then once more to actually switch. Previously you could tell windows to never combine the taskbar icons so you'd have two separate icons you could change to in one click.

[TowerTall]

In windows 10, in a multimonitor setup with "never combined" enabled. If foo.txt is on the left monitor and bar.txt is on the right, the two icons in the taskbar almost always has opposite sort order compared to the the monitor layout.

Clicking the left icon bring up the document on the right monitor and clicking the icon to the right brings up the document on the left. You very often end up picking the wrong document and must do over. That pretty annoying.

[neogodless]

Haven't seen this, perhaps because there's a setting in 10 to only show icons on the taskbar where the item is open, which I enable.

[Someone1234]

You can in "applications" you cannot in "apps." For example there's no way of opening multiple Settings windows and Teams is still extremely limited.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

I don’t think you can have multiple excel documents open with the same file name, that’s been around for decades if I remember correctly.

[cataphract]

Can't you replace the desktop environment anymore? I remember there used to be explorer replacements and Microsoft even told you how to go back to progman.exe.

[n8cpdx]

As of Windows 10, UWP apps aren’t usable without explorer.exe actively running; window contents don’t update to match frame size changes. So the answer is surprisingly kind of no, unless you want to commit to never using “modern” apps, or manually opening file explorer every time you do.

Of course some would say that not being able to use UWP apps is an enhancement, not a bug.