7 ms·

I am mad about how slow the search is now. I used to press window button, start typing first few letters of app of choice hit enter and it would open. Now it ta

by farmin 5y ago

I am mad about how slow the search is now. I used to press window button, start typing first few letters of app of choice hit enter and it would open. Now it takes like 3 seconds for the search to start and by muscle memory I've hit enter now before its even warmed up and for whatever reason ends up doing a web search.. That alone Makes me want to quit Windows.

a_t48 5y ago
Counterpoint - I don't have this issue, it's nice and snappy for me, without even any registry tweaks to disable web search (though now that you mention it, I should).
aeternum 5y ago
Seems like a lot of things can cause this issue, additional hard-drives that are in sleep state, networked drives in sleep, internet search. It's actually a tough design choice with any multi-channel search: Do you start displaying results from the first sources available or do you wait until all sources have reported in? If you wait you get latency, but if you try to stream results the order/top result can change which is jarring to the user and creates UX race conditions.
- vimsee 5y ago
  It should be a non issue. Index the installed apps in the start menu search and make these appear in the search result. I want to be able to press Win-key -> type "fi" -> press nter to open Firefox. On MacOS and all Linux distros I`ve every tried, it works flawlessly. For other (more advanced) search mechanisms, implement these in a designated search option in the taskbar, startmenu, standalone etc. This means that Microsoft needs to abandon Bing and whatever telemetry they can gather from the user in the start menu search making this unlikely to be the reality going forward.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    Can't they just upload the search asynchronously? Why do they have to block the user?
  - a_t48 5y ago
    Funnily enough, on iOS the default behavior is to do a web search - luckily it's possible to disable.
- mulmen 5y ago
  You return whatever results you can before the user perceives a delay. If you think a web search or slower search is useful (it isn't) then add a button to expand the search such as "Search the web for ${search term}" or "Continue this search in Explorer". mulmen's laws of UX design: 1. It is never ok for the user to perceive input delay. 2. There must be no compromise in service of law #1. 3. Your UX improvement is a regression until proven otherwise. 4. To change the UX you must first destroy something you love. 5. The CPU belongs to the user, not to you.
  - jojo14 5y ago
    "before the user perceives a delay": I agree with you. For any UX/UI designer out there a delay is perceived when it is greater than 200ms. Those are milliseconds.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > For any UX/UI designer out there a delay is perceived when it is greater than 200ms. Those are milliseconds. Delay is perceptible at around 10ms, and considered tolerable for generic apps (not realtime games, obviously) to about 100ms, and that's been established for quite a long time. 200ms is...too much.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  >Do you start displaying results from the first sources available or do you wait until all sources have reported in? In the strongest possible sense: Neither, ever. You can not treat instant results and un-cacheable delayed results of unknown quantity/size as the same element of UI. It's a fallacious premise. (Sorry to sound aggressive.)
  - jiggawatts 5y ago
    Microsoft developers found a way to do it, without having to make any compromises or impact user-visible performance in any way. Their brilliant trick to achieving this -- wait for it, it's so simple -- was nothing more than simply... sitting in the same building that Bing is served from! With a mere 1ms latency over 100 Gbps fibre from their office to the Bing servers, there's no pesky latency or packet loss to interfere with the instantaneous UX response times and deterministic behaviour. Those pesky users are just "whining" and need to learn to sit at Redmond, just like they do.
vyrotek 5y ago
I was frustrated with it as well. I turned to Power Toys Run and never use the default search anymore. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/run https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/run
- manapause 5y ago
  Powertoys is terrific, and open Source! https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/main/README.md https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/main/README.md For the fastest searching possible on Windows, I use the Journal-indexing "Everything" search. https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/ https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/
- xmprt 5y ago
  Why is this not the default in Windows?! I've been looking for something like this since I installed Windows 10
  - Someone1234 5y ago
    > Why is this not the default in Windows?! Because Microsoft is a giant dysfunctional bureaucracy and getting anything approved within the org takes ten years of meetings and tons of political capital. Whereas a non-Windows side project can run under the radar and just make cool stuff.
noahtallen 5y ago
That’s interesting, search for me was significantly worse on windows 10.
aufhebung 5y ago
I've heard it improved with Windows 11. It used to be the one think I pointed to when talking about the downward trajectory of Windows.
esalman 5y ago
I actually don't have this issue.
sk0g 5y ago
I have a similar but unrelated problem. The searching seems to be... non-deterministic or something, it's weird. Like if I'm after a program, let's call it "uniquator". That program may be the first suggestion for "uni", but after q another random program, or search suggestion, or some Store shovelware would be the top suggestion. It doesn't sound annoying, but it means you often hit enter mid-typing, only for the top suggestion to change right as you are hitting enter.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  This is a common autocomplete/top-result UX mistake. If typing a substring of X autocompletes to X, then typing more of that substring of X, contiguously, must also autocomplete to X. This is a no-brainer (having the result change before you can stop yourself from hitting enter is easily one of the most frustrating things in all UX). However, it seems like people implementing clever auto-complete rules just don't care (I absolutely refuse to believe it's ignorance - it's impossible to be unaware of this problem if you're implementing autocomplete). I assume the issue is poor decision making about rule conflicts. E.g., what's higher priority: Consistency, or exact-match? E.g. if "photo" auto-completes to "Photoshop", should "photos" auto-complete to "Photoshop" or "Photos"? I think it's "obvious" that consistency is more important here. If the user wants "Photos" despite opening "Photoshop" more often, let them configure the search explicitly to prioritize it, or allow them to select from a list of multiple matches. And that's just a comparison against a single conflicting rule. Now imagine all the obscure rules they've implemented, for reasons varying from a misguided drive for "features" to nefariously pushing the user to click on what they want them to.
  - Maxion 5y ago
    This is a big issue with a lot of ML algorithms - it causes issues with consistency. Prioritising apps in auto complete search should be done with a simple tally of how many times the user has opened the program, perhaps as a rolling n days or something. Either way, that causes consistency. If you have some ML algorithm that takes into account how long the window of the app has been visible or in focus or a bunch of other weird features will cause poor UX the moment the baby projectile vomits across the room while the dog has diarrhea that the robot vaccuum spread all over the room. Suddenly you have some esoteric app called PhotosResizer2000 stay in focus for 8 hours while you deal with the emergency from which point onward the ML algorithm will suggest this app whenever you start to type Pho...

