6 ms·

Now I'd like to know why Task Manager got rewritten in Windows 8. I liked the old one better; it was lighter and faster than the current one. Disclosure: I wor

Now I'd like to know why Task Manager got rewritten in Windows 8. I liked the old one better; it was lighter and faster than the current one. Disclosure: I work at Microsoft, on the Windows accessibility team. But I didn't join until a couple years after Windows 10's initial release.

deadso 6y ago
Why do you think it got rewritten? Obviously the UI has changed, but the reddit post indicating that it can run without shell32.dll makes me think it was rewritten with a nicely decoupled UI and that is what got updated in later iterations. If you work at MS, it would be cool to find the last person to push a change to that code base and ask them. Or maybe we can reply to the reddit post.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
I'm tempted to reply it's because MS are spiteful tossers but actually (despite that being true) there's a bigger problem. MS used to be pretty good at interfaces - true, they really did - but on & after win8 they just forgot that UIs are not there to look 'cool' and 'awesome' but to simply to help users get shit done.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  It's weird because Win8 looks like quite the opposite of "cool", at least in my view. And their interface is actually somewhat helpful on touch-based devices, but other OS's do a way better job of having a unified interface for 'touch' and 'keyboard+mouse' input.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    > but other OS's do a way better job of having a unified interface for 'touch' and 'keyboard+mouse' input. What are you thinking of? IOS? Android? GNOME? KDE? OSX? Windows isn't perfect at this stuff, but it's honestly the best experience I've had with a 2 in 1 (Tablet with extra keyboard + touchpad). GNOME is close, but the UI arrangement is stupid (ok, it's worse on Windows, but I digress), pen right click doesn't work and the on screen keyboard is like from another universe (it also doesn't seem to be made for people with mice, but I digress again ...). On Windows I can set the keyboard to mini-mode (floats around in a small window) and slide on it with a pen, getting about the same input speed as when typing. It's quite amazing. It's just a shame that there's Windows around it.
    - lstamour 6y ago
      Windows is good, yes. Especially for compatibility with standard desktop apps and new form factors like pen, handwriting, etc. But iPad with touchpad now is also good—better, perhaps, than the Pencil’s OS integration. Presumably the standardization of App Store categories means MacOS and iOS will align eventually as much as Windows modern and native apps can on the same (“desktop”) system. Both platforms and Chrome want app authors adapting new features, but developers generally implement what’s easiest/appropriate for their codebase, so... I think the next big leap in UI will be when AI recognizes and labels patterns in complex code for more advanced refactoring...
- diamondo25 6y ago
  Wasn't Vista where they went all-in with animations and blurs, like Windows Aero?
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    First thing I did on pretty much every new computer was turn all of that off. And in windows 8 found some hack to restore something resembling a "start" menu. Windows 10 hasn't bothered me enough in that regard to go digging for the settings to kill visual effects.
  - birdyrooster 6y ago
    And the useless Windows Experience Index. Like they thought developers would ship software with a single WEI for minimum and recommended requirements.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  Seems like Win8 was them trying to push the mobile style UIs onto people even though they were using a Desktop/Laptop. I remember in Win8, the calculator would take up the whole screen, similar to the way it does on an IPhone. I could never understand how such a usability atrocity got past Redmond.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    https://www.pcworld.com/article/257840/microsoft_announces_new_surface_tablet_pc.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/257840/microsoft_announces_n...
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    I think MS misread ipad popularity and the resulting "tablet computing" trend as a tidal shift to touch-based interfaces as the emerging "new normal".
    - nmfisher 6y ago
      It kind of made sense at the time, given the popularity of the Surface. The trend certainly seemed to be towards smaller form-factor, lower-power devices that sat nicely on the spectrum between a tablet and laptop. Of course, that didn't mean they needed to completely overhaul the desktop experience though.
      - birdyrooster 6y ago
        This is the sort of wisdom that leads a company to create macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. The recognition that some things are too dissimilar to ship in the same box.
        lostmsu 6y ago
