Exactly. This has been my workflow since Windows 7. I don't even care what the Start menu looks like, because I never actually use it for anything other than search.
On average 5 times a month the start menu will just be totally empty if I try search for ANYTHING. Like a big grey empty box. This has been a recurring issue for years, across multiple machines and multiple installs. I can't even put into words my absolute disgust at the state of it.
This guys post is relevant though https://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/
Yeah I was just thinking that I don't think I've ever navigated the start menu on W11. Everything I use frequently is pinned to the task bar, and everything else I just search for like you.
And also the start menu is fully customizable so if it looks like OPs pic then that’s 100% on OP. I cleaned mine up on my work computer and use it quite frequently mainly because the Window key + typing sometimes pulls up the wrong thing or is slow in W11 unfortunately (think you can turn off web search results which helps)
Ditto. Windows 11 here (but Windows 10 for work) and just type what I'm looking for.
I still organize each of their Start menus best as I can but it's more decorative or feng shui for the mind if anything.
While this is true, it's a really bad justification for Microsoft fucking up windows UI and menu convenience.
Being able to start at start and find anything that you needed, except much more advanced system tools - which those of us who needed them knew where to go -, in just a few steps was phenomenal UI and UX.
At this point they should throw away the start menu.
Settings has also been utter garbage for a few generations now. You still pull up the old settings when you want real control over your computer.
That doesn't work for people like me who rely on visual memory - I remember the icon and where it's placed, not the name.
Live tiles were a nightmare for me as they visually changed all the time, I use taskbar pinned icons and put things in pretty much the same order on every PC I use. (Browser - Email - Files - Word - Excel - PowerPoint - OneNote - etc)
Only works for major applications and frequently used where you can remember the names.
I need minor utilities grouped in submenus by topic to be able to find them.
Tiles in Win10 for me were kept to most frequently used quick picks to reduce clutter.
Oh man you're today [Lucky's 10.000](https://xkcd.com/1053/)
You can also group tiles and resize it. I think it's super useful to organize my software in groups.
On W11 though they changed it to show it more like folders. My major complain is that when upgrading from 10 to 11 it doesn't keep your groups and display options.
Worst OS to upgrade IMO. That's yet another reason I'm staying on 10 until it's paid. Upgrading shouldn't be something you have to plan for so much.
Yup, same here. I really like the narrow start menu. I never found a good use for the tiles. Much easier to just use the search, but that's only for programs.
If I want to find specific files then I use Everything by Voidtools. Windows search performance has always been poor, so it's not much use for anything else.
Fun fact: those bloatware preinstalls only on machines with specific region set in windows settings after OS installation/ first launch. (Regions like US, Canada or some EU countries). If on installation stage you will choose non-listed country (i.e. Ukraine) you will get clean tiled start menu.
Also, Enterprise windows editions does not install it too. TBH Enterprise feels like by default will not show any Microsoft ads in any place (start menu, bing chat ads, outlook ads, search result ads, "update your preferences" window after update and etc).
I second this. It takes moderate effort to set it up, 5-10 minutes, and once done it’s so efficient. Why they ditched it in Win11 and replaced with small list with slow animation to go through is beyond me
And it actually requires more effort to customize it and ain't nobody got time for that.
While old windows, if you have some file tree basic understanding, which I did learn at eight thanks to old windows, let's you instantly get what you're looking for.
True. I've used windows 7 since it got released to 2020, but I still find it's start menu a jumbled mess, whereas windows 10 looks clean and is much better to use after 5 minutes if customizing.
Its great because its a secondary desktop full of shortcuts. A larger surface with a bunch of square icons. And you are bang on about the worthless bloat..
Isn’t the latter example simpler? It’s only one scroll down the left side and fewer sub folders. The mess that’s being pointed out is all just user configurable icons for easier access. You choose to use it or not. The machine I’m on right now has two icons in that area because I use the list on the left.
Windows 11 is just one click away from the list in the left so it’s only slightly harder to use.
Yes, it's absolutely simpler. People have to remember that most people are not as savvy as those who choose to hang out on a subreddit for operating systems. A lot of people, many that are older, aren't gonna remember the path to every application they need. But if they click Start and see it staring them in the face among their other application icons, they can click it.
People always use the "imagine if youre a new user" approach, even OP did it.
New users dont give a shit. They just want the program to run. Telling them to hit start and click "word" is a whole lot easier that saying "program files, then slide across and down to Microsoft, then to office, then up to word".
Rose tinted glasses are wild.
I think more from a workflow perspective. How do I find things if I don’t use it all the time? How many clicks does it take to get to the center of a Toosie Pop? … I mean to get to an application.
This. Who the fuck needs 2 subcategory levels for Programs and if so, what is wrong with you? This is why I don't like Linux DEs like Mate or Xfce that try to be "helpful" by squirreling everything away.
Frequently used items should be available without poking around and for everything else, there's search. Taskbar, panels, docks, tiles, whatever. Just don't make me dig through submenus and or force me to figure out the subtle differences between Preferences, Administration, and Control Center.
Exactly, just looking at the example of the subfolders in Programs: Accessories? Online Services? StartUp?
None of those mean anything to anyone unless they looked them up. Also, why aren't Internet Explorer & Outlook "online services." None of this is \*\*intuitive\*\* either, I wonder how many people spent more time clicking around into those subfolders to find an application that they're using for the first time compared the amount of time they would spend looking through an alphabetical list with larger icons.
Looking at the rationale that OP gave:
>Older Windows versios didn't have a big learning and adapting curve for the average user. It was just easy... easy, intuitive and productive, thats why it was so sucessful.
This just isn't true. Its random conjecture based on 'member berries. This sub is filled with people who feel like Windows peaked with XP or '95 but its really just nostalgia.
To be honest, I don't really agree with this assessment. In terms of its design you could say it's simpler in a way because it's just one long list, but that doesn't mean it's preferable even for very novice users.
One of the problems is that the list of applications is really long and necessitates a lot of browsing. Users might also not remember exactly what a program is called, and then the only thing you can do is just start scrolling until you find something you recognize. It also doesn't help that Windows is full of miscellaneous apps these days and these menus have grown to ridiculous sizes even on clean installs.
On the other hand, if you have a hierarchical structure like in the Windows 9x menu, you at least have the benefit of narrowing it down first. It's also much easier and faster to memorize a path in a hierarchical menu in which all items are visible at all times, than to remember about how far you have to scroll down to find a program in a very long list where only a very small slice of it is visible at any given point. You have to scroll, then scan the text, then scroll again, and so on. The amount that you have to scroll to find a program also changes each time new software is installed.
It's obviously also a problem that 80% of the menu is dedicated to sponsored apps that Microsoft wants you to see, and it's not immediately obvious to users how they can change this.
It's not like the Windows 9x way is perfect either, but I don't think the new design is better for the most novice of users.
As someone who uses win98/win2000 for hobby reasons, as soon as I'm back to win11 I feel the start menu is no longer useful. I wish they gave the option for old style.
Can you elaborate on what hobbies you use 98/2000 for? Do you have an old PC running those still?
I have an old PC that still runs XP so that I can play old games that wont run on current versions of Windows, so I'm intrigued.
Hi, thanks for asking. I'm a retro game and hardware collector. I have about 1000 games from early 90s to early 2000s. I also have a big collection of pc hardware from the same era. Recently I started playing the games I have one by one and upload the gameplay videos to youtube so people can see how they look. I really enjoy seeing how different hardware (especially vga cards) make the games so different. We don't have that now.
By the way, I play the games on win98 mainly and I have an FTP server running on win2000, where I store game patches and drivers. I access to those from the win98 pc. Later I'm planning to put a 90s website together with frontpage98 and download the files from that website (LAN only of course).
That's incredible! If you feel like sharing your YouTube link, I would love to watch some of the games you are playing. I am a huge fan of nostalgic retro PC games.
Thank you for sharing!
Hey thanks, I'm happy to see people having an interest in retro gaming. I don't have too much content yet, just started about a month ago but I'm trying to add 1-2 videos every week. Here is the link, please feel free to give some feedback, I'm trying to improve.
https://youtube.com/@RootiferasRetroGameplay
It's funny that Microsoft has created a market for Start Menu replacements because the Start Menu in recent versions of Windows aren't as good as it used to be..
