8 ms·

I work on the Start menu. It's just a UWP XAML app with Models and ViewModels written in C++/Cx, as are most of the new Shell features and built-in apps--althou

I work on the Start menu. It's just a UWP XAML app with Models and ViewModels written in C++/Cx, as are most of the new Shell features and built-in apps--although some of the newer ones, like Maps and Xbox, are in XAML/C#/.Net Native. Even the UI frame of Edge is in XAML, and the new Office UWP apps are too. I encourage everyone here to give UWP apps a shot; we dogfooded the dev platform to ensure it was stable and fast, and XAML really is a pleasure to use. It's come a long way since WPF.

deleted 11y ago
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tonyedgecombe 11y ago
What is UWP?
- Aleman360 11y ago
  https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Dn894631.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Dn894631.aspx "Universal Windows Platform". Lets you target every Windows 10 device with a single app, from Raspberry Pi 2 to phone to PC's to Xbox One. Apps are written in C++/C#/VB with XAML markup or JavaScript/HTML/CSS. Also FYI, it takes a minimal amount of work to repackage an existing web app as a UWP.
  - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
    Does that support Windows 7/8/8.1? If not I won't be able to adopt it for a long time.
    - shmed 11y ago
      No it doesn't. Only works on win10 (phone, PC, tablet & surface hub for the moment, but they are expanding it to hololens and xbox one).
      - frik 11y ago
        Even Avalon/WPF has been back ported from Vista to WinXP. Afaik, UWP is newer release of WinRuntime (WinRT).
      - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
        I'll take a look closer to 2023 then, when 8.1 reaches end of life.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  "Universal Windows Platform"[0] [0] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Dn894631.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Dn894631.aspx
- deleted 11y ago
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- deleted 11y ago
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Someone1234 11y ago
Considering Windows 10's new development methodology, you guys can continue to update the Start Menu. So I have two questions/concerns: - Do you have a strategy to allow users to modify the Start Menu directly (e.g. akin to a bookmark manager tool). As far as I can tell right click no longer works, so renaming a folder, creating a folder, moving icons, or similar is impossible. The only way to accomplish this now is you just need to know where the Start Menu's content is located on disk and go do it using File Explorer. Also the Startup folder is hidden. - Why when I hit "All Apps" does it only use up 1/3 of the space for the app list? Why not have it expand out to a multi-column widget? Being able to see my pinned apps after I hit "All Apps" isn't useful.
- Aleman360 11y ago
  1. Stay tuned. We've received a lot of feedback on that. We do look at the Windows Feedback app reports; it's all automated, so once something gets upvoted enough it gets routed to the feature team. 2. I'm personally working on all apps list improvements. I don't know if I can share details yet until we push stuff out to Insiders. One UI feature that makes dealing with the narrow list a little easier is the jump list that pops up when you click one of the letter headers. It's just one of these bad boys: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.ui.xaml.controls.semanticzoom.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/window...
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    Thanks for the info. It is welcome to hear that the Start Menu will continue to evolve based on user feedback. Windows 10 is certainly launching in a strong place regardless.
anonymfus 11y ago
How do you get feedback about localisation? Russian version shipped with the word "Создать" (literally "Create") as the translation for the "New" mark in the list of all applications, despite many heavily upvoted posts in the feedback app.
- Aleman360 11y ago
  Through the feedback app. After enough upvotes, it gets automatically routed to the feature team for triage.
  - anonymfus 11y ago
    Are there separate translation/localisation teams for different components of the system? What happens when it automatically routed to the wrong team?
    - Aleman360 11y ago
      Localization is handled by dedicated teams. People are constantly combing through the bug tracker and we have internal tools that assist in making sure bugs get routed to the right owners.
  - psykovsky 11y ago
    Triage being the keyword, right? There is no promise it will be implemented just because users want it, or am I wrong and triage means something else for you?
    - overgryphon 11y ago
      Triage generally means the feedback will be routed to the relevant people. I'm confused why a promise Would be expected here. How do you envision a system for handling large amounts of public feedback working?