by farmin 5y ago

a_t48 5y ago

Counterpoint - I don't have this issue, it's nice and snappy for me, without even any registry tweaks to disable web search (though now that you mention it, I should).

aeternum 5y ago

Seems like a lot of things can cause this issue, additional hard-drives that are in sleep state, networked drives in sleep, internet search. It's actually a tough design choice with any multi-channel search: Do you start displaying results from the first sources available or do you wait until all sources have reported in? If you wait you get latency, but if you try to stream results the order/top result can change which is jarring to the user and creates UX race conditions.

vimsee 5y ago
It should be a non issue. Index the installed apps in the start menu search and make these appear in the search result. I want to be able to press Win-key -> type "fi" -> press nter to open Firefox. On MacOS and all Linux distros I`ve every tried, it works flawlessly. For other (more advanced) search mechanisms, implement these in a designated search option in the taskbar, startmenu, standalone etc. This means that Microsoft needs to abandon Bing and whatever telemetry they can gather from the user in the start menu search making this unlikely to be the reality going forward.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Can't they just upload the search asynchronously? Why do they have to block the user?
- a_t48 5y ago
  Funnily enough, on iOS the default behavior is to do a web search - luckily it's possible to disable.
mulmen 5y ago
You return whatever results you can before the user perceives a delay. If you think a web search or slower search is useful (it isn't) then add a button to expand the search such as "Search the web for ${search term}" or "Continue this search in Explorer". mulmen's laws of UX design: 1. It is never ok for the user to perceive input delay. 2. There must be no compromise in service of law #1. 3. Your UX improvement is a regression until proven otherwise. 4. To change the UX you must first destroy something you love. 5. The CPU belongs to the user, not to you.
- jojo14 5y ago
  "before the user perceives a delay": I agree with you. For any UX/UI designer out there a delay is perceived when it is greater than 200ms. Those are milliseconds.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > For any UX/UI designer out there a delay is perceived when it is greater than 200ms. Those are milliseconds. Delay is perceptible at around 10ms, and considered tolerable for generic apps (not realtime games, obviously) to about 100ms, and that's been established for quite a long time. 200ms is...too much.
happytoexplain 5y ago
>Do you start displaying results from the first sources available or do you wait until all sources have reported in? In the strongest possible sense: Neither, ever. You can not treat instant results and un-cacheable delayed results of unknown quantity/size as the same element of UI. It's a fallacious premise. (Sorry to sound aggressive.)
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  Microsoft developers found a way to do it, without having to make any compromises or impact user-visible performance in any way. Their brilliant trick to achieving this -- wait for it, it's so simple -- was nothing more than simply... sitting in the same building that Bing is served from! With a mere 1ms latency over 100 Gbps fibre from their office to the Bing servers, there's no pesky latency or packet loss to interfere with the instantaneous UX response times and deterministic behaviour. Those pesky users are just "whining" and need to learn to sit at Redmond, just like they do.