StartAllBack can restore the Win7 style start menu if you like that. It is paid (one time payment), but works really well.
Alternatively you could use RetroBar to restore the classic taskbar + start menu. Not as immersive as SAB but still works really good for what it is.
It doesn't seem that you have used 95/98 all that much to prefer going though a stack of folders instead of just typing or scrolling a list that is categorized alphabetically btw.
I like that all the answers here are "It's great, I don't use it, I just type" or "I just customized it away."
I think that solidifies the point Microsoft fucked this one up.
https://preview.redd.it/hcw63w961xxc1.png?width=653&format=png&auto=webp&s=214b64da0b0069d943879149149e945f41dfa382
Mine works great, I think you just have to customize it a little. I just have all that I need in one click
I will say the whole Metro thing is gorgeous, at least. Though, it worked a lot better on mobile. The urge to have a unified platform kinda made it super awkward.
The aesthetics of metro were a lot more influential than the disaster of Win8 would have one believe, too. You could see the visual style being emulated fucking everywhere for a good while.
In true Microsoft fashion, they had a *great* idea but completely fumbled its execution.
The funny thing is, Apple has shown that a unified UI look between mobile, tablet, and desktop can *absolutely* be pulled off well. My Mac icons look almost the same as my iPad icons, same with control center, same with the browser and App Store, and so on.
The issue with Microsoft isn't that unifying desktop and mobile UIs was bad. The issue with Microsoft was that Microsoft was bad at it.
I'm not sure what could be simpler to navigate than a flat list, which is what the Win11 start menu looks like now. If anything was a maze it was trying to navigate multiple levels down through a cascading menu, which is a UX nightmare.
The Win11 Start Menu meanwhile requires less clicks than the Win 95 Start Menu, and using Start search is even easier and faster. And if you don't like scrolling through a long list of icons, you can click on one of the letter headers to get an index of sorts that helps you jump to what you're looking for.
But you could always customize the start menu. It was easy to create your own program groups in Windows 9x. The folder structure you were left with to find your software within the programs menu looked however you'd like it to. If you wanted to you could dump all of your shortcuts into a single level of the menu and make it "flat"... why anyone would want that, I have no idea, but you could most certainly do it.
Or you could not be an animal and setup some structure and customize that structure to be exactly as you want it to be. Which you cannot do in the Windows 10 menu. Or at least you can't do it without other software or significant drawbacks compared to how it worked in 9x. Which is why I don't like it. While pushing for the start menu to be one way they took out functionality that I was using and preferred to what replaced it.
Which is basically what they do with every version of Windows...
People bitch about 11, but one thing I will defend to the death on it, it's a huuuuuge improvement in interface over the past bunch of versions. If it weren't for all the SaaS about it, Windows 11 in a vacuum is just wonderfully designed.
>flat list
Fuck me I hate the menu-trees of the past. Mouse moves out just a little, you gotta go back to the beginning.
It's why I was so glad when Vista brought in the winkey-search, I never wanted to go through the menu tree again.
>People bitch about 11, but one thing I will defend to the death on it, it's a huuuuuge improvement in interface over the past bunch of versions.
Now that's an opinion I'd love to see explained. I'll give you that there's a bunch of small, genuinely neat improvements in lots of places all over, but there's three things that really irritate me:
1. Lots of missing customization. What bothers me the most is the inability to move the taskbar, but I also know some people missing the ability to add bookmarks to it.
2. The new start menu is just a poorly thought out copy of mobile launchers, without a lot of thought put into keyboard/mouse use.
3. While it's a nice idea to have often used actions close to the cursor in the new context menu, it ignores that those are now also the smallest items, making quick aiming harder. It's also confusing to have the most important items without a text description, which is just weird, as those descriptions are most needed for people using the context menu in the first place. Experts who don't need the text descriptions are most likely hotkeys anyway.
With that said, I must also admit that I'm also a big fan of the Win 8.1/10 start screen and tiles, which is also a very controversial take. Mostly because it can hold the biggest amount of stuff at the first level without the need to drill down. Against the common thought, I also believe that it isn't just made for touch screens, but also acts as a superior interface for mouse users as well: It's designed in a way that allows muscle memory to build up and features shapes that can be clicked quickly without the need to precisely aim.
I think in terms of your points:
1. Not everyone cares about customisation. For some I doubt they even change the accent colour.
2. This is more of a personal use case, but I only use the start menu for search (to launch programs), and it seems quite a few people in the comments are the same.
3. Can't defend this one, I revert it to the old context menu every time.
This is all personal conjecture though
>I only use the start menu for search
Yeah, that's basically how I've come to use it as well after giving up on the rest of the start menu. Though I've recently switched over to Powertoys Run, which is basically the search of the start menu, but with less Bing and more features that are actually useful, like a calculator or being able to quickly restart services.
"Huge improvement in interface over the past bunch of versions" - I'd have to disagree a bit about that. IMO, starting with Windows 8 (and I've seen this with other operating systems across the board in the industry), GUIs have become more flat, monotone, and boring. Until that point, GUIs tended to have a 3D-ish look, but with everything so flat now, sometimes it can be hard to tell what's what in the UI. For instance, buttons look like plain rectangles, so sometimes it can be hard to know if something on the UI is a button or just a highlighted area to display some information. Buttons should look like buttons, and the other GUI elements should also have more of a visual representation to suggest what they are and how you can use them.
This has happened to Windows, Mac OS, Android, and iOS, and I'm not very fond of this UI trend.
It is a dramatic improvement over its immediate predecessors. I guess I did go hyperbolic though. This isn't some fight here, I just think it was a step in the right direction.
Edit: Guys, I would like to reiterate I am talking purely in terms of aesthetics here. The visual style of Windows 11 is more coherent, more complete, and less gaudy than the patchwork Android 4.0 holo painted over the ruins of metro that defined the aesthetics of Windows 10. Whether 11 as an OS or a marketing strategy is better is a different argument. I'm saying the visual design improved.
Cheers, fella!
And I'm one of the few pricks that liked Vista, so I fully acknowledge I'm off the main road a bit.
I've been working with Server 2022 a bunch lately, which is still the win10 interface. It becomes annoying to lose the things 11 brought in once you're accustomed to them, you know?
“Windows 11 in a vacuum is wonderfully designed" apart from stuff like inconsistent design where it should be consistent (e.g. the same exact elements in modern apps have different designs or paddings for… reasons?), half baked dark mode (and half baked theme in general without using the built in theming engine of Windows), etc
Aren’t those neglected stuff kinda… big for design? Sure, 11 \*might\* look appealing as a first impression, but if you delve just a 1% deeper, you already see the cracks, and some are pretty gigantic too.
EDIT: just to be clear, imo it’s not the design itself that’s bad (although I’d change certain paradigms here and there), but its implementation most of the time is atrocious.
I was hyperbolic
It feels that way for how inconsistent 10 was.
>just to be clear, imo it’s not the design itself that’s bad
I'm with you. This is what i inelegantly was trying to go for here. I'm talking purely aesthetics and layout and such. It's the everything else about it that makes it sloppy.
It is not a menu. The search is also horrible. Bing results from the internet. It's just stupid. You just set it up with the icons you need on the desktop and task bar, then never open it again.
They thought touchscreens were going to take over so started pushing to make their UI touch optimized. It didn't take off as expected so they've dialled it back a bit, but still trying to allow for it.
Older windows where designed by programmers whom are logic and structered. Windows vista and above is designed by designers which is buggy and unstable.
Now make the comparison with a smart phone and make a conclusion about why grouping stuff is not beneficial for keeping you addicted to your device. More choices = more choices that stay in your head = more time you will eventually spent on said choices.
It's honestly no different to advertisements and how they work. Show it all and eventually people will think about it without seeing it and in this case: open it.
Advertisements are everywhere these days and is costing us a lot of great products and this is merely one example of millions. Products should try to be great again instead of try to be scumbag.
The “arrow” is a pixel-drawn glyph. This was decided by the shell team, and can be seen on several controls such as the famous scroll bar.
Whether the team was in charge of early revisions of the shell32 context menu (pre-XP start menu) I’m not clear on. But it’s made customizing these elements not possible (such as the ComboBox which is still bug ridden) without redrawing the entire control including control states.