stinos 11y ago
I encourage everyone here to give UWP apps a shot I did, and while UWP seems still a bit immature it sure is nice. Unfortunately I have a couple of existing and pretty huge WPF apps and it does not seem you can 'port' that to UWP in some way (except like rewriting all UI code - or am I missing something?) so I don't think I'm gonna switch anytime soon and I'm probably not alone?
- Aleman360 11y ago
  Yea unfortunately the new XAML isn't 100% compatible with the old XAML. Things like DataTriggers no longer exist; everything is Visual State Manager. On the plus side, though, UWP XAML perf is significantly better than WPF XAML. WPF is still supported however, and recently got improvements in .Net 4.6. There are plans to allow WPF apps (and other Win32-based apps) to be published on the Windows Store, so you might not have to worry about porting, as long as you're happy just targeting PC users.
WCityMike 11y ago
I'd be curious as to your reaction to Ars Technica's review, in which they complained about what they perceived as a "debilitating" Start Menu issue: "This database is (inexplicably) maintained by a system service running as the super-privileged SYSTEM identity. And at the time of writing, this database has the oh-so convenient feature of being limited to around 500 entries. [...] The All apps view didn't show all my programs. This would be tolerable if that's all that happened [...] Except that searching breaks, too. For search-to-start apps, Windows appears to use the same database. [...] if you reduce the number of apps to below 500 or so, it doesn't fix anything. There's no easy way to make it re-read all the short cuts."
- GeorgeHahn 11y ago
  I have observed the same issue over the past few months. It's a dealbreaker of a problem: instead of running the application you asked for, more often than not you are directed to the application's website. I've been able to avoid this problem by replacing the start menu with Classic Start Menu, but that comes with its own set of issues (lag, funky focus interactions, and inability to launch some metro apps). So far, this is the only issue that has me thinking about downgrading.
- WorldWideWayne 11y ago
  I'm a Microsoft fan and I love Windows, but this is the worst Windows yet in my opinion because they removed features and useful screens just to replace them with bland UWP style screens that don't have half as much functionality. - Start menu keyboard acceleration is poor. I used to be able to hit the Windows key and then just hit ENTER to run the first app on the Start screen. Now, you have to hit tab or use an arrow key before you can do anything. - The Start screen/menu/whatever doesn't let you operate in bulk anymore. WTF? Now I have to click three times as much to disable live tiles for a bunch of apps. - Why can I not middle-click task-bar items to close the app yet? This seems like an obvious feature since that's how you close tabs on a tabbed window. 7+ Taskbar Tweaker fixed this glaring omission in Windows 8, but it's not on 10 yet. (I don't combine taskbar items. I know you can click the preview window after waiting a second for it to show up, but that's too slow.) - They removed titlebar colors from all Windows so now you can't even tell which window is active or where the titlebar can be dragged. (This is an anti-pattern obviously copied from OS X, but the reason that I don't use OS X is because I don't like most of Apple's design decisions either.) - I can't stand all of the thick borders and focus lines in the Metro/UWP style apps. At least in Windows 8, I could avoid them most of the time but there are even more of these screens in Windows 10. Win32 apps are so much better looking than this. In short, I'm uninstalling this and going back to Windows 8.1 Pro, which I actually liked because it was easy to avoid Metro.
AndrewDucker 11y ago
So, will you be the one fixing this bug? http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_desktop/some-win32-apps-missing-from-start-menu-all/b41f1f57-5af3-468d-896f-bd283aa6cfdf?auth=1 http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_win... :->
- zach 11y ago
  512 apps should be enough for anyone.
Retric 11y ago
Sounds like you’re working in the belly of the beast. If you don't mind me asking what's up with the 'tile' concept that's pasted all over windows UI. I get the fact it makes a cool looking demo, but the usability is terrible. So, who / what’s pushing this internally?
- shmed 11y ago
  Can you expand on why you say the usability is terrible? I understand people didn't like the Win8 start menu, since it was only accessible in full screen and would hide your desktop entirely, however I never heard any one give a reason why they would think tiles in general are terrible. I personally love the concept. I spent some time on Windows Phone too and the live tiles were the best thing about the OS. Also, you can unpin all of them on windows 10 and resize the start menu to only keep the app list (but I have no idea would anyone would do that).