        Meh. I still think that is a mistake. Windows Mobile lost because it was late to market, and was not designed well the first two times. Windows Mobile 10 was good, so was ability to develop for desktop, mobile and Xbox with one codebase. IMO Microsoft shut it down when it actually was becoming awesome. Maybe Windows 10 ARM64 will still come back to phones though.
- megameter 6y ago
  It's not exactly that the new stuff is even that bad - I do use some parts of it. It's that there's a really awkward shift in philosophy that the new UI engages with: Old: Expose the hardware in a highly compatible way for developers. Help the user do productive work with their applications. Old basically remains in the same paradigm through WinXP. But starting around Vista the concept changes, and that accelerates with Win8. New: Help the user shop and consume content. Protect them from malicious software. And this consumer focus leads in turn towards aesthetics and "wow factor". But it's Vista's shift towards heavy security prompting that I see as the precipitating element in this. It's the change from "they know what they're doing" to "they don't know what they're doing", and the attempt to continually reinvent the same thing but "easier." The UI changes are more like a reflection of the broader trend of aping whatever smartphones do. And one thing I will credit modern Windows for is this - running on contemporary hardware it's really stable and doesn't blow up easily. But it's like running two operating systems at once, and the newer one is mostly unnecessary.
  - Nition 6y ago
    The absolute worse of this old vs. new split has got to be the two different settings interfaces (Control Panel and Settings) that have some overlap, but other features that are only in one. Try changing the mouse pointer speed starting on Settings[1]. Or for a bigger challenge, try finding the place to change which Desktop icons appear.[2] ---- Answer key: [1] Settings -> Devices -> Mouse -> Related settings [tiny text on the far right] -> Additional mouse options -> [opens old Control Panel mouse settings] -> Pointer Options -> Motion: Select a pointer speed. [2] Right-click Desktop -> Personalise -> Themes [!?] -> Related Settings [tiny text on the far right] -> Desktop icon settings
    - IanSanders 6y ago
      >the two different settings interfaces (Control Panel and Settings) that have some overlap, but other features that are only in one. All that's going to happen is we'll lose the control panel eventually, and get an inferior settings reimplementation instead. That long scroll alone is really, really terrible.
asveikau 6y ago
Fits in with the rest of windows 8, and later 10. Lots of rewrites and new UIs, many of the replacements are not up to par with the original.
jedieaston 6y ago
I like new taskmgr more, it actually kills applications without having to go into detailed view and remember what the exe is called. Old taskmgr would bring up the “Application is not responding, what do you want to do about it?” screen, which is useless by time you bring up taskmgr and the app is hanging.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  * >kills applications without having to go into detailed view* For apps that are well & truly borked, the new app-driven interface often fails in this for me. But it does let me right-click and "go to details" and kill it there, so it's still an improvement.
  - thejsa 6y ago
    Have you tried clicking the ‘End Task’ button twice? It’s arguably rather unintuitive, but in my experience the first click seems to send a ‘politely quit’ signal and the second results in the merciless massacre which hasn’t failed me yet.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      Yep, sometimes after a few attempts a box will come up saying "this app is unresponsive" and it seems about even chance if that will end the task
gruez 6y ago
>Now I'd like to know why Task Manager got rewritten in Windows 8 * displays multiple cpus better * graphs autoscale, so the network utilization graph isn't stuck at showing everything in 1gbit scale * multi process programs (eg. chrome) are grouped together, so it's easy to tell how much resources it's actuality using
- quietbritishjim 6y ago
  * Adds GPU usage - this wasn't available even in details before. * Adds graphs for disk usage and GPU usage (per GPU). * Adds a few useful columns to the applications tab, including disk usage which wasn't possible even in details before. * Applications tab has heatmap highlighting thing, which is a bit gimmicky but is actually useful.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    * Merged in the good parts of MSConfig: Service Management and Startup Applications. (Is a better service manager in general than crusty old Services.msc; no longer need to wait for MMC snap-in and plugin loading.)
bigbizisverywyz 6y ago
Somehow I had the impression that Task Manager was rewritten when the guys from Sysinternals joined MS (who had the excellent Process Explorer app). And with that in mind, I actually think the new one is better.

