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Microsoft announces Windows 11

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Re: Microsoft announces Windows 11

#361
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have been able to move the task bar to left/right screen edges for years. If your task bar is not locked, just click and drag it to the window edges. A feature to Left align the buttons has been shown in the leaked builds.

> You have been able to move the task bar to left/right screen edges for years Since Windows 95, even.

I remember during the Windows 95 days users at my company suddenly had their task bars stuck to the left or right side of the screen and nobody knew how to get them back :(

Re: Microsoft announces Windows 11

#362

It's mind boggling to me, that Microsoft went with a redesign here. Personally the Windows UI never bothered me that much. I just feel like that they could have focused more on things like, stability, the search functionality or, and I'm not even kidding, printer and scanner support.

There's nothing wrong with redesign as long as they do it consistently across the whole OS, but from my experience, they reskin like 30% of the stuff and everything else stays inconsistent [0]. If they're gonna work on UI, I'd like to see them actually grow that 30% rather than keep changing things up.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27556754

Re: Microsoft announces Windows 11

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some answers here - https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22546801/microsoft-window...

More details here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...

Great link, thanks!

Found this unfortunate change deep down:

> Taskbar functionality is changed including: Alignment to the bottom of the screen is the only location allowed.

Re: Microsoft announces Windows 11

#365

So taskbar extends horizontally and places icons in the middle, which means: 1. It creates unnecessary visual clutter in the right and left sides and takes up valuable space. 2. Users will have harder time clicking to start button. I’m having hard time seeing what is UX benefit of this?

The first rule of UX design, as far as I'm concerned, is: Don't make me think. Moving stuff around? You just made me think. You'd better have a good reason for that, better than just "it will play better on touch devices". I'm not on a touch device, so you just slowed me down to solve a problem that I don't have .

I agree. Teams is pretty bad about this. Every few weeks some buttons get moved around so you have to look for them. Instead of fixing problems it seems they just keep changing the UI.

Re: Microsoft announces Windows 11

#366
post #329

Every time this happens someone says fuck it and installs Linux. After two weeks some of them come back, but the Linux market share grows. I want an OS that stays current on security patches, attempts to be as unobtrusive as possible, allows for Desktop Environment customization but has sane defaults. I don't want special integrations. The OS should follow single responsibility and defer special functionality to app…

I did this when Vista came out. I said fuck it and installed Ubuntu, I had enough of Microsoft bullshit. Then Ubuntu upgraded and moved all window icons to the left side and rearranged them awkwardly. On the next update, they upgraded the sound subsystem and I was without sound until I bought my next PC. Another update came and computer went to sleep when watching movies, so I had to move the mouse every minute to fi…

The upside to Linux is when one of these kinds of changes happen you have the freedom to modify or swap out components to your liking.

The downside to Linux is nobody actually wants to constantly modify or maintain components to their liking and nobody can agree what a good liking is so nobody likes the way somebody else does it.

Re: Microsoft announces Windows 11

#367
post #310
post #94

So to summerize what they have announced (so far) - * A new look task bar. Centred similar to the macOS dock by default but lacking the ability to position on any other screen edge? * A new start menu design * Windows have rounded corners * Some built in apps such as the Xbox app and Microsoft Store have been redesigned (Xbox Game Pass and xCloud built into the Xbox app) * New touch keyboard (SwiftKey?) with improved…

>40% smaller Windows Updates Was there anything about faster updates? Why does the Windows Update service take 50%+ of my CPU and multiple minutes to figure out if there's any updates available for me? I get Windows doesn't have a package manager, but given yum and deb can figure out the answer in seconds... there has to be some way to improve that.

Actually Windows does have a package manager now, it is called winget.

Re: Microsoft announces Windows 11

#368

I really do like Windows, but it has a lot of issues for me: Pushing its users to Microsoft Accounts, telemetry, ads, bloatware it automatically installs, and last but not least inconsistencies all the way through the OS - and adding another design-layer with windows 11 wont help that. I think microsoft really need to address some of this and get back to the needs of "prosumers". I personally want a slim but nice loo…

I've said for years the day I can reliably play League of Legends on Linux you'll never see me using anything else at home again. Just frustrating that gaming is still largely a best-effort crapshoot despite all the work by Valve and others.

Re: Microsoft announces Windows 11

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why right instead of left as text is ltr?

Somehow it is easier for me. Can it be that I can drag the mouse faster to the right as a right-hander? Maybe because the cursor is more often on the right, because of scrollbars on the right side? Maybe because many programs have their vertical menu on the left side (Outlook, Teams, etc) and therefore the left side would be too busy? But maybe I am just used to it.

To be honest, some of these are exactly the reason why I would keep the taskbar to the left - UI elements such as scrollbars or caption buttons are much faster to access with mouse, when they're glued to the edge/corner of the screen, because you can just "throw" your mouse cursor instead of having to aim for a 20x20px target. Having your taskbar to the right takes away that feature

Re: Microsoft announces Windows 11

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 11 will be a free upgrade: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22546801/microsoft-window...

Looks like that news just came out. Glad to hear it. Now let's hope it's an automatic upgrade for as many Windows 10 users as possible.

Oh Windows users, what a crazy bunch. I personally would never use a piece of software that updated (or downgraded, depending on the perspective) against my wishes.
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