7 ms·

Dear Microsoft, You fools, you own a gate to the internet. When i search 8*9 in the start menu, show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "

Dear Microsoft, You fools, you own a gate to the internet. When i search 8*9 in the start menu, show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "search web for 8*9". Make the menu auto-complete with the titles of the first 5 web results instead of random ads. Make it work well as an actually useful extension of search. Forget about edge and bing.com, you will care about the brand name later. (You can thank me later with a sizeable compensation package)

rawoke083600 5y ago
Ja, the best advice I ever heard was, "do something right and the money will (probably) follow". Sure it's a massive generalization and doesn't always "work" but dammit it's a very good starting point. Much better than: "How do we get the most money for a user ?"
reedf1 5y ago
>show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "search web for 8*9" As far as I can tell - it already does this. Now I hate how it works and it looks bad, but it does show web search results for what I type in the start menu. And I will actually push back a bit on the start menu because I hate that the start menu searches the web. I want it to search my computer, I have a browser for web searches.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  i must be doing something wrong. I get a list of suggested web searches, not a list of results. like "search for 8*9", "search for 8*96" etc
  - reedf1 5y ago
    Huh - when I type 8*9 I get a search pane (that shows what you are describing) and a web pane. The web pane shows bing results.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      i seem to have turned that off somewhere - better, i think that interface is too much information. Neither of us gets 72 though
      - jordanwallwork 5y ago
        I get a calculator showing 72: https://imgur.com/a/ukQtOwn https://imgur.com/a/ukQtOwn
        bellyfullofbac 5y ago
        That calculator looks like that's part of the Bing results page... so it made an HTTPS connection and parsed some HTML, JS and CSS to show what 8*9 is. It'd be even better if it said "You need to consent to these 100 cookies for us to show you what 8*9 is".
- moogly 5y ago
  You can disable it with a registry variable or through an app like Winaero Tweaker.
flohofwoe 5y ago
No thanks, I'd rather have a simple and obvious checkbox to disable all this sleazy web crap in the Windows UI. If I want to search the web, I use a web browser. If I want to search my machine, I would like to use the Windows search feature (if it would actually work).
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  By the same token we shouldn't need all that crap in omnibox either. It is all about the quality of information and decluttering
  - rbobby 5y ago
    I quite like that the omni box will do math and unit conversions. So handy, so simple.
    - nolok 5y ago
      I think parent point was that if it was well done we would like it in the start menu, but if it was only 99% ok or below we would hate it. Omnibox sucked until it reached a point where it didn't. But microsoft is so focused on competing to google's product that they fail to realize they don't even need to go there. With that said, we're talking about a company who can't even search properly for the installed app given the infinite resource of a modern computer and an app list below a hundred, so I don't want them to make the search menu/search any more of a disaster.
      - amluto 5y ago
        Or maybe omnibox sucked until search got so bad that omnibox is better.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  I get really annoyed when I shop for a part number that has a - and $searchEngine just wants to show me the answer to a subtraction question.
0xTJ 5y ago
As far as I can tell, it already does this, and it's my most hated "feature". The delay while it does the search, combined with everything shuffling around at the end of that delay is terrible for me. Personally, if I want to use the web, I'll open a browser. That's not the role I have for my OS, I don't want. And if it does have that capability, providing an alternate search engine should be doable, and it should respect my default browser.
- nolok 5y ago
  It doesn't do this, because it's not smart and treat everything the same way. You first need to figure out what kind of content the user is talking about, and then go around that. Microsoft system doesn't care if you're typing calc.exe or John Smith or 8x9 it will do the crappy web search, crappy app search, crappy store search, crappy calendar search, and vomit a mix of useless results in your face. That's what makes it "hard" to do it right, and frankly something that microsoft just doesn't have in their dna (if they did, their start menu search wouldn't be so horrible). I think an OS that did it right would be improved, and I hope to hell and back that microsoft won't try it because they will never succeed at that.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    KDE and macOS managed. I don't understand why Microsoft cannot. Maybe there are external forces preventing them. Be it patents or even just the threat of being accused of anti-competitive practices again?
    - nolok 5y ago
      There has simply never been a product or feature in the search world (online or offline) where Microsoft got it, everything they have that works is when they dropped their idea and just copied whatever the other guys were doing. For me they just don't get search, like, the very idea of search or not just searching, it's understanding what you're searching for. And when you bring that down to the start menu, it become super clear and obvious that they're out of their league.
  - 5y ago
rubyist5eva 5y ago
> When i search 89 in the start menu, show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "search web for 89". I was pretty sure it already did this...Just tried it again because you made me second guess myself and yup, sure enough, it already does this.
dr-detroit 5y ago
all the devs are Mac/Linux first. thats all Im going to say because the rest isnt nice.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
I remember loading the Mac Spotlight and trying to calculate some decimal numbers, let's say 63.10 * 3.50 . But because the Mac was expecting the German locale with "," as a decimal separator, it just silently gave me 2208500 instead of 220.85 (or 220,85). Wow.. at least show me I goofed up, you useless piece of software!
- LocalH 5y ago
  I mean, if it wasn't a bug that it was expecting German, then it didn't do anything wrong. The most I could see feasible would be, if you press the wrong decimal separator, the system asks if you want to change or correct the locale setting for math
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Part of Google's success nowadays, I think, is that typing stuff in a browser's address bar takes you straight to Google's search results page. They turned Google into the replacement for typing in web addresses.
- bserge 5y ago
  They also force this behaviour on Chrome and (I'm pretty sure) Firefox. Used to be, Firefox would show previously visited sites/pages (arranged by how often you visit them) first. Now it loads Google search results first and I very often step into them like it's some dogshit on the ground.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    For me, FF shows matches from History first (they have a little clock icon), followed by search results (which aren't from GOOG if you have switched your default search engine to something else, mine are all 'search with DuckDuckGo'), followed by 'Firefox Suggest' which looks to be bookmarks that somehow match whatever I typed in the location bar, at least for me.
- ColinHayhurst 5y ago
  Indeed so. More here and on how Firefox is the only mainstream browser, option if you are interested in more than one lens: https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/09/multiple-choice-in-search.html https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/09/multiple-choice-in-search.ht...
- KKKKkkkk1 5y ago
  When you type into the Safari address bar, it drops down a list of search results while you're typing. I am guessing this comes from the long-promised Apple search engine. It works well enough that I often find myself skipping the Google search results page altogether.
  - jraph 5y ago
    Aren't these search results coming from Google?
Bhilai 5y ago
This is default behavior on my Pixel phone made by Google. When I swipe up and try to search for apps on my phone, it most often starts showing me search completion results from web.
darepublic 5y ago
windows is like an early 2000s web site with a title like 'Top Ten Life Hacks ...' with ad ridden pages where you must search through them to barely make out a sniff of the content you were ostensibly promised, and then a 'next page' button that will lead you into another ad ridden nightmare. windows is a corporate created abomination where the combined deluded career ambitions of hundred or so corporate careerists collectively pool and fester
- letitbeirie 5y ago
  They essentially remade Windows in the image of the Bing website. Yeesh.
jcelerier 5y ago
> When i search 8*9 in the start menu, show me the result of the multiplication but how is that going to increase the server hit rate directly tied to $employee (pardon, %EMPLOYEE%)'s annual wage increase ?
stronglikedan 5y ago
For all but a handful of things, I've replaced my Start menu with PowerToys Run.
bmn__ 5y ago
KRunner in KDE 5 (default shortcut: Alt+F2, but also replicated at the bottom of the start menu) does that. The modules for different purposes (like running applications/shell commands, searching browser tabs/history/bookmarks, searching files/emails/contacts, openstreetmap, etc.) are pluggable and can be easily disabled if the functionality is not desired by the user.

