5 ms·

> Since that button down there is called "Start", it implies that you can probably do something with it, maybe start programs? Click and you'll see the Start Me

> Since that button down there is called "Start", it implies that you can probably do something with it, maybe start programs? Click and you'll see the Start Menu: Over time it seems like a lot of designs stop feeling the need to lead the user in this way. There is an assumption that by now everyone knows what the menu in the bottom left corner does, and we are no longer in the phase of trying to teach the population to use a computer for the first time. I feel like this is the wrong approach. Every day there are new young people using a computer for the first time. Wouldn’t it be nice if all these conventions that evolved over the past 50 years could be intuitively discovered, instead of needing explanations from someone who already understands them? Of course, as the world becomes more digital, many skeuomorphic designs become more abstract to those same young users. The floppy disk, the traditional telephone, even the file folder.

ranger_danger 5mo ago
> There is an assumption that by now everyone knows what the menu in the bottom left corner does, and we are no longer in the phase of trying to teach the population to use a computer for the first time Strong disagree, because: > Every day there are new young people using a computer for the first time I can assure you these people have no idea what the start button is or does... it doesn't help that it no longer even says "Start" for the last ~20 years.
- al_borland 5mo ago
  We do agree. I said the first thing you quoted was the wrong approach, because of the second thing you quoted. Having it say “start”, like it used to, would help solve that.
  - ranger_danger 5mo ago
    Ok but, were you around during that time? I remember it not helping much at all to tell people what to do. When Windows 95 first came out, they had to have a giant arrow pointing to the Start menu with an explanation of what that would do: https://a.imagem.app/Ge6OCZ.jpeg https://a.imagem.app/Ge6OCZ.jpeg Then they had a scrolling animation with an arrow and some text ("Click the Start button to begin") that slid in from the right side of the taskbar and pointed right at the Start button.
    - al_borland 5mo ago
      I was around, though I wasn’t an adult where I was following the release at the time. The first computer I used had Windows 3.1, but I never really knew how to use it. I just played some games on it and my dad would have me feed in a stack of floppy disks for him when he had to install something big. Windows 95 was the first OS I used and explored on my own and made sense to me.
  - ConceptJunkie 5mo ago
    For people complaining that "Start" isn't a great choice, perhaps there's something better, but I can't think of anything. You need a small word that implies, "Click here to do something or find something." and in that regard, I think "Start" is a good choice. On the other hand, I think there were few ideas worse than "My Computer", etc., not the least of which is the fact that it took Windows application software about 10 years to get consistently good at handling paths with spaces in their names. Of course, the worst UI thing Microsoft ever did was hiding file extensions by default. That might be the worst UI decision in all of history.
    - al_borland 5mo ago
      > That might be the worst UI decision in all of history. The Windows 8 touch-first start menu with a hot corner instead of a button, applied to their Server OS, that I assume most accessed through RDP was pretty horrific.
    - ranger_danger 4mo ago
      > the worst UI thing Microsoft ever did was hiding file extensions Highly disagree... that was not a snap decision and they did a lot of research on it. The vast majority of people were only further confused by extensions, and preferred file names to appear more natural. This was also done before the days of widespread use of the internet, email, or viruses/malware. What research have you done that might suggest a large number of people would agree that it was a bad decision?
makeitdouble 5mo ago
I was a wee little kid when I first touch windows 95, and only ever used dos before. The "Start" button made no sense. The computer was already started, and clicking randomly popped up menus and opened documents in their right programs, so it felt like the natural way to progress. The owner of the computer had to point me to the start menu. Even now I still think it was a cursed UI. It was the place primarily to close and shutdown the computer (again, when you see that button the computer and OS will always be already started), get to the control panel or run commands. None of it felt like "start", and the current windows logo only design makes a lot more sense. To your point, small kids get proficient very fast with smartphones and iPads. I'd call their interface a lot more "intuitive"
- jerf 5mo ago
  I never liked the word "start" itself, but if you're going to have a GUI, a single central clean place to say "every interaction you may want to do can be found from here" is a good idea. In principle having search there is pretty useful. In practice Microsoft has consistently from the beginning gone out of their way to make the search useless and slow, a policy that is now old enough to vote. How the start menu has now gone nearly two decades without you being able to type "note" and see Notepad just pop up as one of the choices instantly beats me on my ever-more-super super computers, but that's an implementation detail that Microsoft has consistently botched. And more and more over time, Microsoft has thought more about what they want in the menu than what the user wants. Nevertheless, the general idea of that top-level "here's everything" is a good one. The open source desktop environments do a much better job with it, without marketing trying to figure out how to stuff this half-decade's marketing push on to the user or "monetize" it.
  - ConceptJunkie 5mo ago
    > And more and more over time, Microsoft has thought more about what they want in the menu than what the user wants. This pretty much describes _everything_ in Windows in the last 15 years.
  - steve1977 4mo ago
    This reminds me about one of those seemingly small differences between Windows and macOS - on Windows, it's "Search", on macOS, it's "Find".
mkprc 5mo ago
I also think about this, and worry about this. My go-to example is that the file-system in Windows used to clearly be a tree, and the file explorer was how you traversed this tree. With "Libraries" and other shenanigans with the location of the Desktop folder, it's not much of a tree anymore, and I wonder if this is related to kids-these-days not understanding the basics of file systems anymore. https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...
- al_borland 5mo ago
  I think smartphones obscuring the filesystem away, and desktop search making the skill less of a requirement really hurt the filesystem understanding for younger generations. I remember Steve Jobs saying the last area of complexity they needed to be solved was the filesystem, which is why they made the iPhone the way they did, with apps owning the files, so users didn’t have to deal with it. We’ve seen the Files app introduced and those walls get broken down, so it was clearly the wrong approach, especially when various apps can all perform actions on the same type of files. Jobs also said death would take care of the problem of people not knowing how to type. I often think he should have taken the similar approach to the filesystem. Required learning for the modern era, not something to hide away so skills never develop.
  - falcor84 5mo ago
    > Jobs also said death would take care of the problem of people not knowing how to type. I often think he should have taken the similar approach I was all set for this dark humor, and actually had to double back to then understand the full sentence.
- smcg 5mo ago
  This to me feels like an example of Microsoft poorly copying (a bad feature from) Apple.
rayiner 5mo ago
The new iOS beta buries the “share” button under the line button inside the search lozenge, which was previously for view settings (and downloads). The iOS design team is just coasting on good decisions make a decade ago. The only good things are stuff they haven’t gotten around to fucking up yet.
cesarb 5mo ago
> There is an assumption that by now everyone knows what the menu in the bottom left corner does Except that... it's no longer in the bottom left corner! Recently, I had to help a relative with a Windows system, and what passes for the "Start" button has now moved to somewhere more in the center (and, of course, this completely confused my relative, who was used to the old place). I also had to rant about Fitt's law (without mentioning its name) and how things were better the way they were before. And I also had to find out and show them where the shutdown button ended up this time, so they could power off the computer normally (as they were used to) instead of having to use the power strip switch. And the issue I had to help with? Windows was too slow (to the point of nearly unusable). They don't use the computer often (and obviously always power it down after each use), so it's always running some heavy background update (on a mechanical hard drive) whenever it boots up. My advice was to power it up and let it sit for about an hour before using, then it would be back to normal speed.
- desdenova 5mo ago
  You could've changed the setting that puts the button back on the lower left corner and saved your relative the trouble. The new default is truly terrible, though, and this was the first setting I had to change when I was forced to use a windows laptop by the company I work in.
  - cesarb 4mo ago
    > You could've changed the setting that puts the button back on the lower left corner and saved your relative the trouble. Nice, I didn't know that was possible; I expected it to be unchangeable, since I heard that the whole taskbar is no longer customizable in newer Windows releases.
  - chrismorgan 4mo ago
    Last time I used Windows 11, maybe late last year, there was no way of doing that… though they had finally allowed you to turn off the source of ads (“widgets”) which they put in the corner instead.
- ChoGGi 4mo ago