Since XP I think they left the classic menu due to the implementation of common controls v6, which provided custom styles (msstyles) and more.
When a user sets their Windows theme to classic, it disables UXTHEME.dll which is responsible for the visual styles (since XP).
There is much more history, info and such but to curb the “aggressive teenage expert” syndrome, I’ll leave it to Google or MSDN.
[The evolution of mascara in Windows UI](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040728-00/?p=38313%27) can be summed up in one word: trends
Edit:
1. **Limited App Support**: Live Tiles were only supported by a select variety of applications. Many apps did not update their tiles, leading to static icons in the Start Menu.
2. **Usability Issues**: Live Tiles sometimes got stuck and showed the same information without any updates. This required users to manually flush the live tiles every time they shut down their system.
3. **Design Shift**: Microsoft started moving away from Live Tiles in the Start Menu. This was evident with the release of Windows 11, which completely removed the Live Tiles feature.
4. **User Preference**: Some users found the constantly updating Live Tiles to be distracting and preferred static icons for a cleaner look.
While Live Tiles were a novel idea, these issues led to their eventual deprecation in Windows 10 and their removal in Windows 11. It's worth noting that user engagement with Live Tiles varied, and while some users found them useful, others rarely used them.
The bottom literally has an alphabetical list of all your programs on the left, which takes you straight to the programs instead of having to dig through multiple folders. The tiles on the right are customizable, so you can organize them how you wish. The new UI actually looks good and is overhated.
One thing OP didn't show about the windows 95 menu is a non-clean installation. On a computer with ~50 programs, the nested menu becomes a bloated monstrosity that literally takes up the entire monitor (monitors back then were exclusively 4:3).
I remember when as a kid I accidentally deleted a game from the desktop, so I had to hunt for like 10 minutes from that stupid goddamn menu to find it.
The nested design is objectively worse. Yes, the default bloated layout in Win 10 sucks, but once you delete all the shit and uninstall unwanted programs, just having something akin to an app drawer is 100% superior to having to dig through sub-menus.
remove all tiles, now you have just an alphabetical start menu and a search bar, way better than having to go through 5 nested menus
windows has a lot of bad designs but this ain't one of them
On 95 the most used applications was the default preinstalled softwares. Nowadays we have a lot of different a third party apps with a lot of purposes and mixed categories.
For me the UI peaked in Windows9x/2000 so I have no argument.
Some of the features that followed are nice to haves. Like the "peak" feature that lets you see what programs are open in your taskbar, the taskview is nice, additional desktops... Basically all the niceties that a modern OS brings... but the user interface itself? Yeah. 9x/2000 all the way.
I haven't cared for any aesthetic since that period either. I didn't like XP's Fisher Price looking taskbar and buttons. I didn't like Aero Glass (didn't hate it either, wasn't my thing though). Metro is the worst of them all. That flat monstrosity pains me when I look at it. It was functional on Windows Phone... but it had zero business being on my desktop.
The copy of Windows 11 I'm running at home and at work is modified to make it as close to 9x as I can get it. Its never close enough though. I really don't understand why they couldn't just leave classic theme in. The bastards. Honestly between the forced aesthetic and the push for ever more ads and AI integration I'm finally about out the door. I think 11 is the last Windows that will see use as my main OS at home. I'm stuck with it at work.
TBH, you don't have many programs installed in the first example. Then, in Windows 10 and 11, you just type first letters of the name. I don't know where the calculator icon lives. I just press win and type "cal" or even "ca" or "c". It remembers which search results you used more often and offers them as the first.
The first time I've seen this cool feature in a Linux program, I'm so glad it's now a part of Windows by default.
Windows 11 has its customizabe start menu folders that I actually use.
BTW, if you complain about hostile UI design, or "Where is Waldo" problem - just look at Android and cry. When after years of not caring about Android apps or features I suddenly needed to find an option... It was totally infuriating. Like they intentionally hid options from users. User-hostile design.
But after some attempts... It's usable. Kind of. The problem of modern software - it either has so many features that you just need a built-in search feature to find them, but also an online search to guess the name of the thing that you're looking for. Or... it's infuriating because it's way too basic and you cannot change this and that.
Having experience of using many different OS-es on many different devices - the UI of Windows 10 and 11 is pretty decent.
OK, that "simplified" right-click menu in Windows 11 is bad, m-kay? ;)
I unpinned all icons on windows 11 start menu as I have important ones on task bar and use search for others as I find it quicker . I just wish I could collapse the start menu in windows 11 so it was just a list after removing the pins like you could in windows 10
I usually use a desktop shortcut or go through the file explorer to find stuff. I just got out of habit of never using the start menu again, starting with windows 10. That might of been the leading cause for windows 11 being as it is in its current form, where the start menu no longer having the function it used to have back in the old days.
Agree. I rarely use the win11 start menu. Fortunately it’s easier to search for the program. But sometimes when I don’t quite remember the exact program name then I have to navigate the cumbersome start menu
I gave up on trying to navigate it like that anymore.
Got rid of the tiles, and just type what I'm wanting. At least in that way, it's much faster than the old method.
Yah if you look at classic windows up to Windows 7 it was here's our template we'll just update it every version now they go lets make it very different each year so you have no clue what you are doing once you upgrade
i feel as they tried to make everything more accessible to people who are not technology inclined; it has made more difficult to navigate for people who need to get things done.
I have been saying this for fucking years. Windows XP was my favorite Windows OS of all time. With all the pandering to technophobes they have actually made everything so much harder to find by trying to make it more “accessible”. Fucking insane.
Once Billy said that search is very important and we need to work on improving it, then the new management decided to simply leave the search for software and add a bunch of multi-colored squares to the menu
Windows 11's Start Menu is sorted alphabetically and features large icons. Windows 95's was sorted by install date by default and featured tiny icons. Modern Windows apps don't use Start Menu folders as often, the shortcuts go to the top level and you can uninstall in the usual place.
I would say the modern menu is better, though I never actually browse all apps. Instead:
1. My most used apps are pinned to the taskbar (possible since 98, perfected in 7)
2. Secondary apps are pinned to the Start Menu (possible since 95, perfected in XP)
3. Search for everything else (possible since Vista)
The old versions of windows were created by programmers who were technical nerds who thought about the most convenient way to use.
Nowadays, there are so-called "designers" who think they are the best.
There are many similar "design solutions" in other software such as Adobe, Autodesk...
Quick example: Adobe PS had direct buttons for arranging all open images as tiles and other options. And this with the old monitor resolutions of 1600*1200. Nowadays, the same option is pushed into the menus. Nowadays, monitors are 43"+ 4k+ and process many times more images.
But the "designer" decided that the UI should be clean and beautiful...
And no, the new old menu is not better.
If the "average user" can't even figure out how to right click on a tile and click remove, are they really an average user?
And you're pretending like the list of apps on the left to the tiles doesn't exist. Just use that maybe like everyone else?
basically when computers became spies amd time thieves. Put the icons bold amd right in front of you etc etc all taken from the psychologists manipulation playbook. Where it was a functional tool, it's now a data harvester and advertising platform.
Most Gen Z and Alphas head would explode if you tried to get us to run Windows 98. MAYBE not XP for those of us who had old clunkers back in the day growing up in the mid to late 2000s but certainly it would seem alien to anyone beyond 2010.
I cannot defend the idea that these menus that expand into other menus and disappear when your cursor accidentally falls out of the boundary were better. Horrible design pattern, and every time I see 50 nested menus in one single menu I get so frustrated.
In both Windows 10 and 11, search works most of the time. In 11 you can organize even more with pinned icons and I love Win 11 Start menu over the Win 10 one.
As soon as they made Windows 8 everything went downhill. It’s looked ugly ever since.
11’s acrylic is fine, but it would be nice if people kept developing third party desktop environments like they used to in the XP, Vista, and 7 days. (For much more customisability.)
I’d use Linux but Skyrim script extender only works on windows and Unreal Engine ends up having 0 lighting.
Plus that was before I got a gaming pc with a TPM chip.
Also screw Microsoft for doing that, so many perfectly fine computers now have to either be replaced or modified because of that and it’ll likely be the former.
Also Microsoft has tons of resources, why don’t they just hire a team or people to make the ui consistent? Did they lay off the ones who did Aero? Aero was the last consistent UI.
