In Win98 we were able to put the taskbar anywhere natively and even could split those quick launch toolbars out of it and put it on another side by itself. I can’t believe MS is consrantly removing features. I’m a Linux user for decades now, but I still also use Windows at work and it’s always bothered me MS re-invents the wheel so often and every time the wheel looks a bit more like a rectangle.
Comment on Microsoft is blocking Windows Customization Tools
randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I really hate having the taskbar permanently affixed to the bottom of my screen. I’ve had it on the left side for decades now. They are really throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Someone at Microsoft “Customization is the enemy of progress!”
lurch@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
The taskbar was movable since it was first introduced in Win95. I’ve always had a top taskbar, and will continue to do so in Linux.
TonyOstrich@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I have been missing the ability to split the quick launch and dock it since XP was the last time you could. I had a dedicated auto hiding bar on the right where I put shortcuts to all of my most used folders and applications. I have looked for solutions that brought that functionality back off and on, but never found anything.
Most things are close, but not quite right, and/or very “bloated” (for what I want it to do, not necessarily for what it was designed to do). It’s so dumb.
Pyrarrows@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Just a slight correction, Vista was the last time you could split toolbars off of the taskbar like that, its taskbar was basically the same as XP still. The redesign in 7 was when we lost that ability.
Will say the docked toolbars did look significantly worse in vista as they all got an wide aero border
TonyOstrich@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Huh, thinking about it I’m not sure if I ever really ran Vista on my main desktop at home, so that would make sense. I think I went from my roided out XP x64 image to win 7 despite using Vista quite a bit when working on customer’s PCs. Thanks for the correction, cheers.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Why? Why even fucking do this? What do they get? And why is their default ux so aggressively terrible?
twack@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They want you to use the search instead of a functional interface. That’s why they keep making the interface worse.
It let’s them spy on you through bing, allows them to fill the results with ads, and let’s them hide system applications unless you know exactly how to find them.
Its also them gearing up towards funneling the entire UX through copilot for largely the same reasons.
The entire goal is to flip the operating system from the slave of the user to the master of the content.
blurg@lemmy.world 2 months ago
As to how rationales go, this is the clearest.
I hate it.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Yeah that sounds probable, and I’m worried what happens to all the data on windows machines when they do.
AdamBomb@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Almost plausible, except their search doesn’t fucking work either. I have repeatedly had the experience of typing the exact name of a program I know I have installed only for it not to appear in the incremental results. Sometimes programs will appear if you type less than the full name but then disappear if you dare type all of it. Sometimes the only way for me to find programs I want is to use an alternative launcher like the one in PowerToys. The last time start menu search actually worked was Windows 8.1. I fucking hate it, and it has driven me to make the leap to Linux for my personal computer, I am loving it so far.
twack@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s… Exactly what I was talking about. Master of the content.
I am fully aware that the windows search hides things that you are actually searching for. Particularly if they are system preference apps.
Also, I bailed as well. I use windows for work and school, otherwise I’m on linux.
intro@programming.dev 2 months ago
Oh God, I wish that you are wrong! Because if you’re right, that answer is horrifying!
PervServer@lemmynsfw.com 2 months ago
Hmmm, maybe Windows hired some of the GNOME developers
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Not even gnome is this fucking awful.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Gnome is nothing like Windows. I honestly can’t think of a DE further away from how windows works than Gnome lol
kurcatovium@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Not the person you replied to, but I think I get his meaning.
Windows/MS obviously has strong opinion on how the desktop should look like and behave and they’re shoveling it to the user hard. Gnome tends to do the same thing, although the UI/UX is completely different. Yet the similarity is in the forceful pushing said concept to the user whether user likes it or not.
Sure there are plugins for gnome so you can customize it a lot after all, but it requires some tinkering and your regular not tech savvy user won’t ever find a way to do so.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The difference being that people go out of their way to use Gnome. People opt in to the developers vision because they see it as a good one.
Windows isn’t like that at all.
timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
It is. People who shit on gnome are insufferable. Just use your other de and stfu.
JTskulk@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Gnome’s demented ideas make it into apps I run in KDE. I don’t need buttons, drop-down menus, and text input fields in my title bar lol. I’m lookin at you, LACT.
Toes@ani.social 2 months ago
Really, did they actually take that feature away. Every executive to touch windows 11 needs fired.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 2 months ago
We just need to stop using this garbage. Its not going to get better. Migrate to Linux and hope for support.
nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de 2 months ago
Same. Not being able to move the taskbar, alongside all the other downgrades to it and the start menu is what got me to check out Linux as a desktop OS for real, and not just out of curiosity. So far, I don’t see going back.
And I was even one of the few dozen people who loved Win8. At least there the points that got criticized were due to sweeping and bold changes. Win11 on the other hand feels like the same as 10 but with arbitrary features removed in the core part of the OS.
tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net 2 months ago
I’ve had it up top for years. Windows 11 is unusable in the current state. The new shell is utter garbage. And they messed up the control panel even more than I thourght possible.
HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m on 10 and been a top taskbar guy for rear. Are you Saying 11 forces you to have taskbar only on bottom?
randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Correct
HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Welp fuck. Guess I’ll start looking at Linux but every company I’ve worked for in the past 10 years is ALL Microsoft all the way
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Wine does a Lotta shit. I know I have an NTFS drive running on my debian-family machine.