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Comment by millzlane | Hacker News Reader

Don't upgrade for the center taskbar. Use https://github.com/mdhiggins/CenterTaskbar instead.

Center taskbar seems like another one of those "looks cool, but is actually is degradation of usability" idea. If my icons are left-justified, then if I want to switch to e.g. IntelliJ (if for some reason I'm not alt-tabbing), my muscle memory remembers that it's the 8th or so icon from the left, so around pixel 400 from the left, and I can just move my mouse and my eyes towards that area. But with center taskbar, the location of that icon is variable depending on how many apps I have open, so I would be wasting more brain cycles having to search for it...

I don't get why designers want to redesign fundamental UI components every few years. It would be like a car company redesigning the steering wheel after decades of it being round (Austin-Morris tried that with the Allegro, and it didn't go so well).

I wrote a short "story" about this and automatic updates https://www.middleendian.com/furniture

If you force a team of talented people to go into perpetual “maintenance mode” for a product many of them will want to quit (understandably!).

At any rate, a new UI generates interest in an OS the way few other features will, so while it annoys old timers it has a clear marketing function too - see the ridiculous speed at which everything had to get a “dark mode” for their UI a few years ago as another example of this.

Agreed. The consistent muscle memory support for both the mouse and the keyboard shortcuts (Win 1,2,...,9,0), whether your regular programs are open or closed, is probably my favorite part of the Windows 7-10 UI.

Or TaskbarX: https://github.com/ChrisAnd1998/TaskbarX

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