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Comment by WCityMike | Hacker News Reader

I'd be curious as to your reaction to Ars Technica's review, in which they complained about what they perceived as a "debilitating" Start Menu issue: "This database is (inexplicably) maintained by a system service running as the super-privileged SYSTEM identity. And at the time of writing, this database has the oh-so convenient feature of being limited to around 500 entries. [...] The All apps view didn't show all my programs. This would be tolerable if that's all that happened [...] Except that searching breaks, too. For search-to-start apps, Windows appears to use the same database. [...] if you reduce the number of apps to below 500 or so, it doesn't fix anything. There's no easy way to make it re-read all the short cuts."

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I have observed the same issue over the past few months. It's a dealbreaker of a problem: instead of running the application you asked for, more often than not you are directed to the application's website.

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.

I'm a Microsoft fan and I love Windows, but this is the worst Windows yet in my opinion because they removed features and useful screens just to replace them with bland UWP style screens that don't have half as much functionality.

- 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.

>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.

Because middle-click on taskbar button opens new window/instance of application.

It doesn't do anything in Windows 10. (Perhaps, just when taskbar items are ungrouped, but I'm not sure.)

That is strange. It works for me both with conventional (just checked FireFox 39, Opera 12, Visual Studio 2015, Notepad) and WinRT (Calculator) applications.

It turns out that I had all Settings or Control Panel type windows open when I tried that last time. Those windows don't have a new-window function.

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...

Maybe I need to check again. In any case, closing a window via middle-click would make so much more sense IMO.

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