vyrotek 5y ago

I was frustrated with it as well. I turned to Power Toys Run and never use the default search anymore. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/run https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/run

manapause 5y ago
Powertoys is terrific, and open Source! https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/main/README.md https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/main/README.md For the fastest searching possible on Windows, I use the Journal-indexing "Everything" search. https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/ https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/
xmprt 5y ago
Why is this not the default in Windows?! I've been looking for something like this since I installed Windows 10
- Someone1234 5y ago
  > Why is this not the default in Windows?! Because Microsoft is a giant dysfunctional bureaucracy and getting anything approved within the org takes ten years of meetings and tons of political capital. Whereas a non-Windows side project can run under the radar and just make cool stuff.

noahtallen 5y ago

That’s interesting, search for me was significantly worse on windows 10.

aufhebung 5y ago

I've heard it improved with Windows 11. It used to be the one think I pointed to when talking about the downward trajectory of Windows.

esalman 5y ago

I actually don't have this issue.

sk0g 5y ago

I have a similar but unrelated problem. The searching seems to be... non-deterministic or something, it's weird. Like if I'm after a program, let's call it "uniquator". That program may be the first suggestion for "uni", but after q another random program, or search suggestion, or some Store shovelware would be the top suggestion. It doesn't sound annoying, but it means you often hit enter mid-typing, only for the top suggestion to change right as you are hitting enter.

happytoexplain 5y ago
This is a common autocomplete/top-result UX mistake. If typing a substring of X autocompletes to X, then typing more of that substring of X, contiguously, must also autocomplete to X. This is a no-brainer (having the result change before you can stop yourself from hitting enter is easily one of the most frustrating things in all UX). However, it seems like people implementing clever auto-complete rules just don't care (I absolutely refuse to believe it's ignorance - it's impossible to be unaware of this problem if you're implementing autocomplete). I assume the issue is poor decision making about rule conflicts. E.g., what's higher priority: Consistency, or exact-match? E.g. if "photo" auto-completes to "Photoshop", should "photos" auto-complete to "Photoshop" or "Photos"? I think it's "obvious" that consistency is more important here. If the user wants "Photos" despite opening "Photoshop" more often, let them configure the search explicitly to prioritize it, or allow them to select from a list of multiple matches. And that's just a comparison against a single conflicting rule. Now imagine all the obscure rules they've implemented, for reasons varying from a misguided drive for "features" to nefariously pushing the user to click on what they want them to.
- Maxion 5y ago
  This is a big issue with a lot of ML algorithms - it causes issues with consistency. Prioritising apps in auto complete search should be done with a simple tally of how many times the user has opened the program, perhaps as a rolling n days or something. Either way, that causes consistency. If you have some ML algorithm that takes into account how long the window of the app has been visible or in focus or a bunch of other weird features will cause poor UX the moment the baby projectile vomits across the room while the dog has diarrhea that the robot vaccuum spread all over the room. Suddenly you have some esoteric app called PhotosResizer2000 stay in focus for 8 hours while you deal with the emergency from which point onward the ML algorithm will suggest this app whenever you start to type Pho...