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No Start Menu for You

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Re: No Start Menu for You

#71

Post by yesenadam »

xenonite wrote: post #39
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…

Yes, this is why I turn off search in Spotlight (also for privacy). For window management, please consider using the Rectangle app or some other keyboard window manager. Otherwise, I believe its possible to long press on the maximize button to put your windows on the left or right half.

> its possible to long press on the maximize button to put your windows on the left or right half.

Ohh I never knew about that. Thank you!

Re: No Start Menu for You

#72

Post by iforgotpassword »

dimgl wrote: post #22
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.

Do you have a gaming keyboard? Weird keyboard glitches on Windows were happening to me due to switches on the keyboard, but from a UX perspective it always seemed like Windows was the issue.

Replugging after booting into Windows solved it for one such model.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#73

Post by iforgotpassword »

llanowarelves wrote: post #26

Windows Start Menu has been broken for me sometimes (typing does nothing, have to re-click the menu to toggle it a few times and then it works), over the last few months. Last few weeks has been ok. And recently completely-finished browser downloads have to wait extra long (beyond when the browser says it's done) plus an F5 in Explorer, for Windows to not complain about a "missing file at path" when trying to use the…

ESET is rubbish. Had to do the obligatory support round for family over the holidays. One machine would sporadically not finish sending and email via Outlook, and even rebooting doesn't fix that issue. You just had to wait about a day and it would be ok again. You couldn't send any mail during that time. I tracked it down to the Outlook plugin of ESET. I saw it also has other features like a browser plugin, and intercept for TLS encrypted traffic.

These kinds of security products always make your system less secure, not more. All those complex components that hook into every part of your system are buggy and contain vulnerabilities that malware can target. Use Windows Defender and nothing more.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#74

Post by flohofwoe »

Overly obvious question, but: Why TF is there nobody on the Windows team who does exactly this type of work? Why are these things even slipping through QA over and over again? The user-facing layer of Windows is so full of similar problems, yet nothing ever improves, it only ever gets worse.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#75

Post by Thlom »

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…

Huh. I maximize most of my programs. They maximize in a separate desktop and I switch between them with three finger swipe.

Also noticed yesterday that you can tile windows left right by long-pressing on the maximize button.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#76

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

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?

Hosts file would be your first way assuming you trust MS to honor that convention. You can always consider using a way that is not reliant on Windows goodwill ( for example, Pihole would allow you to limit various unwanted IPs based on your custom list; technically, your router should be able to do it too, but it varies wildly by mfctr/model ). That said, I am not that familiar with that functionality in Excel and it is not a given that it would fail gracefully if it is actually stopped from calling mothership.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#77

Post by flohofwoe »

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…

You can switch off everything related to siri in the system settings (especially 'siri suggestions' in the spotlight settings) to get a local spotlight search (which then actually works pretty well as app launcher, that's what I use it mainly for).

Re: No Start Menu for You

#78

Post by flohofwoe »

daguava wrote: post #10
bitwize wrote: post #4

Meanwhile, an Amiga with a half meg of RAM and a 7 to 25 MHz processor never fails to respond instantly to user input unless it's totally hosed. We seem to have forgotten this very fundamental principle: the user's desires, expressed through input, are paramount for a desktop OS, which means that the OS must be designed from the ground up to respond to input at a very high priority. Mainframe operating systems like U…

Terrible comparison, Windows is still catching every one of those inputs and handling them. The diff is the amiga is doing maybe three things total. This isn't even apples to oranges, it's apples to radish farm.

One important difference was that AmigaOS bumped the priority of threads that dealt with user input - the user always had priority over other tasks.

Somehow this simple trick seems to have been forgotten or is ignored in modern OS development - or if modern operating systems still do this, their process schedulers seem to be pretty terrible at handling priorities.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#79

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

daguava wrote: post #10
bitwize wrote: post #4

Meanwhile, an Amiga with a half meg of RAM and a 7 to 25 MHz processor never fails to respond instantly to user input unless it's totally hosed. We seem to have forgotten this very fundamental principle: the user's desires, expressed through input, are paramount for a desktop OS, which means that the OS must be designed from the ground up to respond to input at a very high priority. Mainframe operating systems like U…

Terrible comparison, Windows is still catching every one of those inputs and handling them. The diff is the amiga is doing maybe three things total. This isn't even apples to oranges, it's apples to radish farm.

Eh. I disagree and agree at the same time.

This is indeed the crux of the problem. Windows Start is trying to do everything at once including guessing what the user may be thinking of wanting including, but not limited to semi-random bing searches. Some would argue that less is more.

However, this is not a popular opinion these days. User is assumed to be an idiot and to not know what they want. As a result, MS menu does 3000 things as opposed to 3 Amiga did.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#80

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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'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-written - no option to preserve it. Restart your machine and you can only load your Startup apps into one virtual desktop (I tried powertoys but it didn't seem to make anything better). Et cetera ...

It's pretty hard to believe that the people designing this system use it for work.

At least they got zones, coming from KDE and not having zones nor virtual windows, initially, was a big shock.

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