10 ms·

Microsoft says changing taskbar location in Windows 11 is not important

39 points by MikusR 5y ago

4oo4 5y ago
As someone that needs to do this to minimize repetitive strain, yes it very much is important.
staticman2 5y ago
You can't do this on MacOS either, right?
- dottrap 5y ago
  You can position the Dock to bottom, left, or right.
- LocalH 5y ago
  Does it matter? You can do it in Windows 10. You can't do it in Windows 11. That is what is relevant here.
- windowsrookie 5y ago
  MacOS doesn’t have a taskbar, but it does have a dock that you can place on the left, right, or bottom edge of the screen. It has been an option since the beginning of OS X I believe.
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  Depends on what you consider the macOS taskbar equivalent. The one where app icons and open documents live? Yeah, you can move it around. The one that act as as the menu bar for open apps? No, you can’t.
- kej 5y ago
  It works in KDE, just as another data point.
- cjsawyer 5y ago
  MacOS also uses less vertical space.
  - chris37879 5y ago
    And on the new macs, it takes up the space of the notch so that your apps are still in the un-notched section of the display.
- chris37879 5y ago
  Yes, you can. You can't move the menu bar at the top, but the dock can go to any of the other three edges of the display, and its popout items work just fine.
leoedin 5y ago
Almost every screen we use is wide-screen, yet almost every activity we use computers for involves scrolling through portrait documents. Putting the taskbar on the side reclaims some precious vertical space at the cost of fairly un-needed horizontal space. It's the logical choice - the only reason everyone doesn't do it is design inertia from when screens were 4:3. This is a shame.
- cedilla 5y ago
  Maybe some value a wider taskbar over one crammed to the side, even at the expense of 3.7% of their vertical space. Or they value their horizontal space more than you do, because they like have a few windows side by side. Or any other number of imaginable reasons.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    A vertical taskbar is particularly useful when running on a screen with few pixel-equivalents (bad eyesight, or low angular view), a lot of software tends to break when going under 720 or even 768 equivalent-lines, this makes it less likely for important bottom buttons to end up "outside" of the screen.
- 8note 5y ago
  the corner is a useful place because i can get my mouse there without knowing where my mouse is Having something like the start button there ensures that nothing funky is being done to my pointer in the place where I'm looking for it
  - chris37879 5y ago
    And if you move your start bar to the right, that button goes to the top right corner.
- Epiphany21 5y ago
  In my opinion it would be more logical to allow the entire task bar to shrink itself down into the Windows logo on the lefthand side like the MacOS 9 control strip. The user could then mouse over it or click it or use a certain key combination to restore it to the full screen width. Getting rid of terrible widescreen monitors as the industry standard might also help (there are Chinese companies dabbling with 3:2 displays, so the market is there). The 16:9 aspect ratio is used purely to increase yields and decrease material costs. If Microsoft is mandating a TPM, they might as well mandate a display aspect ratio that makes their desktop UI semi-usable.
goosedragons 5y ago
What was the point of changing the Taskbar drastically in the first place? It's not something in Windows 10 I'd have identified as must fix unlike the mess that is search, control panel/settings etc. It got a whole bunch of regressions like the inability to move the Taskbar, grouping apps, having a clock on a another monitor (recently fixed), worse file operation indicators, etc. I just have no idea why they did it. It didn't actually IMPROVE anything it just looks slightly different. MS did a whole bunch of work to piss off people for as far as I can tell no noticeable gain.
- hulitu 5y ago
  The point is, just like Google, Apple and others, they want control over users computers. They want a walled garden.
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    But how does this change help Microsoft build a walled garden? Doesn't it do exactly the opposite, if it encourages people to download software to workaround the new bug/limitation?
    - supertrope 5y ago
      Power users are a minority. They’re going after the masses who unbox their computer and click the Internet/Facebook icon. The success of smartphones with a much more curated experience suggests the market values ease of use over customization.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  MBA's using macs telling their ux and ui "engineers" to make things better by copying Apple.
  - chris37879 5y ago
    If they had copied Apple you'd be able to move the taskbar.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
"Am I really that out of touch? No, it's the users that are wrong!" It's really frustrating how it seems, despite having a thousand times more powerful hardware, modern software consistently struggles to do things that code written in the 1990s had no problem doing. I haven't really seen any convincing answers why adding 25 years of hardware and software advancements translates to being able to do less, to be less flexible.
- rusticpenn 5y ago
  Because the number of developers are reduced and are expected to do just enough ( in the name of agile methodology).
- jmrm 5y ago
  In the case of Windows is even more surprising to me knowing the huge process they done with Windows 95 to achieve what we finally had. They had a lot of sessions of different people beta testing Windows 95 with different knowledge about computer, and they mould Windows using that feedback. Now with the "free beta testing" and the ease to give that feedback to Microsoft we are totally certain that Microsoft doesn't do those changes because they don't want to.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Microsoft has huge labs where they collect feedback but honestly I think try just ignore most of it.
    - marginalia_nu 5y ago
      Seems user feedback usually gets cherry picked and used to motivate pushing through unpopular changes. Lets you dismiss those who complain about the change as an insignificant minority.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
1MachineElf 5y ago
>But the funny thing about the taskbar is that the Feedback Hub directly clashes with what Tali Roth has said. The ability to move the taskbar is the most upvoted feedback piece, with more than 17,600 thumb-ups and 1200 comments. Unless Microsoft has another tool to source more feedback from "regular" users, you can tell quite a large chunk of Windows 11 customers want Microsoft to bring back the missing feature more than everything else.
- daveoc64 5y ago
  It's probably a telemetry thing. I would imagine the number of users with the taskbar in a different location on older versions are miniscule.
  - iotku 5y ago
    It's really easy to make up justifications for things with enough data. Many ISPs who implemented low data caps on their services justified it as reasonable because "most people don't use more data than this" which while probably true, also relates to their being punishment for using more data. Similar arguments can be made for most defaults "well the vast majority doesn't change it so..." while ignoring that those who go outside of the defaults value it highly and are more likely to be unhappy about the lack of options while their opinions get overshadowed by people who don't know there was an option in the first place.
  - justsomehnguy 5y ago
    > Only minor part of all people uses epipens, so we can stop manufacturing them.
lights0123 5y ago
> When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge. "the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment" should be none? Unless "apps" refers to something other than standard Windows applications, there shouldn't be any difference since Windows 10.
cjsawyer 5y ago
I’ve had my taskbar on the left for the entire lifetime of windows 10. It saves me a few percent of needed scroll inputs to read code and over the years that’s a significant time saver.
mrtweetyhack 5y ago