deadso 6y ago

Why do you think it got rewritten? Obviously the UI has changed, but the reddit post indicating that it can run without shell32.dll makes me think it was rewritten with a nicely decoupled UI and that is what got updated in later iterations. If you work at MS, it would be cool to find the last person to push a change to that code base and ask them. Or maybe we can reply to the reddit post.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

I'm tempted to reply it's because MS are spiteful tossers but actually (despite that being true) there's a bigger problem. MS used to be pretty good at interfaces - true, they really did - but on & after win8 they just forgot that UIs are not there to look 'cool' and 'awesome' but to simply to help users get shit done.

zozbot234 6y ago
It's weird because Win8 looks like quite the opposite of "cool", at least in my view. And their interface is actually somewhat helpful on touch-based devices, but other OS's do a way better job of having a unified interface for 'touch' and 'keyboard+mouse' input.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  > but other OS's do a way better job of having a unified interface for 'touch' and 'keyboard+mouse' input. What are you thinking of? IOS? Android? GNOME? KDE? OSX? Windows isn't perfect at this stuff, but it's honestly the best experience I've had with a 2 in 1 (Tablet with extra keyboard + touchpad). GNOME is close, but the UI arrangement is stupid (ok, it's worse on Windows, but I digress), pen right click doesn't work and the on screen keyboard is like from another universe (it also doesn't seem to be made for people with mice, but I digress again ...). On Windows I can set the keyboard to mini-mode (floats around in a small window) and slide on it with a pen, getting about the same input speed as when typing. It's quite amazing. It's just a shame that there's Windows around it.
  - lstamour 6y ago
    Windows is good, yes. Especially for compatibility with standard desktop apps and new form factors like pen, handwriting, etc. But iPad with touchpad now is also good—better, perhaps, than the Pencil’s OS integration. Presumably the standardization of App Store categories means MacOS and iOS will align eventually as much as Windows modern and native apps can on the same (“desktop”) system. Both platforms and Chrome want app authors adapting new features, but developers generally implement what’s easiest/appropriate for their codebase, so... I think the next big leap in UI will be when AI recognizes and labels patterns in complex code for more advanced refactoring...
diamondo25 6y ago
Wasn't Vista where they went all-in with animations and blurs, like Windows Aero?
- ineedasername 6y ago
  First thing I did on pretty much every new computer was turn all of that off. And in windows 8 found some hack to restore something resembling a "start" menu. Windows 10 hasn't bothered me enough in that regard to go digging for the settings to kill visual effects.
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  And the useless Windows Experience Index. Like they thought developers would ship software with a single WEI for minimum and recommended requirements.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
Seems like Win8 was them trying to push the mobile style UIs onto people even though they were using a Desktop/Laptop. I remember in Win8, the calculator would take up the whole screen, similar to the way it does on an IPhone. I could never understand how such a usability atrocity got past Redmond.
- Lammy 6y ago
  https://www.pcworld.com/article/257840/microsoft_announces_new_surface_tablet_pc.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/257840/microsoft_announces_n...
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I think MS misread ipad popularity and the resulting "tablet computing" trend as a tidal shift to touch-based interfaces as the emerging "new normal".
  - nmfisher 6y ago
    It kind of made sense at the time, given the popularity of the Surface. The trend certainly seemed to be towards smaller form-factor, lower-power devices that sat nicely on the spectrum between a tablet and laptop. Of course, that didn't mean they needed to completely overhaul the desktop experience though.
    - birdyrooster 6y ago
      This is the sort of wisdom that leads a company to create macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. The recognition that some things are too dissimilar to ship in the same box.
      - lostmsu 6y ago
        Meh. I still think that is a mistake. Windows Mobile lost because it was late to market, and was not designed well the first two times. Windows Mobile 10 was good, so was ability to develop for desktop, mobile and Xbox with one codebase. IMO Microsoft shut it down when it actually was becoming awesome. Maybe Windows 10 ARM64 will still come back to phones though.
megameter 6y ago
It's not exactly that the new stuff is even that bad - I do use some parts of it. It's that there's a really awkward shift in philosophy that the new UI engages with: Old: Expose the hardware in a highly compatible way for developers. Help the user do productive work with their applications. Old basically remains in the same paradigm through WinXP. But starting around Vista the concept changes, and that accelerates with Win8. New: Help the user shop and consume content. Protect them from malicious software. And this consumer focus leads in turn towards aesthetics and "wow factor". But it's Vista's shift towards heavy security prompting that I see as the precipitating element in this. It's the change from "they know what they're doing" to "they don't know what they're doing", and the attempt to continually reinvent the same thing but "easier." The UI changes are more like a reflection of the broader trend of aping whatever smartphones do. And one thing I will credit modern Windows for is this - running on contemporary hardware it's really stable and doesn't blow up easily. But it's like running two operating systems at once, and the newer one is mostly unnecessary.
- Nition 6y ago
  The absolute worse of this old vs. new split has got to be the two different settings interfaces (Control Panel and Settings) that have some overlap, but other features that are only in one. Try changing the mouse pointer speed starting on Settings[1]. Or for a bigger challenge, try finding the place to change which Desktop icons appear.[2] ---- Answer key: [1] Settings -> Devices -> Mouse -> Related settings [tiny text on the far right] -> Additional mouse options -> [opens old Control Panel mouse settings] -> Pointer Options -> Motion: Select a pointer speed. [2] Right-click Desktop -> Personalise -> Themes [!?] -> Related Settings [tiny text on the far right] -> Desktop icon settings
  - IanSanders 6y ago
    >the two different settings interfaces (Control Panel and Settings) that have some overlap, but other features that are only in one. All that's going to happen is we'll lose the control panel eventually, and get an inferior settings reimplementation instead. That long scroll alone is really, really terrible.

