How did that program manage to pin itself to my taskbar when I installed it? | Hacker News Reader

How did that program manage to pin itself to my taskbar when I installed it?

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31 pointsjonchang15 comments

The article links to his earlier discussion of notification icons. The "You have updates" balloon is notorious for giving little information about what to do next. I've received at least a dozen calls from my grandmother and aunt about this.

The only apps I'm aware of that did this to me are IE and the Windows Store whenever you do an update (8.0 to 8.1, not security updates of course). So the Windows folks are saying you shouldn't do this but they're the ones doing it?

> There is no real way of blocking this behavior other than giving guidance not to do that.

I was disappointed by that. It's a security problem. If protecting even taskbar app list is a hopeless case, how are we supposed to have trust in security of any other data?

I don't see how they could protect from this though. When you install something, you have no choice but to trust the application. If you give it elevated access, then you are trusting it even more and it can do pretty much anything it wants to. I guess it's mostly an issue with installing "ad-supported" games and programs though.

The only programs I know that pin themselves are Chrome and Firefox(?!). IMO all apps should have a pin to taskbar at the end of installation. I like them to be there, same as OSX.

IMO all apps should have a pin to taskbar at the end of installation.

Opinions differ :] Please, NO. I am the one deciding what my desktop looks like. After all I am the one who uses it. Just like I detest the installers which slam their shortcut on the desktop without permission, I feel the same towards those trying to do that to the taskbar. Even more so, as it has less room. Put yourself in the start menu without explicitely asking: ok, you have to put it somewhere to be discoverable on Windows.

Agreed, but i would appreciate the option, disabled by default.

You mean system-wide? That would be nifty - but probably hard to accomplish in a way that can never be circumvented.

Well, yeah, that would be nice, but I meant as a "standard" installer option, like the "Add to start menu" and "Create Desktop Icon" options.

I don't know. Doesn't OS X only keep apps in the Dock if they are (assuming bottom Dock):

* Dragged to the left from their original "spawn" position on the right.

* Explicitly set to "Keep in Dock" through the context menu.

Otherwise, the app will disappear from the Dock once it has quit.

The only app I know off the top of my head to install onto the Dock explicitly during installation is Microsoft Office.

Not including games and command line utilities, I probably have at least 40 different apps installed, many of which have multiple executables associated. It would be madness.

Am not a fan of OS X's dock, obscuring the difference between started and unstarted apps. But it doesn't even behave like you describe, you normally have to fish the icon out of that drawer. That's usually too tedious, so apps are generally started by searching - spotlight or Alfred. Smells like design failure to me though.

I have nothing pinned at all, and it would be crazy IMO to pin everything by default. I'd have to unpin every program I install. Isn't that what the start screen is for? Aren't pinned programs supposed to be the exception?

That would be madness, even "typical" users have more programs than could fit in the taskbar. You only want to pin your most important programs (the others can be launched by search), and it must be up to the user to decide which ones those are. (If you leave this to the application programmers, every application will declare itself super important.)

Oh God no. Definitely not. I hated installers that put icons in the Quick Launch toolbar without asking, but pinned icons are even worse since it's not always immediately clear which programs are running.

remember when every program on the planet added itself to quicklaunch?

microsoft wants your taskbar to be something you control. as a consequence most people dont know to pin things.

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