Windows 8 UI is Dropping the ‘Start’ Button

Well I suppose it makes my life easier on a technical support end.

Q. How do I accomplish (x) in Win 8?

A. Upgrade to Win 7.


What a stupid change and yet again no mention of an easy option to Turn metro and all of its useless screen cluttering garbage off. The ribbon was the only smart idea they had with the UI apparently. It just looks like MS went out and bought a bunch of baboons and let them throw poop at random ideas on a wall and chose whichever idea got poop on it.
 
WIndows 8, Vista, ME...following a long line of succession. I'm guessing windows 9 will actually be the next good OS.
 
stealthy123 said:
I don't see how, I love the interface and find it quite intuitive.

have you actually used a windows phone?
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It is, on a phone or a tablet absolutely. I would even go so far as to say I like it better than the default android ui and certainly better than the iPhone UI. However, that interface is clearly designed for a touch screen interface, not for a desktop, esepcially one with more than one display. It just doesnt make sense for every case, and I certainly wont be giving up my desktop for a tablet any time soon.
 
If this is the case, I hope that someone like Stardock brings out Windowblinds themes to replace the shoddy Metro UI & put the start menu back...
 
You can disable Metro UI with a registry key and the desktop works as expected, including the start button. It's the only way I find Win8 usable.
 
pxc said:
You can disable Metro UI with a registry key and the desktop works as expected, including the start button. It's the only way I find Win8 usable.
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That's if they keep that functionality hidden & intact with the beta onwards... :(
 
DeathPrincess said:
Lots of game companies seem to do this too...tell them during the beta how much a program sucks, they just ignore you and do it anyway. :D
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That's because by the time a beta is out, the feature set is pretty much finalized. They share the beta so that people find bugs and they can fix them...

When Win 8 is final, I'll probably give it a test run in a VM or something, but judging by all I'm hearing, I feel chances are good I won't be "upgrading" any time soon.

I want my phone to be more like my computer, not my computer to be more like my phone!
 
Dekoth-E- said:
The ribbon was the only smart idea they had with the UI apparently. It just looks like MS went out and bought a bunch of baboons and let them throw poop at random ideas on a wall and chose whichever idea got poop on it.
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I feel the ribbon is equally bad to Metro.

I have Office 2010 currently and have been using it for a few months now. While its an improvement over 2007, I still prefer using Office 2003.

Neat organized columns of text are really really easy for your eyes to scroll down and find what you are looking for easily.

The garbled mix of icons and text in the ribbon has me - more often than not - spending lots of time searching for features and getting annoyed. Sometimes I'm on the right tab, but I just don't see what I'm looking for because of the poor layout.

I have to admit. I am an icon hater. I feel text is much more effective at precisely explaining something. That being said, Icons could be used effectively if they were organized in one neat row instead of shifting up and down in sizes etc. as you move from left to right. It bugs me.

Facebooks timeline is similar. before I could scroll down everything in one column and I would always find what I was looking for. now that it alternates from side to side, its much easier to miss what you are looking for.
 
What I don't understand, is why is Microsoft not seeing that Windows 8 is going to be a failure? Microsoft needs to give us a reason to upgrade; have not seen a reason yet.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038351479 said:
I feel the ribbon is equally bad to Metro.

I have Office 2010 currently and have been using it for a few months now. While its an improvement over 2007, I still prefer using Office 2003.

Neat organized columns of text are really really easy for your eyes to scroll down and find what you are looking for easily.

The garbled mix of icons and text in the ribbon has me - more often than not - spending lots of time searching for features and getting annoyed. Sometimes I'm on the right tab, but I just don't see what I'm looking for because of the poor layout.

I have to admit. I am an icon hater. I feel text is much more effective at precisely explaining something. That being said, Icons could be used effectively if they were organized in one neat row instead of shifting up and down in sizes etc. as you move from left to right. It bugs me.

Facebooks timeline is similar. before I could scroll down everything in one column and I would always find what I was looking for. now that it alternates from side to side, its much easier to miss what you are looking for.
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The ribbon is very customizable, it is pretty much superior in every way. The fact is that Microsoft collected a ton of usage data over the years and what it said was that people very rarely clicked an item on the menu strip.
 
chinesepiratefood said:
The ribbon is very customizable, it is pretty much superior in every way. The fact is that Microsoft collected a ton of usage data over the years and what it said was that people very rarely clicked an item on the menu strip.
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So they made major design decisions based on their non-power users? :rolleyes: Brilliant.