39 points by MikusR 5y ago

4oo4 5y ago

As someone that needs to do this to minimize repetitive strain, yes it very much is important.

staticman2 5y ago

You can't do this on MacOS either, right?

dottrap 5y ago
You can position the Dock to bottom, left, or right.
LocalH 5y ago
Does it matter? You can do it in Windows 10. You can't do it in Windows 11. That is what is relevant here.
windowsrookie 5y ago
MacOS doesn’t have a taskbar, but it does have a dock that you can place on the left, right, or bottom edge of the screen. It has been an option since the beginning of OS X I believe.
wodenokoto 5y ago
Depends on what you consider the macOS taskbar equivalent. The one where app icons and open documents live? Yeah, you can move it around. The one that act as as the menu bar for open apps? No, you can’t.
kej 5y ago
It works in KDE, just as another data point.
cjsawyer 5y ago
MacOS also uses less vertical space.
- chris37879 5y ago
  And on the new macs, it takes up the space of the notch so that your apps are still in the un-notched section of the display.
chris37879 5y ago
Yes, you can. You can't move the menu bar at the top, but the dock can go to any of the other three edges of the display, and its popout items work just fine.

leoedin 5y ago

Almost every screen we use is wide-screen, yet almost every activity we use computers for involves scrolling through portrait documents. Putting the taskbar on the side reclaims some precious vertical space at the cost of fairly un-needed horizontal space. It's the logical choice - the only reason everyone doesn't do it is design inertia from when screens were 4:3. This is a shame.