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I understand people didn't like the Win8 start menu, since it was only accessible in full screen and would hide your desktop entirely, however I never heard any one give a reason why they would think tiles in general are terrible. Tiles increase the space taken up by each item, which increases the likelihood of needing to scroll or page menu items, which is okay UX on mobile (though moreso on phones than tablets, IMO), but pretty bad on desktop (extra bad if it is side scrolling.) OTOH, Tiles are a great UX for quick at-a-glance access to information and access to frequently used apps; sort of a dashboard interface. Its actually not a bad thing to have such a configurable dashboard, it just serves a completely different need than the pre-Win8 Start Menu, and doesn't make a good substitute for it. There's probably a good UX design possible for providing desktop and dashboard interfaces on the same device, I just don't think Microsoft has nailed that yet.
  - Retric 11y ago
    They take up a lot more screen space. Netflix is a clear example of this problem, sure showing pictures is nice, but scrolling 3 pages to the right just to look at a list is annoying. The 'real' advantage is displaying status information, but most applications like calculator / Photoshop / Skyrim don't have status information. Further many things like weather might seem like the current status are useful, but knowing the current temperature outside or a what the stock price was 15 minutes ago is generally fairly useless and wastes screen space. Consider, the screen shots showing the current user's name. Unless I forgot my name I can't think why displaying it is helpful. PS: Don't get me wrong having a sperate 'tile' menue that's differnt from the start menue like a personal home page might be useful. But, I suspect it would rarely be opened by most people.
mwcampbell 11y ago
I'm glad to see that Microsoft is no longer recommending one toolkit to third-party developers (WPF, WinRT) while using another one for Windows itself (DirectUI). With everyone using the same toolkit now, we should expect to see more consistency, especially in areas like accessibility that don't get as much attention. Edit: I wonder how long it will be until DirectUI is completely gone from the shell, or if that will ever happen.
- deleted 11y ago
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maxxxxx 11y ago
Good! We definitely need a new UI framework that will be abandoned in a few years. Why can't MS improve one of the existing ones like WPF or WinRT (what happened to that anyway?)?
- mwcampbell 11y ago
  Isn't UWP just the current name for WinRT?
zuck9 11y ago
Weird question but do you use (or have used) VB.NET for anything?
frik 11y ago
Why stick with XML? Why not use HTML for UI frames? The startmenu could have a more "responsive design", allowing one to resize it any size would be easy (not just a few predefined sizes that are supported in Win10). HTML would suite itself for the UI of Edge too, similar to Chrome, Firefox (Android), FirefoxOS, WebOS.
- Aleman360 11y ago
  XAML is far easier for app layout than HTML/CSS. It's very easy to do responsive design. We do have a full screen layout for those that want it, and it's what you get in Tablet Mode. <Grid> <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center"/> <\Grid>
  - OniBait 11y ago
    Yeah XAML layouts have always seemed so much cleaner than any CSS layout system. Was hoping that css-grid would have gained more traction over flex. Given the choice, I'd choose XAML over HTML/CSS for app layout/design in a heartbeat. I think it all goes back to what each language was designed for and people hacking things into HTML/CSS to get it do things it wasn't designed for.
  - frik 11y ago
    I meant resizing the startmenu with the mouse by grabbing the border and moving the mouse. It's not that kind of "responsive design" we know from HTML. The startmenu only snaps to at least three sizes (vertical) and doing so with little UX feedback animation. It could be done better even with XAML (and it would be trivial with CSS3), but it was probably a design choice - it's something for Raymond Chen to write about in ten years. (And changing back from tablet-mode startmenu to desktop-mode startmenu is a bit hidden in the icon next to the clock and takes some time to locate the setting.)
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  XAML is much better at solving the UI issue on the desktop. Notably, it allows you to use binding logic to ensure your data model for your application doesn't carry all the weight of the UI logic (such as coloring, resizing, en/dis-abling controls, and etc). So, your XAML contains all the logic that deals with UI and your data model (view-model) contains all the values to be displayed (and possibly some of the business logic tied to those values).