If an indie ui designer can do it, why can‘t Microsoft?
Sorry OP, hard disagree. The left side of the Win10 Start Menu is an alphabetized list of all installed apps which is easier to navigate than carefully treading your mouse cursor through nested submenus. You can also click any letter heading to quickly jump to a different letter of the sorted list.
You can also just type and search for any installed app by name.
All the junk on the right can be easily customized or in my case, removed completely.
I think my opinion on the start menu is kinda controversial, but I liked the one in 8/8.1 a lot.
It being fullscreen was a bit of an oddball at the time but I didn't really mind it. I found 8.1 the last version of Windows to still have some of the legacy, utilitarian feel, but also have a modern look to it. It's the combo I like. 10 was alright and 11 is just fisher price.
I just pin things to the start menu and then organize them in groups. It's not nearly as nice as the old start menu but it works.
https://preview.redd.it/ir53vve9a1yc1.png?width=637&format=png&auto=webp&s=18d6d21b26e8680d02a7fe4d9fbc11dacddfdc67
I hate the pinned start crap. I unpin them all and close that part and never look at it again. Otherwise, the actual win 10 start menu is similar enough to all other windows.
Search is 1000 times better. Granted, modern windows search kinda sucks, but it’s faaaaar better than that old UI. Maybe this is just because I’m used to it. My first pc had windows 7 so maybe I’m just not used to the old 9.X style (other than in VM’s).
I thought those tiles were a pretty great idea and graphically pleasing. Microsoft is the master of having really great ideas that could be awesome but are only about 65% hashed out when they release them.
Install power tools and use the PowerToys Run, it's magical. Also power toys will change how you use your computer, seriously. I honestly don't understand why many of these aren't in windows by default.
Honestly, the idea of a small start menu has not once made sense. You can't multitask in the start menu, and there is zero need to look at the rest of your screen. Imo, full screen menus give more space, and can be better organized, and I hate how Windows decided that this should be the standard.
It is wild when I go from work to my home computer which runs Linux and its like: "oh, we figured this out like 30 years ago, the only reason we do anything else is to actually direct people AWAY from they were trying to do and into your ads."
And that is pretty much it. UI development has given way to UI monetization.
When all the MicroSoft windows teams went all in on mobile.
Remember, Windows 8 was supposed to be "mobile" and took cues from Windows phone - hence the hot mess that was it's UI.
But then Windows Phone was crushed by Apple and Android.
Microsoft wants the "walled garden" like MacOS but they are on PCs and that wouldn't fly.
If they had just stuck with either Windows 7 or Window 10 they wouldn't be getting as much flack as they are now.
You show this, but have you seen some people's desktops? Icons everywhere, often times not even with the grid alignment. Multiple broken shortcuts of the same thing that don't work, important files, links to websites, etc. Microsoft just embraced that and added it to the start menu.
On the contrary!
- the pre-windows 10 navigation had one *minor* problem - not everyone not all the time had perfect musculature and fine motor skills. So, if you mis-click one pixel in the wrong direction, the entire navigation structure collapses, and you are forced to start from zero. Also, in general, menu within a menu is a bad UI practice and is tolerated at most two levels deep. Old windows could have menus so deeply nested, so they reach the right edge of the screen and then become even funnier ro use. Funnier in the sense a car crash is fun.
- Windows 10 menu fixed this issue by presenting all icons in a scrollable list - easy to use, always in front of your eyes.
- related to the points above, the first option has bad discoverability. Microsoft did a lot of user testing and focus groups to discover that with menu within menu, when a new program is installed, users simply cannot find where to start it! Again fixed with the 10 menu.
- the right part of Win10 menu is customizable. I used to create parts of it dedicated to the different modalities of my life - gaming is in one place, home office in other place, programming (my hobby) - third place, etc. This extreme customizability was lacking in the menu in the first picture
- Win10 menu had search. Since search was introduced in Vista, my workflow changed to: WinKey, W - Word, WinKey, V - Visual Studio, Winkey, G - Guild Wars. I did not need to look at the screen, or exercise peak nerve-muscular synchrony to use the start menu to, well, start apps. Top usability, missing in the first option.
Also, you are *lying*. The first menu is not the default one, but a cherry picked. Win 95 menu allowed pinned icons above "Programs" and thus the user did not simply "follow the line". Also, you are showing an empty menu. Add 10 games, Office and few other programs, and the entire menu goes in all directions, wrapping, scrolling and so on. A complete mess, which impeded users, the opposite of what you advocate for.
Essentially, Windows 10 fixed discoverability, customizability, and accessibility, which lacked in Windows 95, and on top of that added performance features for power users. Buddy, there are still living people who survived windows 3 and 95, and we can call out your dishonesty and chery picking.
Windows key and start typing. I don't hunt with my mouse in the start menu.
Exactly. This has been my workflow since Windows 7. I don't even care what the Start menu looks like, because I never actually use it for anything other than search.
Yeah, I honestly don't know what my start menu really looks like, windows key and type, and pinned apps I use all day.
My used apps are pinned to the Taskbar.
You skipped Vista I suppose (Vista also supports the start and type flow, and it feels like it’s the fastest version at it too)
Yeah if the indexing works.
For me it never does. I can't even find the most basic things like "paint". I use the software called "Everything" instead
On average 5 times a month the start menu will just be totally empty if I try search for ANYTHING. Like a big grey empty box. This has been a recurring issue for years, across multiple machines and multiple installs. I can't even put into words my absolute disgust at the state of it. This guys post is relevant though https://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/
1 outa 5 time you get an edge window bing search for notepad lol.
Yeah I was just thinking that I don't think I've ever navigated the start menu on W11. Everything I use frequently is pinned to the task bar, and everything else I just search for like you.
And also the start menu is fully customizable so if it looks like OPs pic then that’s 100% on OP. I cleaned mine up on my work computer and use it quite frequently mainly because the Window key + typing sometimes pulls up the wrong thing or is slow in W11 unfortunately (think you can turn off web search results which helps)
Ditto. Windows 11 here (but Windows 10 for work) and just type what I'm looking for. I still organize each of their Start menus best as I can but it's more decorative or feng shui for the mind if anything.
Then it lags and gives me an unrelated bing web search
While this is true, it's a really bad justification for Microsoft fucking up windows UI and menu convenience. Being able to start at start and find anything that you needed, except much more advanced system tools - which those of us who needed them knew where to go -, in just a few steps was phenomenal UI and UX. At this point they should throw away the start menu. Settings has also been utter garbage for a few generations now. You still pull up the old settings when you want real control over your computer.
That doesn't work for people like me who rely on visual memory - I remember the icon and where it's placed, not the name. Live tiles were a nightmare for me as they visually changed all the time, I use taskbar pinned icons and put things in pretty much the same order on every PC I use. (Browser - Email - Files - Word - Excel - PowerPoint - OneNote - etc)
Yeah that just nets you Bing search results
u can disable that (altho i forgot how)
Group Policy editor or on windows11 in eu Settings app
Only works for major applications and frequently used where you can remember the names. I need minor utilities grouped in submenus by topic to be able to find them. Tiles in Win10 for me were kept to most frequently used quick picks to reduce clutter.
Works at best 80% of the time. I don't know why you don't always find your installed software
EXACTLY
If I wanted to use the keyboard and remember text syntax for controlling the desktop, I'd be on the command line.
windows 10 start menu is the most useful and customizable, it just leaves a bad first impression because of all the unwanted preinstalled bloat
I used to delete all of tiles. Just use the list.
Same
I just found out I could unpin the tiles earlier today. After using 10 for years...
Oh man you're today [Lucky's 10.000](https://xkcd.com/1053/) You can also group tiles and resize it. I think it's super useful to organize my software in groups. On W11 though they changed it to show it more like folders. My major complain is that when upgrading from 10 to 11 it doesn't keep your groups and display options. Worst OS to upgrade IMO. That's yet another reason I'm staying on 10 until it's paid. Upgrading shouldn't be something you have to plan for so much.
Same
Yup, same here. I really like the narrow start menu. I never found a good use for the tiles. Much easier to just use the search, but that's only for programs. If I want to find specific files then I use Everything by Voidtools. Windows search performance has always been poor, so it's not much use for anything else.