cedilla 5y ago
Maybe some value a wider taskbar over one crammed to the side, even at the expense of 3.7% of their vertical space. Or they value their horizontal space more than you do, because they like have a few windows side by side. Or any other number of imaginable reasons.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  A vertical taskbar is particularly useful when running on a screen with few pixel-equivalents (bad eyesight, or low angular view), a lot of software tends to break when going under 720 or even 768 equivalent-lines, this makes it less likely for important bottom buttons to end up "outside" of the screen.
8note 5y ago
the corner is a useful place because i can get my mouse there without knowing where my mouse is Having something like the start button there ensures that nothing funky is being done to my pointer in the place where I'm looking for it
- chris37879 5y ago
  And if you move your start bar to the right, that button goes to the top right corner.
Epiphany21 5y ago
In my opinion it would be more logical to allow the entire task bar to shrink itself down into the Windows logo on the lefthand side like the MacOS 9 control strip. The user could then mouse over it or click it or use a certain key combination to restore it to the full screen width. Getting rid of terrible widescreen monitors as the industry standard might also help (there are Chinese companies dabbling with 3:2 displays, so the market is there). The 16:9 aspect ratio is used purely to increase yields and decrease material costs. If Microsoft is mandating a TPM, they might as well mandate a display aspect ratio that makes their desktop UI semi-usable.

goosedragons 5y ago

What was the point of changing the Taskbar drastically in the first place? It's not something in Windows 10 I'd have identified as must fix unlike the mess that is search, control panel/settings etc. It got a whole bunch of regressions like the inability to move the Taskbar, grouping apps, having a clock on a another monitor (recently fixed), worse file operation indicators, etc. I just have no idea why they did it. It didn't actually IMPROVE anything it just looks slightly different. MS did a whole bunch of work to piss off people for as far as I can tell no noticeable gain.

hulitu 5y ago
The point is, just like Google, Apple and others, they want control over users computers. They want a walled garden.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  But how does this change help Microsoft build a walled garden? Doesn't it do exactly the opposite, if it encourages people to download software to workaround the new bug/limitation?
  - supertrope 5y ago
    Power users are a minority. They’re going after the masses who unbox their computer and click the Internet/Facebook icon. The success of smartphones with a much more curated experience suggests the market values ease of use over customization.
robbedpeter 5y ago
MBA's using macs telling their ux and ui "engineers" to make things better by copying Apple.
- chris37879 5y ago
  If they had copied Apple you'd be able to move the taskbar.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

"Am I really that out of touch? No, it's the users that are wrong!" It's really frustrating how it seems, despite having a thousand times more powerful hardware, modern software consistently struggles to do things that code written in the 1990s had no problem doing. I haven't really seen any convincing answers why adding 25 years of hardware and software advancements translates to being able to do less, to be less flexible.

rusticpenn 5y ago
Because the number of developers are reduced and are expected to do just enough ( in the name of agile methodology).
jmrm 5y ago
In the case of Windows is even more surprising to me knowing the huge process they done with Windows 95 to achieve what we finally had. They had a lot of sessions of different people beta testing Windows 95 with different knowledge about computer, and they mould Windows using that feedback. Now with the "free beta testing" and the ease to give that feedback to Microsoft we are totally certain that Microsoft doesn't do those changes because they don't want to.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Microsoft has huge labs where they collect feedback but honestly I think try just ignore most of it.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    Seems user feedback usually gets cherry picked and used to motivate pushing through unpopular changes. Lets you dismiss those who complain about the change as an insignificant minority.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

1MachineElf 5y ago

>But the funny thing about the taskbar is that the Feedback Hub directly clashes with what Tali Roth has said. The ability to move the taskbar is the most upvoted feedback piece, with more than 17,600 thumb-ups and 1200 comments. Unless Microsoft has another tool to source more feedback from "regular" users, you can tell quite a large chunk of Windows 11 customers want Microsoft to bring back the missing feature more than everything else.

daveoc64 5y ago
It's probably a telemetry thing. I would imagine the number of users with the taskbar in a different location on older versions are miniscule.
- iotku 5y ago
  It's really easy to make up justifications for things with enough data. Many ISPs who implemented low data caps on their services justified it as reasonable because "most people don't use more data than this" which while probably true, also relates to their being punishment for using more data. Similar arguments can be made for most defaults "well the vast majority doesn't change it so..." while ignoring that those who go outside of the defaults value it highly and are more likely to be unhappy about the lack of options while their opinions get overshadowed by people who don't know there was an option in the first place.
- justsomehnguy 5y ago
  > Only minor part of all people uses epipens, so we can stop manufacturing them.

lights0123 5y ago

> When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge. "the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment" should be none? Unless "apps" refers to something other than standard Windows applications, there shouldn't be any difference since Windows 10.

cjsawyer 5y ago

I’ve had my taskbar on the left for the entire lifetime of windows 10. It saves me a few percent of needed scroll inputs to read code and over the years that’s a significant time saver.

mrtweetyhack 5y ago