rawoke083600 5y ago

Ja, the best advice I ever heard was, "do something right and the money will (probably) follow". Sure it's a massive generalization and doesn't always "work" but dammit it's a very good starting point. Much better than: "How do we get the most money for a user ?"

reedf1 5y ago

>show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "search web for 8*9" As far as I can tell - it already does this. Now I hate how it works and it looks bad, but it does show web search results for what I type in the start menu. And I will actually push back a bit on the start menu because I hate that the start menu searches the web. I want it to search my computer, I have a browser for web searches.

cblconfederate 5y ago
i must be doing something wrong. I get a list of suggested web searches, not a list of results. like "search for 8*9", "search for 8*96" etc
- reedf1 5y ago
  Huh - when I type 8*9 I get a search pane (that shows what you are describing) and a web pane. The web pane shows bing results.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    i seem to have turned that off somewhere - better, i think that interface is too much information. Neither of us gets 72 though
    - jordanwallwork 5y ago
      I get a calculator showing 72: https://imgur.com/a/ukQtOwn https://imgur.com/a/ukQtOwn
      - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
        That calculator looks like that's part of the Bing results page... so it made an HTTPS connection and parsed some HTML, JS and CSS to show what 8*9 is. It'd be even better if it said "You need to consent to these 100 cookies for us to show you what 8*9 is".
moogly 5y ago
You can disable it with a registry variable or through an app like Winaero Tweaker.

flohofwoe 5y ago

No thanks, I'd rather have a simple and obvious checkbox to disable all this sleazy web crap in the Windows UI. If I want to search the web, I use a web browser. If I want to search my machine, I would like to use the Windows search feature (if it would actually work).

cblconfederate 5y ago
By the same token we shouldn't need all that crap in omnibox either. It is all about the quality of information and decluttering
- rbobby 5y ago
  I quite like that the omni box will do math and unit conversions. So handy, so simple.
  - nolok 5y ago
    I think parent point was that if it was well done we would like it in the start menu, but if it was only 99% ok or below we would hate it. Omnibox sucked until it reached a point where it didn't. But microsoft is so focused on competing to google's product that they fail to realize they don't even need to go there. With that said, we're talking about a company who can't even search properly for the installed app given the infinite resource of a modern computer and an app list below a hundred, so I don't want them to make the search menu/search any more of a disaster.
    - amluto 5y ago
      Or maybe omnibox sucked until search got so bad that omnibox is better.
Consultant32452 5y ago
I get really annoyed when I shop for a part number that has a - and $searchEngine just wants to show me the answer to a subtraction question.

