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by zokier 1104 days ago
Search as the primary interaction method instead of menus and icons is pretty dramatic shift though; compare vscode command palette to traditional vs, or windows 7 and later start menu to its predecessors. Another thing, especially on Windows, is the de-emphasis or straight out removal of menu bars, once staple of desktop interfaces. As a more generic trend, I think modal dialogs with forms were far more common interaction pattern back in the day than these days.
3 comments

> the de-emphasis or straight out removal of menu bars

This change irks me quite a lot. Hamburger menus are terrible and while command palettes are nice, they aren't available everywhere, and so on Windows and Linux you end up with a lot of software not having any kind of index of its functionality and burying functions in dialog tunnels.

Macs have the best of both worlds: consistent menu bars with built-in function search.
> Search as the primary interaction method

Thanks, I hate it. Search is terrible for browsing/discovery, in spite of many people liking it.

The Mac OS menubar search actually opens the relevant menus and submenus and puts a big floating indicator on the result. It does teach rather than simply surfacing the result.
Personally I love it, but I love it a lot more paired with a robust system for browsing.