deleted 11y ago

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tonyedgecombe 11y ago

What is UWP?

Aleman360 11y ago
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Dn894631.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Dn894631.aspx "Universal Windows Platform". Lets you target every Windows 10 device with a single app, from Raspberry Pi 2 to phone to PC's to Xbox One. Apps are written in C++/C#/VB with XAML markup or JavaScript/HTML/CSS. Also FYI, it takes a minimal amount of work to repackage an existing web app as a UWP.
- tonyedgecombe 11y ago
  Does that support Windows 7/8/8.1? If not I won't be able to adopt it for a long time.
  - shmed 11y ago
    No it doesn't. Only works on win10 (phone, PC, tablet & surface hub for the moment, but they are expanding it to hololens and xbox one).
    - frik 11y ago
      Even Avalon/WPF has been back ported from Vista to WinXP. Afaik, UWP is newer release of WinRuntime (WinRT).
    - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
      I'll take a look closer to 2023 then, when 8.1 reaches end of life.
Someone1234 11y ago
"Universal Windows Platform"[0] [0] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Dn894631.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Dn894631.aspx
deleted 11y ago
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deleted 11y ago
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Someone1234 11y ago

Considering Windows 10's new development methodology, you guys can continue to update the Start Menu. So I have two questions/concerns: - Do you have a strategy to allow users to modify the Start Menu directly (e.g. akin to a bookmark manager tool). As far as I can tell right click no longer works, so renaming a folder, creating a folder, moving icons, or similar is impossible. The only way to accomplish this now is you just need to know where the Start Menu's content is located on disk and go do it using File Explorer. Also the Startup folder is hidden. - Why when I hit "All Apps" does it only use up 1/3 of the space for the app list? Why not have it expand out to a multi-column widget? Being able to see my pinned apps after I hit "All Apps" isn't useful.

Aleman360 11y ago
1. Stay tuned. We've received a lot of feedback on that. We do look at the Windows Feedback app reports; it's all automated, so once something gets upvoted enough it gets routed to the feature team. 2. I'm personally working on all apps list improvements. I don't know if I can share details yet until we push stuff out to Insiders. One UI feature that makes dealing with the narrow list a little easier is the jump list that pops up when you click one of the letter headers. It's just one of these bad boys: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.ui.xaml.controls.semanticzoom.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/window...
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Thanks for the info. It is welcome to hear that the Start Menu will continue to evolve based on user feedback. Windows 10 is certainly launching in a strong place regardless.

anonymfus 11y ago

How do you get feedback about localisation? Russian version shipped with the word "Создать" (literally "Create") as the translation for the "New" mark in the list of all applications, despite many heavily upvoted posts in the feedback app.

Aleman360 11y ago
Through the feedback app. After enough upvotes, it gets automatically routed to the feature team for triage.
- anonymfus 11y ago
  Are there separate translation/localisation teams for different components of the system? What happens when it automatically routed to the wrong team?
  - Aleman360 11y ago
    Localization is handled by dedicated teams. People are constantly combing through the bug tracker and we have internal tools that assist in making sure bugs get routed to the right owners.
- psykovsky 11y ago
  Triage being the keyword, right? There is no promise it will be implemented just because users want it, or am I wrong and triage means something else for you?
  - overgryphon 11y ago
    Triage generally means the feedback will be routed to the relevant people. I'm confused why a promise Would be expected here. How do you envision a system for handling large amounts of public feedback working?

stinos 11y ago

I encourage everyone here to give UWP apps a shot I did, and while UWP seems still a bit immature it sure is nice. Unfortunately I have a couple of existing and pretty huge WPF apps and it does not seem you can 'port' that to UWP in some way (except like rewriting all UI code - or am I missing something?) so I don't think I'm gonna switch anytime soon and I'm probably not alone?

