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No Start Menu for You

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Re: No Start Menu for You

#61

Post by input_sh »

yellow_lead wrote: post #36

There's many other problems with the start menu - specifically search 1) Anything not found opens in Edge™ and not your default browser (WTF?) 2) It loads lazily - so sometimes you hit enter and the highlighted item has already changed 3) Partial searches don't work very well. At this point, I'm wondering if there's a start menu replacement app

> At this point, I'm wondering if there's a start menu replacement app

Not using Windows for like a decade now, but I always go for a third-party launcher on Linux/macOS. They're fast(er) and more importantly extensible.

Instead of trying to index everything all the time, they function via triggers. If I start my query with "em", it searches emojis, if I start it with "=" it does calculations, if with "tr" it translates stuff for me, if with "fs" it does a file search. If there's no trigger at the start it searches apps on my system, and if no app is found it points me to my search engine (and respects my default browser choice).

Instead of using a default launcher that's trying to guess what I want and makes everything slow as hell, limiting the scope of my search like this just makes things much faster. There must be some launcher for Windows that's comparable to Alfred (macOS) or uLauncher (Linux) and once you try it, you'll never go back.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#62

Post by iforgotpassword »

samplatt wrote: post #53
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…

General question for the class... Is there any way to stop this? Is there some entries we can add to the hosts file so that Windows and Office will instantly return as failed, rather than timing out?

If you want to put in the effort you can sniff the hostname lookups and if it's done halfway dedicated name, as an entry for 0.0.0.0 to the hosts file.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#63

Post by iforgotpassword »

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.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#64

Post by _23sd »

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…

The more direct equivalent to the Windows start menu (assuming you just want to search programs) is the Launchpad, which isn't bound to a key by default but you can do it in settings. It's much more reliable than Spotlight. Personally, since I regularly have to deal with all 3, I use the same key combo for PowerToys Run on Windows, Launchpad on Mac, and the GNOME app launcher on Linux.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#65

Post by xboxnolifes »

com2kid wrote: post #7

Across 2 different machines, 100% repo, the start button on my keyboard only opens the start menu every other time I push it. It has been that way for 4+ years, it went away for a bit after an update, then came back again. Microsoft never has recovered from their dismantling of their test organizations.

I also have this issue. It's not 100% repo for me, be it's pretty frequent. I'm on a relatively recently fresh installed Windows 11.

I've also have an issue where sometimes the start menu doesn't let me type in the search on the first open until I close and reopen again.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#66

Post by iforgotpassword »

tdrgabi wrote: post #57
tablespoon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't that make things worse? Those applications usually expect to be able to make these calls. So now, instead of lagging once in a while when the home base is having troubles, it will lag all the time. Not necessarily. The lag may be waiting for the remote server to respond to a request, and the app may move on quickly if it can't open a connection at all. It's not totally uncommon to work totally offline (e.g…

In my experience, each time a firewall is blocking a connection, you experience it as a timeout, so the app tries to connect and finally times out. Which would take longer. I haven't tried though

No, it usually results in an immediate connection refused.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#67

Post by boloust »

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 page of useless Bing results.

Just infuriating, and makes me so glad that I'm using Rofi/Wofi, which never changes the results without user input, and responds to keypresses with no perceptible delay, even when searching across every file in my home directory (via fzf).

Re: No Start Menu for You

#68

Post by damowangcy »

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…

Switching between Windows and Mac, spotlight (or Alfred) is something I missed on Windows (solved by using FlowLauncher, PowerToys Start doesn't support plugins).

I don't understand the need to wait for something other than a search box to draw on the front when I just wanted to search and launch something.

On top of that, there is no way to customise the search result or create aliases. If I installed something portable without writing to registry, I couldn't even find it. And this is coming from a company that is adding AI to their search engine soon.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#69

Post by gigel82 »

On Windows 11 the start menu is simply unusable; there is no way at all to disable network requests (group policy, registry, etc.). Every single keystroke makes a new network requests, even with web search disabled.

I just bought Start11.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#70

Post by Neil44 »

From an IT support & admin point of view The Windows 10+ XML based start menu stuff has been bit of a dumpster fire the whole time. Start menus would randomly not work at all and need the users whole profile nuking to resolve. Who wants to see results from Bing in their start menu? Anyone? Controling start menu and taskbar for the org by policy is way more complicated now. Yes you can make it work eventually but it could be so much easier if anyone at Microsoft gave a crap about users and admins any more.
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