News Windows 11 Preview Hands-On: Much Ado About Menus

[RodroX]

MS is and will try by all means to push cloud workflow, I don't think they really care much if its touchscreen, keyboard and mouse, or brain control.

Last year we contacted them to buy a around 2 hundred windows and office licences (among others) for our office and to renew the update contract we already had for a lot of licences. Instead they offered and insisted really hard to "upgrade" for free all of our licences and the ones we wanted to buy to be "online/cloud ready" with the chance to install them in "offline/standard" mode (sorry can't remember the right names of the products/services, I don't usually get involved on those business).

They just want everything in the cloud, and this is because you can charge and get payed every month, or atleast once a year, instead of just selling 1 windows licence and let the user use it for 8 years or more.

Not to mention in the cloud you can control for real who is who, and if this person payed or not for the product/service he/she want to use. Its another way to force people and bussiness to use all of thier solutions (OS, office, mail, messenger, meetings, etc.) instead of a mix from many developers.

 

[Pollopesca]

I think the Windows-10 "Photos" is one of the most buggy/worse software, and I prefer the previous one. And, no way to remove the animation by changing image..just take time when you preview/search for a photo.

I still have the old Windows Photo Viewer on 10. It displays images with no delay. meanwhile the Windows 10 Photos app takes a few seconds to bring up images. How hard it it to make a basic image viewer?

 

[JoBalz]

Of all the changes in Windows 11, the one I dislike most is how Search has changed from a box on the taskbar into a separate app that must be launched. It might be an odd habit, but I often launch apps in Windows 10 by going to the search box and typing the first few letters of their name so I can hit Enter to launch the top result.

I'd been wondering about that, as it's a feature I now use all the time. One commenter stated that all you need to do is hit the Windows Key and start typing, but that's just one more click to get there. The more I read about Win 11, the less I feel inclined to upgrade, which would be the first time I haven't upgraded to a new version of Windows as soon as it was available. It just seems with Win 11, Microsoft is taking away functions (such as many of those associated with right-clicking on icons) which many users like myself have been using for several Windows versions now. I get this deja vu feeling of Windows 8.0., the UI of which I totally hated (installing 3rd party software to restore a Windows 7 UI). Right now, my system can't be upgraded as I accidentally partitioned my new M.2 SSD with MBR instead of UEFI. Otherwise, My Ryzen 5 5600X supports TPM 2.0. The problem with Secure Boot and UEFI can be fixed, but I'm not so sure about Win 11.

 

[JoBalz]

You do realize you don't need to click in a search box to search, right? Just press the Windows key and start typing - like it's always been since they introduced the functionality in Vista.

Just another click I have to make to get to something that was on the Taskbar in Win 10 (and I use that search box multiple times a day). Just another WTF UI change by MS designers who seem to be more tablet oriented than desktop/laptop.

 

[JoBalz]

"This is a team who has been trying to get rid of the control panel for 5 years, but still can't figure out how to design a functional settings menu to replace it. Its hopeless; a major step backwards.
The only thing that they've learned since Windows 8 is that the start menu shouldn't hide the taskbar. But.. They still thought that was a good idea in the first place.

It's been over 25 years since info began to leak in the media as to how MS was honing the UI for the next version, Windows 95. As I remember, they had hired a large number of people tasked with using the new UI and reporting back to the design team regarding what worked and what did not work. And by the time Win 95 was released, we got the START button, and it seem that over succeeding generations, customer/user dissatisfaction and push-back have been involved with changes to the START button and menu. MS designers need to face it, that for desktop and laptop PC, the design of the START was a successful UI design element. Even Linux uses a pseudo-START button on a number of popular distro UIs. So instead of trying to get rid of it, the might want to consider how to actually improve it and add additional functionality without having to take over much of the screen real estate. The old right click in icons also goes a long way to improved usability.

 

[JoBalz]

Every new iteration of most ui I have to deal in life seems to be made to hide information/functions, make you do more clicks to get to the same place, and in the way try to point you to some "preferred" app that the developer wants you to use instead.

And we have to deal with it, if we want to use this new iteration. It has been the same since Windows 95, and we will get used to it, we always do.

Don't get me wrong, it does not change the fact that is annoying, very annoying to have to dig more and more everytime to get to the same place, its what it is if we want to use Windows.

The else we can voice our annoyance to Microsoft the same way as we did for Windows 8. Refuse to upgrade. Demand to be able to revert back to Windows 10. They eventually listened. If not, they may begin seeing annoyed users gradually beginning to turn to Apple or Linux.

 

[dalauder]

...
this looks like a tablet OS forced onto the desktop. and they are further integrating bing and teams into this monstrosity? no thank you. they're going to force me back to linux at this pace.

Every Windows 10 update breaks it more. I wish I'd bothered learning Linux several years back before I had kids and had time to.

With the latest Windows 10 updates, I can't launch, uninstall, or reinstall Office 360. I guess I'll have to use a pirated install of Office 2010 instead? I own like 5 copies legally, but their ridiculously bad DRM is harder to use.

Anyhow...Windows 11 sounds like abandon ship time.

 

[dalauder]

I get that, but why did Windows 8 received so much criticism? Do people use touch screens that much? And my main point is: why benefit touch users in spite of non-touch ones?

I still hope they get it more right, like Windows 8.1 tried to, but the first move is a bad one IMO.