Aleman360 11y ago
Yea unfortunately the new XAML isn't 100% compatible with the old XAML. Things like DataTriggers no longer exist; everything is Visual State Manager. On the plus side, though, UWP XAML perf is significantly better than WPF XAML. WPF is still supported however, and recently got improvements in .Net 4.6. There are plans to allow WPF apps (and other Win32-based apps) to be published on the Windows Store, so you might not have to worry about porting, as long as you're happy just targeting PC users.

WCityMike 11y ago

I'd be curious as to your reaction to Ars Technica's review, in which they complained about what they perceived as a "debilitating" Start Menu issue: "This database is (inexplicably) maintained by a system service running as the super-privileged SYSTEM identity. And at the time of writing, this database has the oh-so convenient feature of being limited to around 500 entries. [...] The All apps view didn't show all my programs. This would be tolerable if that's all that happened [...] Except that searching breaks, too. For search-to-start apps, Windows appears to use the same database. [...] if you reduce the number of apps to below 500 or so, it doesn't fix anything. There's no easy way to make it re-read all the short cuts."

GeorgeHahn 11y ago
I have observed the same issue over the past few months. It's a dealbreaker of a problem: instead of running the application you asked for, more often than not you are directed to the application's website. I've been able to avoid this problem by replacing the start menu with Classic Start Menu, but that comes with its own set of issues (lag, funky focus interactions, and inability to launch some metro apps). So far, this is the only issue that has me thinking about downgrading.
WorldWideWayne 11y ago
I'm a Microsoft fan and I love Windows, but this is the worst Windows yet in my opinion because they removed features and useful screens just to replace them with bland UWP style screens that don't have half as much functionality. - Start menu keyboard acceleration is poor. I used to be able to hit the Windows key and then just hit ENTER to run the first app on the Start screen. Now, you have to hit tab or use an arrow key before you can do anything. - The Start screen/menu/whatever doesn't let you operate in bulk anymore. WTF? Now I have to click three times as much to disable live tiles for a bunch of apps. - Why can I not middle-click task-bar items to close the app yet? This seems like an obvious feature since that's how you close tabs on a tabbed window. 7+ Taskbar Tweaker fixed this glaring omission in Windows 8, but it's not on 10 yet. (I don't combine taskbar items. I know you can click the preview window after waiting a second for it to show up, but that's too slow.) - They removed titlebar colors from all Windows so now you can't even tell which window is active or where the titlebar can be dragged. (This is an anti-pattern obviously copied from OS X, but the reason that I don't use OS X is because I don't like most of Apple's design decisions either.) - I can't stand all of the thick borders and focus lines in the Metro/UWP style apps. At least in Windows 8, I could avoid them most of the time but there are even more of these screens in Windows 10. Win32 apps are so much better looking than this. In short, I'm uninstalling this and going back to Windows 8.1 Pro, which I actually liked because it was easy to avoid Metro.

AndrewDucker 11y ago

So, will you be the one fixing this bug? http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_desktop/some-win32-apps-missing-from-start-menu-all/b41f1f57-5af3-468d-896f-bd283aa6cfdf?auth=1 http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_win... :->

zach 11y ago
512 apps should be enough for anyone.

Retric 11y ago

Sounds like you’re working in the belly of the beast. If you don't mind me asking what's up with the 'tile' concept that's pasted all over windows UI. I get the fact it makes a cool looking demo, but the usability is terrible. So, who / what’s pushing this internally?