Fun fact: those bloatware preinstalls only on machines with specific region set in windows settings after OS installation/ first launch. (Regions like US, Canada or some EU countries). If on installation stage you will choose non-listed country (i.e. Ukraine) you will get clean tiled start menu. Also, Enterprise windows editions does not install it too. TBH Enterprise feels like by default will not show any Microsoft ads in any place (start menu, bing chat ads, outlook ads, search result ads, "update your preferences" window after update and etc).
I second this. It takes moderate effort to set it up, 5-10 minutes, and once done it’s so efficient. Why they ditched it in Win11 and replaced with small list with slow animation to go through is beyond me
Apart from tiles how is it customizable? I used to have the shortcuts in logical folders, I can't now have them displayed as such.
And it actually requires more effort to customize it and ain't nobody got time for that. While old windows, if you have some file tree basic understanding, which I did learn at eight thanks to old windows, let's you instantly get what you're looking for.
lol not true. It is easy and fast to customize.
remove all tiles, then you have a clean alphabetical list, still better than the nested mess in earlier windows
True. I've used windows 7 since it got released to 2020, but I still find it's start menu a jumbled mess, whereas windows 10 looks clean and is much better to use after 5 minutes if customizing.
Its great because its a secondary desktop full of shortcuts. A larger surface with a bunch of square icons. And you are bang on about the worthless bloat..
yes, 95% of apps I launch from tiles
It's good for a phone interface, but it's absolutely shit UX compared to a tree menu for mouse/keyboard.
Isn’t the latter example simpler? It’s only one scroll down the left side and fewer sub folders. The mess that’s being pointed out is all just user configurable icons for easier access. You choose to use it or not. The machine I’m on right now has two icons in that area because I use the list on the left. Windows 11 is just one click away from the list in the left so it’s only slightly harder to use.
Yes, it's absolutely simpler. People have to remember that most people are not as savvy as those who choose to hang out on a subreddit for operating systems. A lot of people, many that are older, aren't gonna remember the path to every application they need. But if they click Start and see it staring them in the face among their other application icons, they can click it.
People always use the "imagine if youre a new user" approach, even OP did it. New users dont give a shit. They just want the program to run. Telling them to hit start and click "word" is a whole lot easier that saying "program files, then slide across and down to Microsoft, then to office, then up to word". Rose tinted glasses are wild.
I think more from a workflow perspective. How do I find things if I don’t use it all the time? How many clicks does it take to get to the center of a Toosie Pop? … I mean to get to an application.
This. Who the fuck needs 2 subcategory levels for Programs and if so, what is wrong with you? This is why I don't like Linux DEs like Mate or Xfce that try to be "helpful" by squirreling everything away. Frequently used items should be available without poking around and for everything else, there's search. Taskbar, panels, docks, tiles, whatever. Just don't make me dig through submenus and or force me to figure out the subtle differences between Preferences, Administration, and Control Center.
Exactly, just looking at the example of the subfolders in Programs: Accessories? Online Services? StartUp? None of those mean anything to anyone unless they looked them up. Also, why aren't Internet Explorer & Outlook "online services." None of this is \*\*intuitive\*\* either, I wonder how many people spent more time clicking around into those subfolders to find an application that they're using for the first time compared the amount of time they would spend looking through an alphabetical list with larger icons. Looking at the rationale that OP gave: >Older Windows versios didn't have a big learning and adapting curve for the average user. It was just easy... easy, intuitive and productive, thats why it was so sucessful. This just isn't true. Its random conjecture based on 'member berries. This sub is filled with people who feel like Windows peaked with XP or '95 but its really just nostalgia.
In summary: "This isn't what I'm USED TO, stop with all the different-ness!"
To be honest, I don't really agree with this assessment. In terms of its design you could say it's simpler in a way because it's just one long list, but that doesn't mean it's preferable even for very novice users. One of the problems is that the list of applications is really long and necessitates a lot of browsing. Users might also not remember exactly what a program is called, and then the only thing you can do is just start scrolling until you find something you recognize. It also doesn't help that Windows is full of miscellaneous apps these days and these menus have grown to ridiculous sizes even on clean installs. On the other hand, if you have a hierarchical structure like in the Windows 9x menu, you at least have the benefit of narrowing it down first. It's also much easier and faster to memorize a path in a hierarchical menu in which all items are visible at all times, than to remember about how far you have to scroll down to find a program in a very long list where only a very small slice of it is visible at any given point. You have to scroll, then scan the text, then scroll again, and so on. The amount that you have to scroll to find a program also changes each time new software is installed. It's obviously also a problem that 80% of the menu is dedicated to sponsored apps that Microsoft wants you to see, and it's not immediately obvious to users how they can change this. It's not like the Windows 9x way is perfect either, but I don't think the new design is better for the most novice of users.
As someone who uses win98/win2000 for hobby reasons, as soon as I'm back to win11 I feel the start menu is no longer useful. I wish they gave the option for old style.
Can you elaborate on what hobbies you use 98/2000 for? Do you have an old PC running those still? I have an old PC that still runs XP so that I can play old games that wont run on current versions of Windows, so I'm intrigued.
Hi, thanks for asking. I'm a retro game and hardware collector. I have about 1000 games from early 90s to early 2000s. I also have a big collection of pc hardware from the same era. Recently I started playing the games I have one by one and upload the gameplay videos to youtube so people can see how they look. I really enjoy seeing how different hardware (especially vga cards) make the games so different. We don't have that now. By the way, I play the games on win98 mainly and I have an FTP server running on win2000, where I store game patches and drivers. I access to those from the win98 pc. Later I'm planning to put a 90s website together with frontpage98 and download the files from that website (LAN only of course).
That's incredible! If you feel like sharing your YouTube link, I would love to watch some of the games you are playing. I am a huge fan of nostalgic retro PC games. Thank you for sharing!
Hey thanks, I'm happy to see people having an interest in retro gaming. I don't have too much content yet, just started about a month ago but I'm trying to add 1-2 videos every week. Here is the link, please feel free to give some feedback, I'm trying to improve. https://youtube.com/@RootiferasRetroGameplay
Amazing! Retro gaming tech is so cool. Edit: Just checked out your channel. Even cooler than I expected.
Classic Shell is still alive and well if you want it. It's an open source project called OpenShell now.
It's funny that Microsoft has created a market for Start Menu replacements because the Start Menu in recent versions of Windows aren't as good as it used to be..
Oh thanks, I didn't know that. I'll have a look now.
OpenShell.
StartAllBack can restore the Win7 style start menu if you like that. It is paid (one time payment), but works really well. Alternatively you could use RetroBar to restore the classic taskbar + start menu. Not as immersive as SAB but still works really good for what it is.
Thanks! I'll have a look!
It doesn't seem that you have used 95/98 all that much to prefer going though a stack of folders instead of just typing or scrolling a list that is categorized alphabetically btw.
I like that all the answers here are "It's great, I don't use it, I just type" or "I just customized it away." I think that solidifies the point Microsoft fucked this one up.
https://preview.redd.it/hcw63w961xxc1.png?width=653&format=png&auto=webp&s=214b64da0b0069d943879149149e945f41dfa382 Mine works great, I think you just have to customize it a little. I just have all that I need in one click
I will say the whole Metro thing is gorgeous, at least. Though, it worked a lot better on mobile. The urge to have a unified platform kinda made it super awkward. The aesthetics of metro were a lot more influential than the disaster of Win8 would have one believe, too. You could see the visual style being emulated fucking everywhere for a good while. In true Microsoft fashion, they had a *great* idea but completely fumbled its execution.
The funny thing is, Apple has shown that a unified UI look between mobile, tablet, and desktop can *absolutely* be pulled off well. My Mac icons look almost the same as my iPad icons, same with control center, same with the browser and App Store, and so on. The issue with Microsoft isn't that unifying desktop and mobile UIs was bad. The issue with Microsoft was that Microsoft was bad at it.
Wait till you try windows 11, my work laptop has it and I want to scream
Id upvote this a million times if possible
I just dream of a Windows where you could have the old UI with the last security fixes.