The issue isn't touch screen usage, it's changing things and dumbing them down for the sake of changing them. If that's your mentality, you are most likely making things worse. This has been going on since Windows 8, but it's really only gotten to be crippling with Windows 10, when updates shuffle menu items around and the "How To..." websites stop helping because they're a couple months out of date.

 

[cryoburner]

this looks like a tablet OS forced onto the desktop.

Yeah, the impression I've been getting is that Windows 11 is just Microsoft re-purposing Windows 10X for use on the desktop. Microsoft claimed to "abandon" 10X development, but really they just merged it with 10 and gave it a new name. The centered taskbar... The widely-spaced icons... The simplified menus... It all looks like it was designed first and foremost for touchscreen devices, with desktop and laptop use being an afterthought. Which pretty much makes this a rerun of what they tried with Windows 8, just with different things changing in different ways.

...then we would still be on DOS

That's not a particularly good comparison, since DOS had significant limitations, and most would consider Windows to make for a much more usable environment for multitasking and organizing things. And in general, the changes made to Windows tended to largely be positive throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s. The UI designers did a good job refining the interface, for the most part. Then, you got different people coming in and making changes that detracted from things that were already working well. It's like they have too many cooks in the kitchen, and don't put enough thought into why existing things were designed the way they were, and whether changes will actually be an improvement or not. Like, do we really need a start menu icon that moves around depending on how many applications are open? It's in the corner for a reason, as one can easily swing their pointing device there and click without even looking. At least there's an option to disable that though, and hopefully most of these changes can be reverted in the settings.

Just another click I have to make to get to something that was on the Taskbar in Win 10 (and I use that search box multiple times a day). Just another WTF UI change by MS designers who seem to be more tablet oriented than desktop/laptop.

How is it another click? Either you click the search bar, or you click the start menu icon, or you tap the start button on your keyboard, and begin typing. It should work the same either way, requiring the same number of clicks, so there's no real reason to have a search box wasting space on your taskbar when you're not actively using it. There are certainly changes to menus in recent versions of Windows that require more effort to get through, but that shouldn't be one of them. If you know the search functionality is there, you probably don't need a dedicated box or search icon to remind you of it.

 

[USAFRet]

Every Windows 10 update breaks it more. I wish I'd bothered learning Linux several years back before I had kids and had time to.

With the latest Windows 10 updates, I can't launch, uninstall, or reinstall Office 360. I guess I'll have to use a pirated install of Office 2010 instead? I own like 5 copies legally, but their ridiculously bad DRM is harder to use.

Anyhow...Windows 11 sounds like abandon ship time.

That sounds like a you problem.

I've had zero issues with Win 10 updates. This is from Day 1 of the original Tech Preview.
And you may think that I don't do a whole lot with my systems....you'd be badly wrong.

 

[hannibal]

I get that, but why did Windows 8 received so much criticism? Do people use touch screens that much? And my main point is: why benefit touch users in spite of non-touch ones?

I still hope they get it more right, like Windows 8.1 tried to, but the first move is a bad one IMO.

good question! When win8 did come out. Touch Screen in laptops were very expensive and only few laptops did have those. Customers are also more familiar with touch screens ow than they used to be. My students seems to be surpriced when they found out that schools computers don`t have touchscreens!
Well i am mouse man myself, but it seems that future is touch based. So more touch friendly Os now makes much more Sense than it did 8 years ago!

 

[nimbulan]

Just another click I have to make to get to something that was on the Taskbar in Win 10 (and I use that search box multiple times a day). Just another WTF UI change by MS designers who seem to be more tablet oriented than desktop/laptop.

What are you talking about? I'm saying you don't have to click at all. The search is still available directly on the task bar or through the start menu without clicking. Literally nothing has changed except the visual design.

 

[froggx]

Windows 11 seems to be what happens when you are in the windows insider program but don't bother to look at what the latest "let's update dammit" prompt is going to install. I've not had any problems with Windows updates on the Dev branch so far, so I told windows updater to do its thing, went to the store to get some beer, and had this fresh hell waiting for me when I got back. Want to go back to the Windows 10 start menu? Just add some obscure key to the registry. Want your taskbar to display the name of the open apps or at least not combine all the open windows into a single icon? Too bad, that would be functional, productive, and ugly on a tablet. I feel like on startup it should say something like "Welcome to Windows Idiot-resistant edition."

 

[Matt_ogu812]

Please all remember that... IT'S FREE!! It's FREE. No-one is FORCING anyone to install the OS.

P.s. Remove the ticks from animations in the ye-olde Performance options:
-Animate Controls and elements inside windows
-Animate Windows when...
-Animations in the taskbar
-Fade x3
-Slide open combo boxes

Let's hope that the person installing Windows 11 gave it enough time to index and mess with dotnet libraries. Or whatever it does. After that, it should be nice and fast.

The 'Free' part is the word to the wise because M$ is know to install updates without ones consent.

 

[froggx]

The 'Free' part is the word to the wise because M$ is know to install updates without ones consent.

just rolled back the non-con update myself

 

[cryoburner]

just rolled back the non-con update myself

You gave your consent to install the update by taking part in the insider program. That's the whole point of the program, to beta test potentially unstable or otherwise incomplete versions of the OS to catch potential problems before they are rolled out to the general public. If you don't want that, then you should probably stick to running the standard release.