shmed 11y ago
Can you expand on why you say the usability is terrible? I understand people didn't like the Win8 start menu, since it was only accessible in full screen and would hide your desktop entirely, however I never heard any one give a reason why they would think tiles in general are terrible. I personally love the concept. I spent some time on Windows Phone too and the live tiles were the best thing about the OS. Also, you can unpin all of them on windows 10 and resize the start menu to only keep the app list (but I have no idea would anyone would do that).
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I understand people didn't like the Win8 start menu, since it was only accessible in full screen and would hide your desktop entirely, however I never heard any one give a reason why they would think tiles in general are terrible. Tiles increase the space taken up by each item, which increases the likelihood of needing to scroll or page menu items, which is okay UX on mobile (though moreso on phones than tablets, IMO), but pretty bad on desktop (extra bad if it is side scrolling.) OTOH, Tiles are a great UX for quick at-a-glance access to information and access to frequently used apps; sort of a dashboard interface. Its actually not a bad thing to have such a configurable dashboard, it just serves a completely different need than the pre-Win8 Start Menu, and doesn't make a good substitute for it. There's probably a good UX design possible for providing desktop and dashboard interfaces on the same device, I just don't think Microsoft has nailed that yet.
- Retric 11y ago
  They take up a lot more screen space. Netflix is a clear example of this problem, sure showing pictures is nice, but scrolling 3 pages to the right just to look at a list is annoying. The 'real' advantage is displaying status information, but most applications like calculator / Photoshop / Skyrim don't have status information. Further many things like weather might seem like the current status are useful, but knowing the current temperature outside or a what the stock price was 15 minutes ago is generally fairly useless and wastes screen space. Consider, the screen shots showing the current user's name. Unless I forgot my name I can't think why displaying it is helpful. PS: Don't get me wrong having a sperate 'tile' menue that's differnt from the start menue like a personal home page might be useful. But, I suspect it would rarely be opened by most people.

mwcampbell 11y ago

I'm glad to see that Microsoft is no longer recommending one toolkit to third-party developers (WPF, WinRT) while using another one for Windows itself (DirectUI). With everyone using the same toolkit now, we should expect to see more consistency, especially in areas like accessibility that don't get as much attention. Edit: I wonder how long it will be until DirectUI is completely gone from the shell, or if that will ever happen.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

maxxxxx 11y ago

Good! We definitely need a new UI framework that will be abandoned in a few years. Why can't MS improve one of the existing ones like WPF or WinRT (what happened to that anyway?)?

mwcampbell 11y ago
Isn't UWP just the current name for WinRT?

zuck9 11y ago

Weird question but do you use (or have used) VB.NET for anything?

frik 11y ago

Why stick with XML? Why not use HTML for UI frames? The startmenu could have a more "responsive design", allowing one to resize it any size would be easy (not just a few predefined sizes that are supported in Win10). HTML would suite itself for the UI of Edge too, similar to Chrome, Firefox (Android), FirefoxOS, WebOS.

Aleman360 11y ago
XAML is far easier for app layout than HTML/CSS. It's very easy to do responsive design. We do have a full screen layout for those that want it, and it's what you get in Tablet Mode. <Grid> <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center"/> <\Grid>
- OniBait 11y ago
  Yeah XAML layouts have always seemed so much cleaner than any CSS layout system. Was hoping that css-grid would have gained more traction over flex. Given the choice, I'd choose XAML over HTML/CSS for app layout/design in a heartbeat. I think it all goes back to what each language was designed for and people hacking things into HTML/CSS to get it do things it wasn't designed for.
- frik 11y ago
  I meant resizing the startmenu with the mouse by grabbing the border and moving the mouse. It's not that kind of "responsive design" we know from HTML. The startmenu only snaps to at least three sizes (vertical) and doing so with little UX feedback animation. It could be done better even with XAML (and it would be trivial with CSS3), but it was probably a design choice - it's something for Raymond Chen to write about in ten years. (And changing back from tablet-mode startmenu to desktop-mode startmenu is a bit hidden in the icon next to the clock and takes some time to locate the setting.)
norea-armozel 11y ago
XAML is much better at solving the UI issue on the desktop. Notably, it allows you to use binding logic to ensure your data model for your application doesn't carry all the weight of the UI logic (such as coloring, resizing, en/dis-abling controls, and etc). So, your XAML contains all the logic that deals with UI and your data model (view-model) contains all the values to be displayed (and possibly some of the business logic tied to those values).