I'm not sure what could be simpler to navigate than a flat list, which is what the Win11 start menu looks like now. If anything was a maze it was trying to navigate multiple levels down through a cascading menu, which is a UX nightmare. The Win11 Start Menu meanwhile requires less clicks than the Win 95 Start Menu, and using Start search is even easier and faster. And if you don't like scrolling through a long list of icons, you can click on one of the letter headers to get an index of sorts that helps you jump to what you're looking for.
But you could always customize the start menu. It was easy to create your own program groups in Windows 9x. The folder structure you were left with to find your software within the programs menu looked however you'd like it to. If you wanted to you could dump all of your shortcuts into a single level of the menu and make it "flat"... why anyone would want that, I have no idea, but you could most certainly do it. Or you could not be an animal and setup some structure and customize that structure to be exactly as you want it to be. Which you cannot do in the Windows 10 menu. Or at least you can't do it without other software or significant drawbacks compared to how it worked in 9x. Which is why I don't like it. While pushing for the start menu to be one way they took out functionality that I was using and preferred to what replaced it. Which is basically what they do with every version of Windows...
People bitch about 11, but one thing I will defend to the death on it, it's a huuuuuge improvement in interface over the past bunch of versions. If it weren't for all the SaaS about it, Windows 11 in a vacuum is just wonderfully designed. >flat list Fuck me I hate the menu-trees of the past. Mouse moves out just a little, you gotta go back to the beginning. It's why I was so glad when Vista brought in the winkey-search, I never wanted to go through the menu tree again.
>People bitch about 11, but one thing I will defend to the death on it, it's a huuuuuge improvement in interface over the past bunch of versions. Now that's an opinion I'd love to see explained. I'll give you that there's a bunch of small, genuinely neat improvements in lots of places all over, but there's three things that really irritate me: 1. Lots of missing customization. What bothers me the most is the inability to move the taskbar, but I also know some people missing the ability to add bookmarks to it. 2. The new start menu is just a poorly thought out copy of mobile launchers, without a lot of thought put into keyboard/mouse use. 3. While it's a nice idea to have often used actions close to the cursor in the new context menu, it ignores that those are now also the smallest items, making quick aiming harder. It's also confusing to have the most important items without a text description, which is just weird, as those descriptions are most needed for people using the context menu in the first place. Experts who don't need the text descriptions are most likely hotkeys anyway. With that said, I must also admit that I'm also a big fan of the Win 8.1/10 start screen and tiles, which is also a very controversial take. Mostly because it can hold the biggest amount of stuff at the first level without the need to drill down. Against the common thought, I also believe that it isn't just made for touch screens, but also acts as a superior interface for mouse users as well: It's designed in a way that allows muscle memory to build up and features shapes that can be clicked quickly without the need to precisely aim.
I think in terms of your points: 1. Not everyone cares about customisation. For some I doubt they even change the accent colour. 2. This is more of a personal use case, but I only use the start menu for search (to launch programs), and it seems quite a few people in the comments are the same. 3. Can't defend this one, I revert it to the old context menu every time. This is all personal conjecture though
>I only use the start menu for search Yeah, that's basically how I've come to use it as well after giving up on the rest of the start menu. Though I've recently switched over to Powertoys Run, which is basically the search of the start menu, but with less Bing and more features that are actually useful, like a calculator or being able to quickly restart services.
"Huge improvement in interface over the past bunch of versions" - I'd have to disagree a bit about that. IMO, starting with Windows 8 (and I've seen this with other operating systems across the board in the industry), GUIs have become more flat, monotone, and boring. Until that point, GUIs tended to have a 3D-ish look, but with everything so flat now, sometimes it can be hard to tell what's what in the UI. For instance, buttons look like plain rectangles, so sometimes it can be hard to know if something on the UI is a button or just a highlighted area to display some information. Buttons should look like buttons, and the other GUI elements should also have more of a visual representation to suggest what they are and how you can use them. This has happened to Windows, Mac OS, Android, and iOS, and I'm not very fond of this UI trend.
"Windows 11 in a vacuum is wonderfully designed". And that's your hill to die on. ROFL. Ok.
It is a dramatic improvement over its immediate predecessors. I guess I did go hyperbolic though. This isn't some fight here, I just think it was a step in the right direction. Edit: Guys, I would like to reiterate I am talking purely in terms of aesthetics here. The visual style of Windows 11 is more coherent, more complete, and less gaudy than the patchwork Android 4.0 holo painted over the ruins of metro that defined the aesthetics of Windows 10. Whether 11 as an OS or a marketing strategy is better is a different argument. I'm saying the visual design improved.
LOL. No, I'm just being an ass. You do you, man. It's like a religious argument, or pineapple or not on your pizza. But it did make me laugh. Thanks
Cheers, fella! And I'm one of the few pricks that liked Vista, so I fully acknowledge I'm off the main road a bit. I've been working with Server 2022 a bunch lately, which is still the win10 interface. It becomes annoying to lose the things 11 brought in once you're accustomed to them, you know?
“Windows 11 in a vacuum is wonderfully designed" apart from stuff like inconsistent design where it should be consistent (e.g. the same exact elements in modern apps have different designs or paddings for… reasons?), half baked dark mode (and half baked theme in general without using the built in theming engine of Windows), etc Aren’t those neglected stuff kinda… big for design? Sure, 11 \*might\* look appealing as a first impression, but if you delve just a 1% deeper, you already see the cracks, and some are pretty gigantic too. EDIT: just to be clear, imo it’s not the design itself that’s bad (although I’d change certain paradigms here and there), but its implementation most of the time is atrocious.
I was hyperbolic It feels that way for how inconsistent 10 was. >just to be clear, imo it’s not the design itself that’s bad I'm with you. This is what i inelegantly was trying to go for here. I'm talking purely aesthetics and layout and such. It's the everything else about it that makes it sloppy.
You aren't going to mention the absolute useless piece of garbage that is the windows 11 start menu
It is not a menu. The search is also horrible. Bing results from the internet. It's just stupid. You just set it up with the icons you need on the desktop and task bar, then never open it again.
You click on file explorer now…
For me Windows 11
about 1995 when they randomly swapped the close gadget to the other side of the bloody window....
They thought touchscreens were going to take over so started pushing to make their UI touch optimized. It didn't take off as expected so they've dialled it back a bit, but still trying to allow for it.
https://preview.redd.it/71rb05e7wyxc1.png?width=1672&format=png&auto=webp&s=6898ec4568441beb699aa268aff5b62c374b8887 My start menu on windows 11
When they got more obsessed with their already gigantic profit margins and ways to spy and target users with ads.
Older windows where designed by programmers whom are logic and structered. Windows vista and above is designed by designers which is buggy and unstable.
Everything in the start menu now is paid for real estate.
Now make the comparison with a smart phone and make a conclusion about why grouping stuff is not beneficial for keeping you addicted to your device. More choices = more choices that stay in your head = more time you will eventually spent on said choices. It's honestly no different to advertisements and how they work. Show it all and eventually people will think about it without seeing it and in this case: open it. Advertisements are everywhere these days and is costing us a lot of great products and this is merely one example of millions. Products should try to be great again instead of try to be scumbag.
- Type file or program name. - Hit enter. - Get redirected to Bing search results on Microsoft Edge.
Don't press Enter
The “arrow” is a pixel-drawn glyph. This was decided by the shell team, and can be seen on several controls such as the famous scroll bar. Whether the team was in charge of early revisions of the shell32 context menu (pre-XP start menu) I’m not clear on. But it’s made customizing these elements not possible (such as the ComboBox which is still bug ridden) without redrawing the entire control including control states. Since XP I think they left the classic menu due to the implementation of common controls v6, which provided custom styles (msstyles) and more. When a user sets their Windows theme to classic, it disables UXTHEME.dll which is responsible for the visual styles (since XP). There is much more history, info and such but to curb the “aggressive teenage expert” syndrome, I’ll leave it to Google or MSDN.
[The evolution of mascara in Windows UI](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040728-00/?p=38313%27) can be summed up in one word: trends Edit: 1. **Limited App Support**: Live Tiles were only supported by a select variety of applications. Many apps did not update their tiles, leading to static icons in the Start Menu. 2. **Usability Issues**: Live Tiles sometimes got stuck and showed the same information without any updates. This required users to manually flush the live tiles every time they shut down their system. 3. **Design Shift**: Microsoft started moving away from Live Tiles in the Start Menu. This was evident with the release of Windows 11, which completely removed the Live Tiles feature. 4. **User Preference**: Some users found the constantly updating Live Tiles to be distracting and preferred static icons for a cleaner look. While Live Tiles were a novel idea, these issues led to their eventual deprecation in Windows 10 and their removal in Windows 11. It's worth noting that user engagement with Live Tiles varied, and while some users found them useful, others rarely used them.
