[omnibrain]

The Start button is (or at least used to be) a Window. And in the first Release of they forgot to remove the window control menu - the thing that opens/used to open when you click the program icon on the top left corner. Obviously there was no program icon to click, but you could use a shortcut to open it. Then you could select "move" and move the start button on the task bar or even close it. After you closed it, it was gone and you had to kill explorer.exe via task manager and restart it, to get it back. I can't remember the shortcut, it must have been something like alt+-.

In older programs this menu is still around and you can still use it to close programs, like you did in Windows 3.1 days. Even doubleclicking the icon in the top left corner still works to close those programs.

[toast0]

> I can't remember the shortcut, it must have been something like alt+-.

It's alt+SPACE. Very handy if you manage to get a window off screen, you that menu almost always shows up on screen, and you can select Move (possibly by hitting m), and then move (or drag) your mouse and the window comes back.

[omnibrain]

> It's alt+SPACE.

Maybe, but I just tried it and it seems to open some type of search.

> Very handy if you manage to get a window off screen, you that menu almost always shows up on screen, and you can select Move (possibly by hitting m), and then move (or drag) your mouse and the window comes back.

I used to use it exactly for this, but it seems like they fixed something in the past 10 years, because that does no longer happen for me. I think the last time it happened was in the Windows 7 days. That's probably also why I forgot the shortcut.

I still use the double click in the top left corner to close windows, but they kill that for more and more programs. For some time it still worked for some programs with reduced chrome, like tabbed browsers, when I clicked on a few of the blank pixels in the top left corner.

[Stratoscope]

> > It's alt+SPACE.

> Maybe, but I just tried it and it seems to open some type of search.

That's because you installed PowerToys, and the PowerToys Run module takes over the Alt+Space key combo.

This really pissed me off the first time I wanted to use Alt+Space to rescue an offscreen window and I had no idea what this search box was.

It's a real problem with the kids who maintain Windows today and the "modern" Windows apps. They just don't know, and don't care, what the classical keyboard shortcuts are and how important they can be.

Here is one example of a GitHub issue that was closed as "wontfix":

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/13860

You can fix this by changing the "activation shortcut" for Run in the PowerToys Settings, or by disabling PowerToys Run entirely.

I changed it to Win+Alt+Space and now Alt+Space works like it always has.

Also, 'toast0' left out an important step in their description. You need to press Alt+Space, then M, and then any cursor key, and finally you can use the mouse to move the window.

[WorldMaker]

> It's a real problem with the kids who maintain Windows today and the "modern" Windows apps. They just don't know, and don't care, what the classical keyboard shortcuts are and how important they can be.

These days (since Windows Vista, hah) the easiest way to rescue an offscreen window is Win+Arrow (the "Aero Snap" keys). (It's also the easiest way to do most of the other old control menu things: Win+Up is Maximize/Restore and Win+Down is Minimize/Restore. The two lacking things are Move when you actually intend to keyboard move and Size for keyboard resizing, though both are less usual at modern resolutions than they used to be.)

If someone has installed PowerToys the likelihood they are using FancyZones increases and so too the likelihood they already use Win+Arrow shortcuts heavily (especially if they let FancyZones take over them for zones).

> Also, 'toast0' left out an important step in their description. You need to press Alt+Space, then M, and then any cursor key, and finally you can use the mouse to move the window.

You need to push a cursor key because Move was originally intended as an accessibility feature when you couldn't Move a window with the mouse (or needed more precision than your mouse supported) and needed to use the keyboard arrows. Also why Size exists in that old menu. If you want to talk about knowing the history of classical keyboard shortcuts, the use of that menu for keyboard accessibility to things instead of the mouse is an important part of why that menu existed in the first place (and part of why it feels so vestigial today because mice have improved so much since the early days of Windows and screen resolutions have grown so much since the early days of Windows that trying to precisely to-the-pixel move or resize windows with the keyboard today seems silly).

[toast0]

> You need to push a cursor key because Move was originally intended as an accessibility feature when you couldn't Move a window with the mouse (or needed more precision than your mouse supported) and needed to use the keyboard arrows.

I would say less accessibility, and more the mouse was optional with Windows before 95, so all features needed to be keyboard friendly. I think they became 'required' by spec in 95, but you could still do everything with a keyboard. Mousekeys was included in Win95 and is more of an accessibility feature.

[WorldMaker]

Yep, and Mousekeys still exists into Windows 11. It's a useful accessibility feature.

[ogurechny]

> trying to precisely to-the-pixel move or resize windows with the keyboard today seems silly

I've recently discovered that GNOME switches between fast and precise keyboard dragging with Ctrl, and snaps to window edges on Shift. See process_keyboard_move_grab():

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/blob/main/src/compos...

[silon42]

Try Shift+Esc, maybe that works.

[ale42]

I don't think Shift+Esc does anything on Windows. In Firefox it opens a "Process manager" but that's just inside the browser, nothing related to Windows.

[Dwedit]

The start button is still a window, but it's not a top-level window. It's a child window of the taskbar. And has been so since Windows 95.

[ankurdhama]

Not anymore. On Windows 11 you can use spy++ to check the taskbar window and it will show up a single window and everything inside it, start button or program buttons, all are not a window. This seems to be the case for any app that is using <whatever is the new windows app framework>.

[ale42]

As far as I remember, Alt+- opens the menu of an MDI child window. For the current window (which is generally more useful, MDI applications being very rare these days), it's Alt+Space as mentioned by several people.

[ankurdhama]

I still use the window menu shortcut Alt+space and then C to close the window, it is more easy to press compare to Alt+f4 (such a non-ergonomic key combination, compare to macOS cmd+w)

[WorldMaker]

Ctrl+Q works in most (though yes, certainly not consistently all) Windows applications. Cmd+Q is also what you'd use on macOS to quit an entire application (Cmd+W is close single window), so the cross-platform ergonomics/muscle memory are actually somewhat preserved. Most Windows applications that still use MDI for some reason or that have tabbed browsing interfaces (appropriately) generally use Ctrl+W for window or tab closing, respectively.

[barrkel]

Anything in Windows that could get keyboard focus basically had to be a window. If you could tab to it, window.