Personally, I find the need to go in to the advanced menu items in office many many times a day, especially in Excel.

I gave Office 2010 the benefit of the doubt and have been using it since November when my work computer was upgraded from Office 2003, but in the almost three months since, I still feel like I am slower in 2010, and find that I spend time needlessly searching through the ribbon, when things were right there, in the menus.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038351625 said:
So they made major design decisions based on their non-power users? :rolleyes: Brilliant.

Personally, I find the need to go in to the advanced menu items in office many many times a day, especially in Excel.

I gave Office 2010 the benefit of the doubt and have been using it since November when my work computer was upgraded from Office 2003, but in the almost three months since, I still feel like I am slower in 2010, and find that I spend time needlessly searching through the ribbon, when things were right there, in the menus.
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Personal proficiency/deficiency regarding UIs is all about how well we function with them. Some power users love the ribbon, others hate it. You may just have found that you don't do well with it but that doesn't mean you can't improve. Ever think the possibility might be your attitude about it & how your predisposing yourself to failure with it?
 
Guess I'll be skipping Win 8 unless I buy a faildozer (for some reason)
 
CrimsonKnight13 said:
That's if they keep that functionality hidden & intact with the beta onwards... :(
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Metro is just a shell. It can be disabled one way or another on startup. The desktop functionality is required for backwards compatibility, so that's not going away.
 
pxc said:
Metro is just a shell. It can be disabled one way or another on startup. The desktop functionality is required for backwards compatibility, so that's not going away.
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Good to know.
 
Me: Dad, go to the Start Butt....oh wait....
Dad: What button?
Me: One sec....i'm still using Win7
Dad: You suck son...i'm disowning you...
Me: *sob*

Yeah...my IT days are numbered...
 
This change makes perfect sense to anyone who's used the dev preview on a tablet.

You can bring up the "charms" bar (which has a start button on it) by dragging in from the right side of the screen. On a tablet, having a start button also on the taskbar is redundant, a waste of space, and confusing.

Removing the start button also gives you more horizontal space for pinned applications, which is even more important when holding a device in portrait orientation.

Now,with that said, the start button HAS NOT BEEN REMOVED from the taskbar. It's still there, it just auto-hides now. Put your mouse in the bottom-left corner of the screen and the button re-appears. The headline of this article is totally sensationalist and inaccurate.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038351625 said:
So they made major design decisions based on their non-power users? :rolleyes: Brilliant.

Personally, I find the need to go in to the advanced menu items in office many many times a day, especially in Excel.

I gave Office 2010 the benefit of the doubt and have been using it since November when my work computer was upgraded from Office 2003, but in the almost three months since, I still feel like I am slower in 2010, and find that I spend time needlessly searching through the ribbon, when things were right there, in the menus.
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Actually it was designed with power users in mind. If you find yourself going into the advanced menu items multiple times a day, then you haven't customized your ribbon to give you quick access to those features. I use Excel heavily every day and I almost never go into the advanced menus now. Operating office 2010 is overwhelmingly quicker for me to do advanced tasks now that I have my ribbon completely setup.

I Loathed ofice 2003, I was forced to use that terrible version for far too many years.
 
Negative Decibel said:
What I don't understand, is why is Microsoft not seeing that Windows 8 is going to be a failure? Microsoft needs to give us a reason to upgrade; have not seen a reason yet.
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Because MS has a wad of cash so if they make a mistake, they will pay to have it changed. Small companies think things through. My belief is MS has more then one team working on different flavors of windows, look how fast they came out with win 7 when vista became a failure to a majority of consumers.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Which is kind of raises the question why the hell they bother with beta/developer versions to start with...:confused:

Lots of game companies seem to do this too...tell them during the beta how much a program sucks, they just ignore you and do it anyway. :D
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LOL... They aren't really looking for your opinion. They want to fix bugs, get as much user experience time on the product as possible and get it as solid as possible.
 
wow, terrible idea. im sticking with win7 until im forced to change.
 
