Why the Windows 7 Start Menu is Going Out of Fashion

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I really loved Windows XP style Start Menu, please bring that back! The reason Start Menu is not popular in Windows 7 is because you always have to go through "All Program" to get to your stuff - an unnecessary and frustrating step...
 

torque79

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pinned to the taskbar? huh? do they mean the quickstart icons? or do they mean making a folder with link shortcuts in it and making a new toolbar pointing to that folder (which I'm still doing with windows XP)?

yeah it's more convenient to use taskbar and desktop icons for frequently accessed programs, but the start menu is still useful for infrequently used programs.

I'm worried all this focus on "apps" will have huge icons all over the place instead of allowing a clean look.
 
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Out of curiosity, how could they possibly get accurate statistics on these things without invasively tracking what you do on your computer?
 

dirgle

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I've always liked to have a clean barren desktop(some say a waste of screen real estate). Auto hide the task bar and make the recycle bin disappear. So the start menu and windows+E button always get a lot of use. So I would miss the start menu, but if it was replaced by an app drawer like in Android or OSX I could learn to live with it.
 

alextheblue

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[citation][nom]jimsocks[/nom]i still keep little used programs on the start menu to keep my screen from being cluttered with icons[/citation]
Right. You'll still be able to do that with the "Start screen", though. In fact realistically in a lot of cases (especially touchscreen mobile devices) you could drop explorer and just use Metro - put your most common apps up front, and the rest are tucked away but still very easy to get to. It's not for everyone, though, and that's why Win8 has both interfaces.
 

Anomalyx

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Yet what they fail to see is that the first graph shows that more than half of users pin items to the Start Menu...
Removing the Start Menu will guarantee that I will not buy.
I like my desktop clean, and only my 2 or 3 most used programs pinned to taskbar. Don't clutter it up by removing the start menu.
 

ravewulf

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I have a feeling the decrease in using the "Documents," "Pictures," etc links on the start menu was at least partly due to them sending you to the "Libraries" instead of your actual "Documents" and "Pictures" folders. Don't get me wrong, libraries are useful, but when I see my user tile followed by my user folder I expect that the "Documents" and "Pictures" will also take me to the real folders, not "Libraries."
 

socalboomer

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[citation][nom]torque79[/nom]pinned to the taskbar? huh? do they mean the quickstart icons? or do they mean making a folder with link shortcuts in it and making a new toolbar pointing to that folder (which I'm still doing with windows XP)?yeah it's more convenient to use taskbar and desktop icons for frequently accessed programs, but the start menu is still useful for infrequently used programs.I'm worried all this focus on "apps" will have huge icons all over the place instead of allowing a clean look.[/citation]

No, they mean Pinned to the Taskbar - which is exceptionally easy with Win7 and a step beyond what was in XP's Quick Launch icons.

With a Pinned app, I can pin quite a bit more than just the application; I can pin its status so if it's an RDP window, I can pin that server and have a stack of servers so when I right-click on that Pinned App, I get a choice of 7 (that I have pinned). Granted, you can do that with XP, but it's far more laborious and you can't stack them. . .

That's just one example - honestly, it's really nice.

On the other hand, if we could go back to XP's side-expanding Start Menu, I'd be happier! The reason I don't go with Win7's menu (which MS doesn't seem to get) is because it expands vertically which is not very conducive to work. . . it's clunky. . .
 
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Win7 start button usage is down, because it's not as usable as XP's.
 

Netherscourge

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I'd rather do a MacOS/iOS combo type of interface:


1. Have Buttons/Widgets/Shortcuts, etc... scattered/arranged on the desktop for instant access.

2. Have a horizontal scroll bar along the bottom with less-used features like the control panels, settings, configurations, etc...

3. Along the top, have browser-like tabs for each open program "window" that you can jump around to.


That's waht I want to see in Windows 8.

Tree-style menus are pretty much obsolete. I don't like the TILE stuff Windows 8 seems to be pushing though - seems like a big messy collage.
 
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Although a big fan of the desktop I think we need to remember that windows was based on a "work" environment (thus "desktop" and “folders”). Now that computers are moving more to the "home" environment (and more importantly developers are realizing this). I don't think anyone wants a system they use at "home" to work like their "work" system (task oriented) instead, visual cues that are emotional, social and fun oriented. So instead of “desktops”, “folders” and “project” we will see things like “home”, “family and friends” and “stuff to do”.
 

mrmaia

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Microsoft is following Apple's tendency of favoring looks over using ease. For me XP's start menu is the best way to keep your stuff organized, much better than Win7's quick launch. If Windows takes the start menu out I'll reverse back to XP.
 

Specter0420

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I hope they don't remove the "press windows key/type a few letters/press enter" shortcut! I also hope they do something with kinect and maybe some software to make motion tracking out of a few cheap webcams. I don't like fingerprints.
 

Prey

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If they're going the apple direction I'll keep a windows box for gaming and use Debian for everything else, I should probably just do that anyway
 
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@torque79

i find for the infrequent used items smart search is awesome, between pinned to taskbar and smart search i have never found the need to hunt into the start menu

i hope they will replicate some functionality of pinned to taskbar in the metro tiles, pinned item quicklist has been a god send

smart search is still present in win8 albeit it slightly more laborious (winkey + W or Q key depending which context your searching)
 

PhoneyVirus

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The menu feels cramped relative to available screen real estate when you try to see and navigate the full catalog of your programs.

Make Icons Smaller and Use Quick Launch Problem Solved Next...

Search doesn’t have the space it deserves to quickly show you rich results across all sources of information, especially on larger screens.

Press F3 Next...

Icons and shortcuts are static and don’t leverage more of the pixels we see in modern graphical interfaces to surface connected scenarios.

Create better icons not 256 x 256 again Problem Solved.

 

ravewulf

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Anyone else get the feeling that Microsoft's PR team has a hand in a lot of these stories about the new Windows 8 interface changes? I've liked/been neutral towards Microsoft for ages, but this stuff has raised my doubts.
 

utgardaloki

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Remember what Windows 95 was all about? Besides a whole new platform, it also brought us the Start menu, which was big enough to get its own Rolling Stones theme song.

If I remember correctly MS sought to use "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" as a way to refer to win 95 as a whole but REM rejected. MS got "start me up" instead and had it be all about the start menu.
 
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This is nothing else than Microsoft wanting the same UI to start things on a desktop, a tablet and a mobile phone.

OK, the icon mosaic is nice on a phone, on which there are only a "few" heavily used apps, and it's not a pain to slide the mosaic with your fingers on the screen. That's definitelu not the same story when a larger display is being used, I don't want to have a big mosaic of big icons, or even worse a huge mosaic of small icons.

So to me, this article seems to be a brain washing tactic from Microsoft ....
 
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