I've been able to avoid this problem by replacing the start menu with Classic Start Menu, but that comes with its own set of issues (lag, funky focus interactions, and inability to launch some metro apps). So far, this is the only issue that has me thinking about downgrading.
- Start menu keyboard acceleration is poor. I used to be able to hit the Windows key and then just hit ENTER to run the first app on the Start screen. Now, you have to hit tab or use an arrow key before you can do anything.
- The Start screen/menu/whatever doesn't let you operate in bulk anymore. WTF? Now I have to click three times as much to disable live tiles for a bunch of apps.
- Why can I not middle-click task-bar items to close the app yet? This seems like an obvious feature since that's how you close tabs on a tabbed window. 7+ Taskbar Tweaker fixed this glaring omission in Windows 8, but it's not on 10 yet. (I don't combine taskbar items. I know you can click the preview window after waiting a second for it to show up, but that's too slow.)
- They removed titlebar colors from all Windows so now you can't even tell which window is active or where the titlebar can be dragged. (This is an anti-pattern obviously copied from OS X, but the reason that I don't use OS X is because I don't like most of Apple's design decisions either.)
- I can't stand all of the thick borders and focus lines in the Metro/UWP style apps. At least in Windows 8, I could avoid them most of the time but there are even more of these screens in Windows 10. Win32 apps are so much better looking than this.
In short, I'm uninstalling this and going back to Windows 8.1 Pro, which I actually liked because it was easy to avoid Metro.
Because middle-click on taskbar button opens new window/instance of application.
So, I think if we need a reason to change the functionality of middle-click on a taskbar-item, that's it. Every window should have a close-window function and there would be no confusion over what middle-click means.
(Then again, I guess the designer was probably trying to protect non-power users when they decided that. A close-window function is obviously a destructive act. But power-users are such a powerful group, so I think they need to cater to use a bit more by giving us the gosh-darn options that we want!)
EDIT: Also, I take it back. I'll keep it on this machine for now and see what happens...
- Do you have a strategy to allow users to modify the Start Menu directly (e.g. akin to a bookmark manager tool). As far as I can tell right click no longer works, so renaming a folder, creating a folder, moving icons, or similar is impossible. The only way to accomplish this now is you just need to know where the Start Menu's content is located on disk and go do it using File Explorer. Also the Startup folder is hidden.
- Why when I hit "All Apps" does it only use up 1/3 of the space for the app list? Why not have it expand out to a multi-column widget? Being able to see my pinned apps after I hit "All Apps" isn't useful.
2. I'm personally working on all apps list improvements. I don't know if I can share details yet until we push stuff out to Insiders.
One UI feature that makes dealing with the narrow list a little easier is the jump list that pops up when you click one of the letter headers. It's just one of these bad boys: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/window...
Edit: I wonder how long it will be until DirectUI is completely gone from the shell, or if that will ever happen.
Russian version shipped with the word "Создать" (literally "Create") as the translation for the "New" mark in the list of all applications, despite many heavily upvoted posts in the feedback app.
What happens when it automatically routed to the wrong team?
I'm confused why a promise Would be expected here. How do you envision a system for handling large amounts of public feedback working?
I did, and while UWP seems still a bit immature it sure is nice. Unfortunately I have a couple of existing and pretty huge WPF apps and it does not seem you can 'port' that to UWP in some way (except like rewriting all UI code - or am I missing something?) so I don't think I'm gonna switch anytime soon and I'm probably not alone?
WPF is still supported however, and recently got improvements in .Net 4.6. There are plans to allow WPF apps (and other Win32-based apps) to be published on the Windows Store, so you might not have to worry about porting, as long as you're happy just targeting PC users.
"Universal Windows Platform". Lets you target every Windows 10 device with a single app, from Raspberry Pi 2 to phone to PC's to Xbox One.
Apps are written in C++/C#/VB with XAML markup or JavaScript/HTML/CSS. Also FYI, it takes a minimal amount of work to repackage an existing web app as a UWP.
:->
The startmenu could have a more "responsive design", allowing one to resize it any size would be easy (not just a few predefined sizes that are supported in Win10). HTML would suite itself for the UI of Edge too, similar to Chrome, Firefox (Android), FirefoxOS, WebOS.
<Grid>
<TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center"/>
<\Grid>Given the choice, I'd choose XAML over HTML/CSS for app layout/design in a heartbeat.
I think it all goes back to what each language was designed for and people hacking things into HTML/CSS to get it do things it wasn't designed for.
It's not that kind of "responsive design" we know from HTML. The startmenu only snaps to at least three sizes (vertical) and doing so with little UX feedback animation. It could be done better even with XAML (and it would be trivial with CSS3), but it was probably a design choice - it's something for Raymond Chen to write about in ten years.
(And changing back from tablet-mode startmenu to desktop-mode startmenu is a bit hidden in the icon next to the clock and takes some time to locate the setting.)
So, who / what’s pushing this internally?
I personally love the concept. I spent some time on Windows Phone too and the live tiles were the best thing about the OS. Also, you can unpin all of them on windows 10 and resize the start menu to only keep the app list (but I have no idea would anyone would do that).
Tiles increase the space taken up by each item, which increases the likelihood of needing to scroll or page menu items, which is okay UX on mobile (though moreso on phones than tablets, IMO), but pretty bad on desktop (extra bad if it is side scrolling.)
OTOH, Tiles are a great UX for quick at-a-glance access to information and access to frequently used apps; sort of a dashboard interface. Its actually not a bad thing to have such a configurable dashboard, it just serves a completely different need than the pre-Win8 Start Menu, and doesn't make a good substitute for it. There's probably a good UX design possible for providing desktop and dashboard interfaces on the same device, I just don't think Microsoft has nailed that yet.
The 'real' advantage is displaying status information, but most applications like calculator / Photoshop / Skyrim don't have status information. Further many things like weather might seem like the current status are useful, but knowing the current temperature outside or a what the stock price was 15 minutes ago is generally fairly useless and wastes screen space.
Consider, the screen shots showing the current user's name. Unless I forgot my name I can't think why displaying it is helpful.
PS: Don't get me wrong having a sperate 'tile' menue that's differnt from the start menue like a personal home page might be useful. But, I suspect it would rarely be opened by most people.
So make them smaller, or remove the tiles you don't use often. Did they remove those options in 10?
>but most applications like calculator / Photoshop / Skyrim don't have status information.
So don't put them on your start page
>scrolling 3 pages to the right just to look at a list is annoying.
From what I've read, this isn't the intended use case. The idea is to set up the start page like, as you put it, a personal home page. That's what it's for. The all apps screen is the one with everything on it (extant 512 app limit bug notwithstanding).
>current temperature outside or a what the stock price was 15 minutes ago is generally fairly useless and wastes screen space.
>Unless I forgot my name I can't think why displaying it is helpful.
In any case it's no worse that the old start menus that did exactly the same thing.
Between icons on the desktop, pinned programs on the taskbar, pinned programs on the start page, the all programs page, and typing to search all programs when on the start page, you'd think everyone would be able to work out a balance that fits their usage pattern.
So don't put them on your start page. The point is fast access, anything getting in the way of that is a huge failure.
isn't the intended use case. Several MS videos show people scrolling though tiles on their phone so it is expected behavior. Even though paging allows for much faster access to large lists.
it's no worse Slower to use = worse.
In terms of empirical evidence, I watch people spend a lot more time using search with tiles so they are flat out slower.