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Comment by fbelzile | Hacker News Reader

> Make the Start Menu Full-Screen

I'm surprised by this one. I couldn't stand Windows 8 because of the full screen start menu. Maybe it was because it was too animated. But I think it was more because I didn't like getting kicked out from my desktop and losing context of what I was doing.

I much prefer pressing the Windows key and typing the first few letters of the app I want. Seeing a full screen of apps is way too distracting to me, especially with live tiles.

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The problem I had with the Windows 8 full screen start menu was that it was a disorganized cluttered mess of nearly indecipherable navigation that was so aggressively altered of an experience and change from prior versions. I hated having to open applications from it. I still hate the Vista+ version of the start menu as well, because it turned a manageable fan-out of applications I could just edit into sub-categories into a compact vomit of every application in a list, and Windows 10 only improved it by making it more presentable with spacing and abundant size on screen. The one good thing is that I can just tap the Win key and type what I'm looking for and hit enter, which is almost always faster than trying to navigate it via mouse. I just don't care for the pinned tiles, I don't know if it's still a thing, but major updates were loading tons of useless icons and stupid junk I didn't want there and it was always a fight to reclaim it, so I just opted to get rid of it. I want it to just do its job and be a location to open things, not tell me the weather and stock market info.

That one surprised me too. Lukas is usually pretty insightful on UI/UX issues, but I couldn't disagree more with him here. Interface behaviors that temporarily take over the whole screen, or large parts of it, leave me disoriented and distracted.

The "File" menu in recent versions of Microsoft Office for Windows has the same problem. It takes over the whole window, and after I'm finished doing whatever I was doing from that menu, it sometimes takes 10-20 seconds for me to reorient myself... where was I? What was I working on?

The default behavior of "Aero Peek" on Windows has the same issue too. At least I'm glad they reversed the full-screen-by-default Start menu after Windows 8.

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