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Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

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Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#61

Post by Goronmon »

aneutron wrote: post #41

This was genuinely one of the more intuitive parts of the task bar. Although I'm aware that you can pin applications to the task bar by right clicking. I surely hope they give alternative ways to pin stuff. But in the article, here's what's pissing me off: > In Windows 11, the taskbar lost some other quite popular features users enjoyed in Windows 10. For example, you can no longer move the taskbar to the top, right,…

This was genuinely one of the more intuitive parts of the task bar.

Is it intuitive? I honestly didn't know this was something you could do, and it doesn't seem to work for me. The most I am able to do while dragging something to the taskbar is to pin it to the application that could open it. Other times I just get the same red 'X' as on Windows 11.

Is there a use pattern that I'm just not thinking of?

Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#62

Post by butz »

In Windows 98-ish era I was using an alternative "shells" for Windows UI. First one was "Geoshell" IIRC, after that I used "Blackbox" for more minimalistic look and feel. Nice to see Microsoft opening a niche for alternative UI implementations again.

Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#63

Post by nmstoker »

Closi wrote: post #53
fatnoah wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is a Product led decision. I've never worked at Microsoft, but have worked at other large software companies. This is 100% a design decision. Engineers like buttons, shortcuts, neat tricks, test tools, secret options, lots of menus, etc.

I also think this is a fairly sensible design decision. I personally would expect dragging a file to the dock would put the file on the dock, rather than trying to open the file in whatever app you dragged it onto.

Yes, but even that is blocked (see the screenshot with the no dropping icon)

Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#64

Post by saurik »

cosmotic wrote: post #21

There are two issues here: 1. The task bar, application, and process metaphor in Windows is not conducive to drag-and-drop onto taskbar items. Dropping onto an exe would start a process and pass the file as an argument, but doing this onto a window doesn't make sense. Does it start a new process from the file the window's existing process is based on? This would rely on that program recognizing it's already running a…

> Does it start a new process from the file the window's existing process is based on? This would rely on that program recognizing it's already running and sending a message the other instance to open the dropped file then exit.

You make it sound like this is somehow crazy complex behavior that no one would have implemented, but this is table stakes for a Windows application as otherwise double-clicking files that are supposed to open in your program wouldn't work.

Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#65

Post by Closi »

nmstoker wrote: post #63
Closi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think this is a fairly sensible design decision. I personally would expect dragging a file to the dock would put the file on the dock, rather than trying to open the file in whatever app you dragged it onto.

Yes, but even that is blocked (see the screenshot with the no dropping icon)

Ah yeah you are right, I misread that.

Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#66

Post by Ashanmaril »

vxNsr wrote: post #51

Windows 11 really is shaping up to be the vista version. Look forward to windows 12 which will have all the good features without the annoying ones. Microsoft really has a lock on the good-bad-good cadence.

I don't buy that "good-bad-good-bad" pattern that everyone references. It's a mildly funny observation, but it's hard to say that Windows 10 is really that good. It's more usable than Windows 8, but the bar was so low, that's not a very useful metric.

Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#67

Post by dang »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #14

Welcome to the glorious future everyone, where our computers are less featureful than they were in the 1990s. Could all of you "professional" software "engineers" out there please just stop sucking so damned hard? You're making me deeply ashamed to be a part of this industry.

Can you please follow the site guidelines? They include: "Please don't fulminate."

Also: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#68

Post by t0mbstone »

JohnFen wrote: post #34

Microsoft seems to have a knack for making Windows less useful and more annoying with every release.

The most frustrating thing for me is that it's so inonsistent with its UI. There are literally three different sound device control panels now, each with their own style and subset of functionality.

I wouldn't mind it so much if it wasn't for the fact that Windows 10 always refers me to the less functional (but prettier) sound control panel when I search for "sound". If I want to actually get to the settings I want, I have to dig through things to find the "old" windows sound control panel. It is antiquated, but still holds all the functionality I need.

I do feel their pain, though. They want to make things simple for the average user, but still cater to the power user. It's a very difficult line to straddle, and I think they end up upsetting both groups of users.

I have really come to love OSX. It just works. It's secure. It's easy to use. The UI is simple and consistent, but I can still get to the power user settings very easily.

Pretty much the only thing I use my Windows computer for anymore is crypto mining and gaming.

Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#69

Post by gknoy »

hbn wrote: post #9

> In Windows 11, the taskbar lost some other quite popular features users enjoyed in Windows 10. For example, you can no longer move the taskbar to the top, right, or left. I have a feeling this is gonna be the big issue for some people. I personally just leave it at the bottom, but there's something to be said that when you have a standard 16:9 monitor, it doesn't make sense to remove that space from the vertical ax…

Agreed. Especially on a small screen like a laptop, being able to reclaim the dock space by positioning on the side is VERY useful.

It sounds like the most trivial concern, but this is absolutely the level of configuration that makes one contemplate shell or OS replacement.

Re: Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

#70

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

eysquared wrote: post #23
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #14

Welcome to the glorious future everyone, where our computers are less featureful than they were in the 1990s. Could all of you "professional" software "engineers" out there please just stop sucking so damned hard? You're making me deeply ashamed to be a part of this industry.

I worked on the Windows Core UX team. If you think this is an engineering led decision, you have had a different experience with large software organizations than I have. Even with the Windows 8 UX changes, our most senior engineers were up in arms in open protest and they STILL went through with it. This is a Product led decision.

For one, I doubt very much anyone told the developers of the new task bar that it shouldn't be movable to other screen edges. I'm confident that was a design decision by software engineers who deemed it too difficult or time consuming with no regard to how it would impact people who have used that feature since Windows 95.

But even if they had, I don't anyone gets a pass on building a crap product just because they happened to get paid to do so. If your situation is such that you can't risk your job by refusing to do it, you can at least own it and feel an appropriate amount of shame.

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