Comment on Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 week agoIn every version of Windows up until now which has contained a taskbar and start menu, as far back as Windows 95. Not just Windows 10.
Sadly not true. Microsoft removed the Start button in a version of Windows before. It was in Windows 8 (and Windows Server 2012 for some godforsaken reason) with the cursed “metro” interface. MS did it for the same stupid reason they’re citing here “tablet and touchscreen users”. The uproar caused MS to release Windows 8.1 a year later where they returned the Start button.
Sadly not true. Microsoft removed the Start button in a version of Windows before
They didn’t say that every version of windows since then had a start button
First of all they only talked about the start menu, which was still part of 8, even if it was annoying and full-screen. And second they only said that every Windows version that had that allowed you to move the taskbar around. Not that every Windows version so far had it.
The also killed their UI performance previously when Vista first launched. Remember Aero?
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
Windows 8 and metro were not so bad compared to what’s happening now. They at least had a consistent picture in mind. I liked those things even if I wouldn’t use them (moved firmly to Linux by then).
My own humble opinion is that Windows in all its parts (perhaps except NT and basic layers) is as a project too much legacy. Simply existed too long with backwards support for various versions of involved libraries, with MS carrying the burden of maintaining old versions (while applications developers could package them similarly to how they package patched versions). Many tools to do the same thing.
They should put all that on life support, installable separately, and make a clean set of libraries and tools that forms their new normal desktop installation. Preferably tabula rasa, no compromises.
A file manager, a configuration manager, a set of desktop widgets. It’ll take them much less effort and time to just write a new set of tools.
A normal configuration manager supporting all that it should is the hardest thing. But it’ll also be the killer feature, imagine one UI to configure everything in a Windows installation, it’d be as cool as YaST2 in OpenSUSE or drakconf. IIRC, their system configuration tools for Windows 98 were a bit more user-friendly than NT-inherited for 2000 and XP, and haven’t (the old ones) improved much since then ; they can fix that.
That means dropping backwards compatibility for such a clean installation - well, who wants to run old applications, will run them in, sigh, that installable compatibility environment (might be cut down somehow).
I’m almost certain that’ll be both cheaper and more popular among users than what they are doing.