ranger_danger 5mo ago

> There is an assumption that by now everyone knows what the menu in the bottom left corner does, and we are no longer in the phase of trying to teach the population to use a computer for the first time Strong disagree, because: > Every day there are new young people using a computer for the first time I can assure you these people have no idea what the start button is or does... it doesn't help that it no longer even says "Start" for the last ~20 years.

al_borland 5mo ago
We do agree. I said the first thing you quoted was the wrong approach, because of the second thing you quoted. Having it say “start”, like it used to, would help solve that.
- ranger_danger 5mo ago
  Ok but, were you around during that time? I remember it not helping much at all to tell people what to do. When Windows 95 first came out, they had to have a giant arrow pointing to the Start menu with an explanation of what that would do: https://a.imagem.app/Ge6OCZ.jpeg https://a.imagem.app/Ge6OCZ.jpeg Then they had a scrolling animation with an arrow and some text ("Click the Start button to begin") that slid in from the right side of the taskbar and pointed right at the Start button.
  - al_borland 5mo ago
    I was around, though I wasn’t an adult where I was following the release at the time. The first computer I used had Windows 3.1, but I never really knew how to use it. I just played some games on it and my dad would have me feed in a stack of floppy disks for him when he had to install something big. Windows 95 was the first OS I used and explored on my own and made sense to me.
- ConceptJunkie 5mo ago
  For people complaining that "Start" isn't a great choice, perhaps there's something better, but I can't think of anything. You need a small word that implies, "Click here to do something or find something." and in that regard, I think "Start" is a good choice. On the other hand, I think there were few ideas worse than "My Computer", etc., not the least of which is the fact that it took Windows application software about 10 years to get consistently good at handling paths with spaces in their names. Of course, the worst UI thing Microsoft ever did was hiding file extensions by default. That might be the worst UI decision in all of history.
  - al_borland 5mo ago
    > That might be the worst UI decision in all of history. The Windows 8 touch-first start menu with a hot corner instead of a button, applied to their Server OS, that I assume most accessed through RDP was pretty horrific.
  - ranger_danger 4mo ago
    > the worst UI thing Microsoft ever did was hiding file extensions Highly disagree... that was not a snap decision and they did a lot of research on it. The vast majority of people were only further confused by extensions, and preferred file names to appear more natural. This was also done before the days of widespread use of the internet, email, or viruses/malware. What research have you done that might suggest a large number of people would agree that it was a bad decision?