asveikau 6y ago

Fits in with the rest of windows 8, and later 10. Lots of rewrites and new UIs, many of the replacements are not up to par with the original.

jedieaston 6y ago

I like new taskmgr more, it actually kills applications without having to go into detailed view and remember what the exe is called. Old taskmgr would bring up the “Application is not responding, what do you want to do about it?” screen, which is useless by time you bring up taskmgr and the app is hanging.

ineedasername 6y ago
* >kills applications without having to go into detailed view* For apps that are well & truly borked, the new app-driven interface often fails in this for me. But it does let me right-click and "go to details" and kill it there, so it's still an improvement.
- thejsa 6y ago
  Have you tried clicking the ‘End Task’ button twice? It’s arguably rather unintuitive, but in my experience the first click seems to send a ‘politely quit’ signal and the second results in the merciless massacre which hasn’t failed me yet.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    Yep, sometimes after a few attempts a box will come up saying "this app is unresponsive" and it seems about even chance if that will end the task

gruez 6y ago

>Now I'd like to know why Task Manager got rewritten in Windows 8 * displays multiple cpus better * graphs autoscale, so the network utilization graph isn't stuck at showing everything in 1gbit scale * multi process programs (eg. chrome) are grouped together, so it's easy to tell how much resources it's actuality using

quietbritishjim 6y ago
* Adds GPU usage - this wasn't available even in details before. * Adds graphs for disk usage and GPU usage (per GPU). * Adds a few useful columns to the applications tab, including disk usage which wasn't possible even in details before. * Applications tab has heatmap highlighting thing, which is a bit gimmicky but is actually useful.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  * Merged in the good parts of MSConfig: Service Management and Startup Applications. (Is a better service manager in general than crusty old Services.msc; no longer need to wait for MMC snap-in and plugin loading.)

bigbizisverywyz 6y ago

Somehow I had the impression that Task Manager was rewritten when the guys from Sysinternals joined MS (who had the excellent Process Explorer app). And with that in mind, I actually think the new one is better.