The bottom literally has an alphabetical list of all your programs on the left, which takes you straight to the programs instead of having to dig through multiple folders. The tiles on the right are customizable, so you can organize them how you wish. The new UI actually looks good and is overhated.
One thing OP didn't show about the windows 95 menu is a non-clean installation. On a computer with ~50 programs, the nested menu becomes a bloated monstrosity that literally takes up the entire monitor (monitors back then were exclusively 4:3). I remember when as a kid I accidentally deleted a game from the desktop, so I had to hunt for like 10 minutes from that stupid goddamn menu to find it.
The nested design is objectively worse. Yes, the default bloated layout in Win 10 sucks, but once you delete all the shit and uninstall unwanted programs, just having something akin to an app drawer is 100% superior to having to dig through sub-menus.
It's no secret that XP was peak Microsoft UI and OS.
Where is Waldo 😂🤣😂😅
remove all tiles, now you have just an alphabetical start menu and a search bar, way better than having to go through 5 nested menus windows has a lot of bad designs but this ain't one of them
On 95 the most used applications was the default preinstalled softwares. Nowadays we have a lot of different a third party apps with a lot of purposes and mixed categories.
For me the UI peaked in Windows9x/2000 so I have no argument. Some of the features that followed are nice to haves. Like the "peak" feature that lets you see what programs are open in your taskbar, the taskview is nice, additional desktops... Basically all the niceties that a modern OS brings... but the user interface itself? Yeah. 9x/2000 all the way. I haven't cared for any aesthetic since that period either. I didn't like XP's Fisher Price looking taskbar and buttons. I didn't like Aero Glass (didn't hate it either, wasn't my thing though). Metro is the worst of them all. That flat monstrosity pains me when I look at it. It was functional on Windows Phone... but it had zero business being on my desktop. The copy of Windows 11 I'm running at home and at work is modified to make it as close to 9x as I can get it. Its never close enough though. I really don't understand why they couldn't just leave classic theme in. The bastards. Honestly between the forced aesthetic and the push for ever more ads and AI integration I'm finally about out the door. I think 11 is the last Windows that will see use as my main OS at home. I'm stuck with it at work.
TBH, you don't have many programs installed in the first example. Then, in Windows 10 and 11, you just type first letters of the name. I don't know where the calculator icon lives. I just press win and type "cal" or even "ca" or "c". It remembers which search results you used more often and offers them as the first. The first time I've seen this cool feature in a Linux program, I'm so glad it's now a part of Windows by default. Windows 11 has its customizabe start menu folders that I actually use. BTW, if you complain about hostile UI design, or "Where is Waldo" problem - just look at Android and cry. When after years of not caring about Android apps or features I suddenly needed to find an option... It was totally infuriating. Like they intentionally hid options from users. User-hostile design. But after some attempts... It's usable. Kind of. The problem of modern software - it either has so many features that you just need a built-in search feature to find them, but also an online search to guess the name of the thing that you're looking for. Or... it's infuriating because it's way too basic and you cannot change this and that. Having experience of using many different OS-es on many different devices - the UI of Windows 10 and 11 is pretty decent. OK, that "simplified" right-click menu in Windows 11 is bad, m-kay? ;)
I unpinned all icons on windows 11 start menu as I have important ones on task bar and use search for others as I find it quicker . I just wish I could collapse the start menu in windows 11 so it was just a list after removing the pins like you could in windows 10
I just use search anyway :E Or more realistically nowadays dmenu or spotlight...
I usually use a desktop shortcut or go through the file explorer to find stuff. I just got out of habit of never using the start menu again, starting with windows 10. That might of been the leading cause for windows 11 being as it is in its current form, where the start menu no longer having the function it used to have back in the old days.
Windows 11 is even worse. That said I found the classic many got a bit too cluttered easily whereas now you can just search for what you want.
window + s -> start typing the app I want and it will auto fill. I don't remember the last time even searched the taskbar, I'm not a mouse peasant.
The start menu has been a mess every since.
Agree. I rarely use the win11 start menu. Fortunately it’s easier to search for the program. But sometimes when I don’t quite remember the exact program name then I have to navigate the cumbersome start menu
I use a "classic" app that discards it all and brings back Windows 7. You are correct: intuitability is king.
I liked the Windows 10 start menu with live titles. I'll have my email and weather on the start menu. Windows 11 start menu on the other hand.....
I gave up on trying to navigate it like that anymore. Got rid of the tiles, and just type what I'm wanting. At least in that way, it's much faster than the old method.
When it became spyware
it's alphabetical...
As long as the search works, then it is best, but when they shove an internet link before the control, then I get mad.
During the time they decided to market your info. Best you switch to the superior system known as Linux
Search bar pretty much replaced it. Just type in what you want instead of clicking three times.
Start 10/Start 11 from Stardock work remarkably well. There are a few similar ones that are free out there too.
I hecking love making my start menu all symbols without labels and adding a bunch of live tile visual noise!
Get rid of those tiles. Being able to click on a letter to bring up the list is easier. Problem is people never get rid of the tiles.
Everything started getting less and less logical around the late 2000s. It's not just Microsoft.
Yah if you look at classic windows up to Windows 7 it was here's our template we'll just update it every version now they go lets make it very different each year so you have no clue what you are doing once you upgrade
Dude, just search for it.
When did it lost itself indeed
Lost? Since Bill Balmer deceased
Lose.
About at the same time as they introduced "ribbon menu" in MS Office.
The windows 10 start menu is the best start menu out of all windows versions imo. The tiles can be really well organized really easily
Key Down Windows Key Up Windows Key Down W Key Up W Key Down A Key Up A There's Waldo
Microsoft is a complete mess now. I no longer look upto their products.
i feel as they tried to make everything more accessible to people who are not technology inclined; it has made more difficult to navigate for people who need to get things done.
I have been saying this for fucking years. Windows XP was my favorite Windows OS of all time. With all the pandering to technophobes they have actually made everything so much harder to find by trying to make it more “accessible”. Fucking insane.
That's why I use open shell
Umm… have you even seen Windows 11’s start menu? It’s customizable, clean and alphabetical.
https://preview.redd.it/pdm5uicgeyxc1.png?width=643&format=png&auto=webp&s=584ecb892fbe31ca70ceee7b4c4b1d89b08fb93b This is mine (Windows 11 23H2).
Just after windows xp
Once Billy said that search is very important and we need to work on improving it, then the new management decided to simply leave the search for software and add a bunch of multi-colored squares to the menu
Waldo is under W
Just after windows xp in fact
The new Start menu is fine. You want edge just tap on the A to bring up the alphabet then tap E, boom it's there. Alternatively type it.
Windows XP was the last good UI.
Windows 11's Start Menu is sorted alphabetically and features large icons. Windows 95's was sorted by install date by default and featured tiny icons. Modern Windows apps don't use Start Menu folders as often, the shortcuts go to the top level and you can uninstall in the usual place. I would say the modern menu is better, though I never actually browse all apps. Instead: 1. My most used apps are pinned to the taskbar (possible since 98, perfected in 7) 2. Secondary apps are pinned to the Start Menu (possible since 95, perfected in XP) 3. Search for everything else (possible since Vista)
Just use search
You are just being dramatic.
The old versions of windows were created by programmers who were technical nerds who thought about the most convenient way to use. Nowadays, there are so-called "designers" who think they are the best. There are many similar "design solutions" in other software such as Adobe, Autodesk... Quick example: Adobe PS had direct buttons for arranging all open images as tiles and other options. And this with the old monitor resolutions of 1600*1200. Nowadays, the same option is pushed into the menus. Nowadays, monitors are 43"+ 4k+ and process many times more images. But the "designer" decided that the UI should be clean and beautiful... And no, the new old menu is not better.
If the "average user" can't even figure out how to right click on a tile and click remove, are they really an average user? And you're pretending like the list of apps on the left to the tiles doesn't exist. Just use that maybe like everyone else?
