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No Start Menu for You

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Re: No Start Menu for You

#191

Post by eybbus »

wishfish wrote: post #135
lelanthran wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Huh. I maximize most of my programs. They maximize in a separate desktop and I switch between them with three finger swipe. That's full-screen, not maximised[1]. It's also something I hate - I make an app full-screen and suddenly it's on a different desktop, so my awareness of what apps are on which desktop is completely gone - I can no longer to ctrl-alt-right twice to get from my golang desktop to my browser desk…

I've been using a Mac full time for a little over a year. I'd agree fully with you on the full screen going to a separate desktop. Extremely annoying. However, you can switch desktops with control + right/left arrow. No need for the trackpad. Because I'm easily distracted, I frequently have all major applications maximized. That's how I always used Windows. Fortunately, I can have the same on the Mac. Maximized with…

My issue with control + right/left arrow is just how freaking slow it is. If I realise that I went the wrong direction I have to wait for the animation to finish before going in the other direction. It locks you in the animation.

Note: As I was writing this, I was making sure that I was right. I notice that it will allow me to ignore the animation sometimes, but i am not sure what triggers that.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#192

Post by PaulHoule »

For me it is a pet peeve that the start menu regularly takes a vacation.

It's particularly bad when the machine is starting, it seems the machine would rather listen to the music in its head than take commands from me. I wish it would put a priority on getting the start menu up and running even if it meant caching the state of it ahead of time so it can resume quickly -- I mean, there are just a few commands that I type in 90%+ of the time if it had those ready to go and took another second or to look up something obscure I could forgive it.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#193

Post by emsixteen »

zwaps wrote: post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

I really struggled with moving to macOS for work, but a couple of utilities helped a lot:

AltTab - Windows style tabbing between windows, including thumbnails and tiles for each open window of an application[1].

    brew install --cask alt-tab
LinearMouse - Removes mouse acceleration, but also gives you the ability to have different scroll directions on mouse and trackpad[2].

    brew install --cask linearmouse
Rectangle - Open source window management tool, I use it for window snapping[3].

    brew install --cask rectangle
[1] https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos

[2] https://github.com/linearmouse/linearmouse

[3] https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

Re: No Start Menu for You

#194

Post by mhw »

zwaps wrote: post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

> Tiling left / right etc? Doesn't exist

Sure it does - long press on the green maximise button and you get a little drop down. For me it includes "Enter full screen", "Tile Window to Left of Screen" and "Tile Window to Left of Screen". Tiling is like full screen but with two apps side-by-side rather than one.

If you want to maximise a window instead of going full screen (that is, make it as big as possible but not overlap the menu bar or dock), Option+Click on the green button or double click the title bar. macOS calls this "Zoom". Safari is atypical in that maximising it only changes the window's vertical height, but pretty much everything else maximises height and width.

All these options are on the 'Window' menu as well.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#195

Post by AlecSchueler »

emsixteen wrote: post #186
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found Windows window management to be pretty poor. They removed always on top (except in OneNote, and it's in power toys). Open a second Word document and all your docs get maximised. Undock and re-dock your MS machine from it's MS dock and the MS OS suddenly has no clue where to put your windows. Dock to a different dock (hot-desking; same brand and size of monitor) and the entire display options need to be re-…

> They removed always on top Are you saying macOS has this?

They're saying it was removed from Windows.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#196

Post by actionablefiber »

boloust wrote: post #67

The worst thing about the Windows Start Menu search is that it changes the top result without any user input, and it feels like it happens almost every time I use Windows. I'll type the first few characters of a program installed on the machine, and the top result is the program I want. But just as I hit Enter, the top result switches out to a web search, so instead of the program I wanted to start, I'm staring at a…

This happens to me every time I'm trying to open Notepad or Notepad++. I will type in "notepad" intending to open classic Windows notepad, see the top result I want, and then a new result will appear above it just as I hit enter.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#197

Post by howeyc »

This is exactly why I use OSS whenever possible. Once you've gone through all the trouble of the post, you can spend a little more time to submit a patch.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#198

Post by fluoridation »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #63
martin_ky wrote: post #6

It seems to be a pattern with (not just) Microsoft products to hang the UI while waiting for some remote API, usually talking to the home base. Happens a lot to me with Office desktop apps - they freeze sometimes for a good second or so while starting and more surprisingly also when closing. One time it bothered me so much, that I recorded an ETW and unsurprisingly the time during the hang was spent waiting for some…

I guess it's because in web context, it's easier to do web calls async than sync. While it's perfectly possible to do async web calls in something like C++, or at least move stuff to a different thread, people just somehow don't. Maybe out of lazyness since the first Google result was sync, or because lifecycle management is harder if raw pointers are involved, or whatever else.

It's because the default program structure in C and C++ makes functions blocking, with the caller assuming that if the callee returned it completed. Jamming a non-blocking program structure smack in the middle of a blocking system is never pretty, and most people prefer not to deal with the additional complexity. For the same reason, even though Windows has overlapped IO and other asynchronous IO mechanisms, most people prefer to use the synchronous functions.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#200

Post by flacebo »

I stopped using windows search a while ago.

It is unreasonably slow. Everything (the app) indexes every file on all of your drives in seconds, then filters the list instantly as you type.

When I start typing an application name that has a shortcut in the start menu, it shouldn't take seconds to find, period. There is no excuse. I'm shocked how bad windows search is every time I have to use it on another machine.

After trying multiple application launchers, I've settled with UELI. It does a lot of things (much more than windows search), instantly.

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