0xTJ 5y ago

As far as I can tell, it already does this, and it's my most hated "feature". The delay while it does the search, combined with everything shuffling around at the end of that delay is terrible for me. Personally, if I want to use the web, I'll open a browser. That's not the role I have for my OS, I don't want. And if it does have that capability, providing an alternate search engine should be doable, and it should respect my default browser.

nolok 5y ago
It doesn't do this, because it's not smart and treat everything the same way. You first need to figure out what kind of content the user is talking about, and then go around that. Microsoft system doesn't care if you're typing calc.exe or John Smith or 8x9 it will do the crappy web search, crappy app search, crappy store search, crappy calendar search, and vomit a mix of useless results in your face. That's what makes it "hard" to do it right, and frankly something that microsoft just doesn't have in their dna (if they did, their start menu search wouldn't be so horrible). I think an OS that did it right would be improved, and I hope to hell and back that microsoft won't try it because they will never succeed at that.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  KDE and macOS managed. I don't understand why Microsoft cannot. Maybe there are external forces preventing them. Be it patents or even just the threat of being accused of anti-competitive practices again?
  - nolok 5y ago
    There has simply never been a product or feature in the search world (online or offline) where Microsoft got it, everything they have that works is when they dropped their idea and just copied whatever the other guys were doing. For me they just don't get search, like, the very idea of search or not just searching, it's understanding what you're searching for. And when you bring that down to the start menu, it become super clear and obvious that they're out of their league.
- 5y ago

rubyist5eva 5y ago

> When i search 89 in the start menu, show me the result of the multiplication instead of a link to "search web for 89". I was pretty sure it already did this...Just tried it again because you made me second guess myself and yup, sure enough, it already does this.

dr-detroit 5y ago

all the devs are Mac/Linux first. thats all Im going to say because the rest isnt nice.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

I remember loading the Mac Spotlight and trying to calculate some decimal numbers, let's say 63.10 * 3.50 . But because the Mac was expecting the German locale with "," as a decimal separator, it just silently gave me 2208500 instead of 220.85 (or 220,85). Wow.. at least show me I goofed up, you useless piece of software!

LocalH 5y ago
I mean, if it wasn't a bug that it was expecting German, then it didn't do anything wrong. The most I could see feasible would be, if you press the wrong decimal separator, the system asks if you want to change or correct the locale setting for math

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Part of Google's success nowadays, I think, is that typing stuff in a browser's address bar takes you straight to Google's search results page. They turned Google into the replacement for typing in web addresses.

bserge 5y ago
They also force this behaviour on Chrome and (I'm pretty sure) Firefox. Used to be, Firefox would show previously visited sites/pages (arranged by how often you visit them) first. Now it loads Google search results first and I very often step into them like it's some dogshit on the ground.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  For me, FF shows matches from History first (they have a little clock icon), followed by search results (which aren't from GOOG if you have switched your default search engine to something else, mine are all 'search with DuckDuckGo'), followed by 'Firefox Suggest' which looks to be bookmarks that somehow match whatever I typed in the location bar, at least for me.
ColinHayhurst 5y ago
Indeed so. More here and on how Firefox is the only mainstream browser, option if you are interested in more than one lens: https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/09/multiple-choice-in-search.html https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/09/multiple-choice-in-search.ht...
KKKKkkkk1 5y ago
When you type into the Safari address bar, it drops down a list of search results while you're typing. I am guessing this comes from the long-promised Apple search engine. It works well enough that I often find myself skipping the Google search results page altogether.
- jraph 5y ago
  Aren't these search results coming from Google?

Bhilai 5y ago

This is default behavior on my Pixel phone made by Google. When I swipe up and try to search for apps on my phone, it most often starts showing me search completion results from web.

darepublic 5y ago

windows is like an early 2000s web site with a title like 'Top Ten Life Hacks ...' with ad ridden pages where you must search through them to barely make out a sniff of the content you were ostensibly promised, and then a 'next page' button that will lead you into another ad ridden nightmare. windows is a corporate created abomination where the combined deluded career ambitions of hundred or so corporate careerists collectively pool and fester

letitbeirie 5y ago
They essentially remade Windows in the image of the Bing website. Yeesh.

jcelerier 5y ago

> When i search 8*9 in the start menu, show me the result of the multiplication but how is that going to increase the server hit rate directly tied to $employee (pardon, %EMPLOYEE%)'s annual wage increase ?

stronglikedan 5y ago

For all but a handful of things, I've replaced my Start menu with PowerToys Run.

bmn__ 5y ago

KRunner in KDE 5 (default shortcut: Alt+F2, but also replicated at the bottom of the start menu) does that. The modules for different purposes (like running applications/shell commands, searching browser tabs/history/bookmarks, searching files/emails/contacts, openstreetmap, etc.) are pluggable and can be easily disabled if the functionality is not desired by the user.