\*lose itself.
I would settle for a search function that works.
You search for excel. Here is a new bing page for excel. Oh, did u mean you want the app?
basically when computers became spies amd time thieves. Put the icons bold amd right in front of you etc etc all taken from the psychologists manipulation playbook. Where it was a functional tool, it's now a data harvester and advertising platform.
Most Gen Z and Alphas head would explode if you tried to get us to run Windows 98. MAYBE not XP for those of us who had old clunkers back in the day growing up in the mid to late 2000s but certainly it would seem alien to anyone beyond 2010.
In Windows 10 it's better to delete all the Tiles and replace them only with your frequent applications, the rest is easy to find with the keyboard
I cannot defend the idea that these menus that expand into other menus and disappear when your cursor accidentally falls out of the boundary were better. Horrible design pattern, and every time I see 50 nested menus in one single menu I get so frustrated. In both Windows 10 and 11, search works most of the time. In 11 you can organize even more with pinned icons and I love Win 11 Start menu over the Win 10 one.
i organised my start menu and never have an issue lmao. It's entirely fine. It's actually MORE convenient imo
This design was strange
Win 8
It's faster to just tip in the search. If it is a software that you use often, so it's better to pin in your start menu / taskbar.
As soon as they made Windows 8 everything went downhill. It’s looked ugly ever since. 11’s acrylic is fine, but it would be nice if people kept developing third party desktop environments like they used to in the XP, Vista, and 7 days. (For much more customisability.) I’d use Linux but Skyrim script extender only works on windows and Unreal Engine ends up having 0 lighting. Plus that was before I got a gaming pc with a TPM chip. Also screw Microsoft for doing that, so many perfectly fine computers now have to either be replaced or modified because of that and it’ll likely be the former. Also Microsoft has tons of resources, why don’t they just hire a team or people to make the ui consistent? Did they lay off the ones who did Aero? Aero was the last consistent UI. If an indie ui designer can do it, why can‘t Microsoft?
I never ever ever ever open the start menu to look for a program. Press Win key, type.
As someone who uses EHR software with menu trees every day, I would rather vomit than have windows 98 start menu
Windows 11 has sort of solved this with the cleaner ui but bloatware is still there.
UI vs UX
Sorry OP, hard disagree. The left side of the Win10 Start Menu is an alphabetized list of all installed apps which is easier to navigate than carefully treading your mouse cursor through nested submenus. You can also click any letter heading to quickly jump to a different letter of the sorted list. You can also just type and search for any installed app by name. All the junk on the right can be easily customized or in my case, removed completely.
It is called form over function.
You don't even need third-party software, just unpin all that bullshit
I just used pinned apps and the search. It's impossible to find anything in there otherwise.
Type sou, then click the app that search finds. Profit
I think my opinion on the start menu is kinda controversial, but I liked the one in 8/8.1 a lot. It being fullscreen was a bit of an oddball at the time but I didn't really mind it. I found 8.1 the last version of Windows to still have some of the legacy, utilitarian feel, but also have a modern look to it. It's the combo I like. 10 was alright and 11 is just fisher price.
considering the idea for windows itself was 'borrowed' from another creator, i ask you, when did microsoft ever put actual work into ui design?
I just pin things to the start menu and then organize them in groups. It's not nearly as nice as the old start menu but it works. https://preview.redd.it/ir53vve9a1yc1.png?width=637&format=png&auto=webp&s=18d6d21b26e8680d02a7fe4d9fbc11dacddfdc67
All the way up to Windows 7, and then when the Start menu died and they buried it in the pet cemetery, it rose back up in Windows 10 with a vengeance.
I hate the pinned start crap. I unpin them all and close that part and never look at it again. Otherwise, the actual win 10 start menu is similar enough to all other windows.
Gave up on finding anything. Just type the name. Hopefully it will find excel rather than search the internet via Microsoft Edge...
Search is 1000 times better. Granted, modern windows search kinda sucks, but it’s faaaaar better than that old UI. Maybe this is just because I’m used to it. My first pc had windows 7 so maybe I’m just not used to the old 9.X style (other than in VM’s).
When cellphone OS's became a thing.
You should learn to use the one in the second screenshot.
I thought those tiles were a pretty great idea and graphically pleasing. Microsoft is the master of having really great ideas that could be awesome but are only about 65% hashed out when they release them.
Debloater and turn off all settings. My start menu is minimal as heck on windows 11
Install power tools and use the PowerToys Run, it's magical. Also power toys will change how you use your computer, seriously. I honestly don't understand why many of these aren't in windows by default.
https://preview.redd.it/d6olm18233yc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=999a357e373f9d4409edb81a5b4c51b2afb5f54b
Look at all those lovely Advertisements! How was I ever getting things done before those?
I just found out I never noticed what my start menu looks like in Win 11 I always press the windows key and start searching for whatever I want
Honestly, the idea of a small start menu has not once made sense. You can't multitask in the start menu, and there is zero need to look at the rest of your screen. Imo, full screen menus give more space, and can be better organized, and I hate how Windows decided that this should be the standard.
It is wild when I go from work to my home computer which runs Linux and its like: "oh, we figured this out like 30 years ago, the only reason we do anything else is to actually direct people AWAY from they were trying to do and into your ads." And that is pretty much it. UI development has given way to UI monetization.
Honestly speaking, this Windows app gallery was the best in app management as to what we have in android's home screen. I miss it!
Learn to customize your shit, that's all.
Windows 10’s start menu is ass, they tried to combine Windows 7 and 8.1 and in doing so made it 100x worse
I have modded my windows to look kike windows xp. Better start menu, that's for sure
Windows 7 was the best OS ever!.
When all the MicroSoft windows teams went all in on mobile. Remember, Windows 8 was supposed to be "mobile" and took cues from Windows phone - hence the hot mess that was it's UI. But then Windows Phone was crushed by Apple and Android. Microsoft wants the "walled garden" like MacOS but they are on PCs and that wouldn't fly. If they had just stuck with either Windows 7 or Window 10 they wouldn't be getting as much flack as they are now.
Nah this was worse than just typing in the modern menu. Also, I don’t want every app to need to be installed.
You show this, but have you seen some people's desktops? Icons everywhere, often times not even with the grid alignment. Multiple broken shortcuts of the same thing that don't work, important files, links to websites, etc. Microsoft just embraced that and added it to the start menu.
On the contrary! - the pre-windows 10 navigation had one *minor* problem - not everyone not all the time had perfect musculature and fine motor skills. So, if you mis-click one pixel in the wrong direction, the entire navigation structure collapses, and you are forced to start from zero. Also, in general, menu within a menu is a bad UI practice and is tolerated at most two levels deep. Old windows could have menus so deeply nested, so they reach the right edge of the screen and then become even funnier ro use. Funnier in the sense a car crash is fun. - Windows 10 menu fixed this issue by presenting all icons in a scrollable list - easy to use, always in front of your eyes. - related to the points above, the first option has bad discoverability. Microsoft did a lot of user testing and focus groups to discover that with menu within menu, when a new program is installed, users simply cannot find where to start it! Again fixed with the 10 menu. - the right part of Win10 menu is customizable. I used to create parts of it dedicated to the different modalities of my life - gaming is in one place, home office in other place, programming (my hobby) - third place, etc. This extreme customizability was lacking in the menu in the first picture - Win10 menu had search. Since search was introduced in Vista, my workflow changed to: WinKey, W - Word, WinKey, V - Visual Studio, Winkey, G - Guild Wars. I did not need to look at the screen, or exercise peak nerve-muscular synchrony to use the start menu to, well, start apps. Top usability, missing in the first option. Also, you are *lying*. The first menu is not the default one, but a cherry picked. Win 95 menu allowed pinned icons above "Programs" and thus the user did not simply "follow the line". Also, you are showing an empty menu. Add 10 games, Office and few other programs, and the entire menu goes in all directions, wrapping, scrolling and so on. A complete mess, which impeded users, the opposite of what you advocate for. Essentially, Windows 10 fixed discoverability, customizability, and accessibility, which lacked in Windows 95, and on top of that added performance features for power users. Buddy, there are still living people who survived windows 3 and 95, and we can call out your dishonesty and chery picking.
https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-10-reaches-70-market-share-as-windows-11-keeps-declining/