makeitdouble 5mo ago

I was a wee little kid when I first touch windows 95, and only ever used dos before. The "Start" button made no sense. The computer was already started, and clicking randomly popped up menus and opened documents in their right programs, so it felt like the natural way to progress. The owner of the computer had to point me to the start menu. Even now I still think it was a cursed UI. It was the place primarily to close and shutdown the computer (again, when you see that button the computer and OS will always be already started), get to the control panel or run commands. None of it felt like "start", and the current windows logo only design makes a lot more sense. To your point, small kids get proficient very fast with smartphones and iPads. I'd call their interface a lot more "intuitive"

jerf 5mo ago
I never liked the word "start" itself, but if you're going to have a GUI, a single central clean place to say "every interaction you may want to do can be found from here" is a good idea. In principle having search there is pretty useful. In practice Microsoft has consistently from the beginning gone out of their way to make the search useless and slow, a policy that is now old enough to vote. How the start menu has now gone nearly two decades without you being able to type "note" and see Notepad just pop up as one of the choices instantly beats me on my ever-more-super super computers, but that's an implementation detail that Microsoft has consistently botched. And more and more over time, Microsoft has thought more about what they want in the menu than what the user wants. Nevertheless, the general idea of that top-level "here's everything" is a good one. The open source desktop environments do a much better job with it, without marketing trying to figure out how to stuff this half-decade's marketing push on to the user or "monetize" it.
- ConceptJunkie 5mo ago
  > And more and more over time, Microsoft has thought more about what they want in the menu than what the user wants. This pretty much describes _everything_ in Windows in the last 15 years.
- steve1977 4mo ago
  This reminds me about one of those seemingly small differences between Windows and macOS - on Windows, it's "Search", on macOS, it's "Find".

mkprc 5mo ago

I also think about this, and worry about this. My go-to example is that the file-system in Windows used to clearly be a tree, and the file explorer was how you traversed this tree. With "Libraries" and other shenanigans with the location of the Desktop folder, it's not much of a tree anymore, and I wonder if this is related to kids-these-days not understanding the basics of file systems anymore. https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...

al_borland 5mo ago
I think smartphones obscuring the filesystem away, and desktop search making the skill less of a requirement really hurt the filesystem understanding for younger generations. I remember Steve Jobs saying the last area of complexity they needed to be solved was the filesystem, which is why they made the iPhone the way they did, with apps owning the files, so users didn’t have to deal with it. We’ve seen the Files app introduced and those walls get broken down, so it was clearly the wrong approach, especially when various apps can all perform actions on the same type of files. Jobs also said death would take care of the problem of people not knowing how to type. I often think he should have taken the similar approach to the filesystem. Required learning for the modern era, not something to hide away so skills never develop.
- falcor84 5mo ago
  > Jobs also said death would take care of the problem of people not knowing how to type. I often think he should have taken the similar approach I was all set for this dark humor, and actually had to double back to then understand the full sentence.
smcg 5mo ago
This to me feels like an example of Microsoft poorly copying (a bad feature from) Apple.

rayiner 5mo ago

The new iOS beta buries the “share” button under the line button inside the search lozenge, which was previously for view settings (and downloads). The iOS design team is just coasting on good decisions make a decade ago. The only good things are stuff they haven’t gotten around to fucking up yet.

cesarb 5mo ago

> There is an assumption that by now everyone knows what the menu in the bottom left corner does Except that... it's no longer in the bottom left corner! Recently, I had to help a relative with a Windows system, and what passes for the "Start" button has now moved to somewhere more in the center (and, of course, this completely confused my relative, who was used to the old place). I also had to rant about Fitt's law (without mentioning its name) and how things were better the way they were before. And I also had to find out and show them where the shutdown button ended up this time, so they could power off the computer normally (as they were used to) instead of having to use the power strip switch. And the issue I had to help with? Windows was too slow (to the point of nearly unusable). They don't use the computer often (and obviously always power it down after each use), so it's always running some heavy background update (on a mechanical hard drive) whenever it boots up. My advice was to power it up and let it sit for about an hour before using, then it would be back to normal speed.

desdenova 5mo ago
You could've changed the setting that puts the button back on the lower left corner and saved your relative the trouble. The new default is truly terrible, though, and this was the first setting I had to change when I was forced to use a windows laptop by the company I work in.
- cesarb 4mo ago
  > You could've changed the setting that puts the button back on the lower left corner and saved your relative the trouble. Nice, I didn't know that was possible; I expected it to be unchangeable, since I heard that the whole taskbar is no longer customizable in newer Windows releases.
- chrismorgan 4mo ago
  Last time I used Windows 11, maybe late last year, there was no way of doing that… though they had finally allowed you to turn off the source of ads (“widgets”) which they put in the corner instead.
ChoGGi 4mo ago