I bet Stardock is getting in gear to make massive amount of money selling GUI mods.
 
so the start screen, which I already hate taking up my whole screen (just like I hate how the file menu in office now over takes my whole document...) now also requires a hover then click, why does microsoft loves adding steps

but beyond that, having the start screen take up my entire screen is pretty much inexcusable, besides the fact that it blacks out my other 5 monitors every time I click on it (has that since been changed?)
 
ShadowSoldier89 said:
so the start screen, which I already hate taking up my whole screen (just like I hate how the file menu in office now over takes my whole document...) now also requires a hover then click, why does microsoft loves adding steps

but beyond that, having the start screen take up my entire screen is pretty much inexcusable, besides the fact that it blacks out my other 5 monitors every time I click on it (has that since been changed?)
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Uh, the Start Menu already requires a hover (you have to have the mouse over the Start Orb ) and a click. The Start Menu will only use one screen if you're using independent monitors. I haven't tried it with a single widescreen resolution but I do see an issue here though that's a pretty small number of users but it could be a problem for gamers.
 
michael.pa2 said:
If it ain't broke,don't fix it!
It may be an old adage,but it's still all too true. Too many changes are made just for the sake of change.
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Doesn't microsoft make money on training (or training the trainers) and tech support, as well as having an excuse to bill you again for Notepad?

Since windows 95, the only things I've benefitted from are USB support, more polished home networking, and 64-bit. I've paid far and above that cost in Windows to justify those. The only reason, compatibility. Incompatibility forces you to update. It forces you to update your whole company too instead of rolling it out slowly with new machines.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Actually it was designed with power users in mind. If you find yourself going into the advanced menu items multiple times a day, then you haven't customized your ribbon to give you quick access to those features. I use Excel heavily every day and I almost never go into the advanced menus now. Operating office 2010 is overwhelmingly quicker for me to do advanced tasks now that I have my ribbon completely setup.

I Loathed ofice 2003, I was forced to use that terrible version for far too many years.
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Actually before 2010, you could customize toolbars, in fact you could have multiple toolbars. So you're touting a feature that was already there before 2010 and was more flexible.

In fact, with a little work, more detailed toolbars could have been added giving you what ribbons give you now.
 
jpm100 said:
Doesn't microsoft make money on training (or training the trainers) and tech support, as well as having an excuse to bill you again for Notepad?

Since windows 95, the only things I've benefitted from are USB support, more polished home networking, and 64-bit. I've paid far and above that cost in Windows to justify those. The only reason, compatibility. Incompatibility forces you to update. It forces you to update your whole company too instead of rolling it out slowly with new machines.
Click to expand...

You don't think that modern versions of Windows are more secure than - say - Windows 95?

That IMHO, is the most important reason to stay current with modern operating systems.
 
jpm100 said:
Actually before 2010, you could customize toolbars, in fact you could have multiple toolbars. So you're touting a feature that was already there before 2010 and was more flexible.

In fact, with a little work, more detailed toolbars could have been added giving you what ribbons give you now.
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Correct, and ribbons are just an evolved form of those toolbars. However the argument he was presenting was the menus vs Ribbons and in that case there is no comparison. The menu system was just flat out crap compared to ribbons.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Correct, and ribbons are just an evolved form of those toolbars. However the argument he was presenting was the menus vs Ribbons and in that case there is no comparison. The menu system was just flat out crap compared to ribbons.
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I would say devolved.

and the Menu system let you explore new features and capability. Ribbons hide things. I can see why IT people might like them. Can't have the users get curious about new capability.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038352765 said:
You don't think that modern versions of Windows are more secure than - say - Windows 95?

That IMHO, is the most important reason to stay current with modern operating systems.
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Why was security a problem in the first place? In part being sloppy because they were more interested in bringing out bells and whistles that I never used that created those vulnerabilities.

And they plugged those holes after an assortment of third parties showed them how to be plugged.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038352765 said:
You don't think that modern versions of Windows are more secure than - say - Windows 95?
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He might be right, actually, in a sense. After all, who's targeting Windows 95 these days? What viruses, malware and so forth would even have any kind of functionality at all in Windows 95?
 
Great. A phone interface on my TV. A phone interface I hate at that. MacOSX Lion is looking better every day :)
 
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