Technology

Why would applications have to consider relayouting? Isn't that entirely in the hand of the Windows taskbar?

It shows the window groups, windows, pops over previews of windows or tabs in a consistent style, presumably owned by the taskbar itself. At no point do applications themselves control their positions or size in the taskbar or the taskbar popovers.

My screen is wider than it is tall. I have more horizontal screen real estate than vertical, why are you forcing me to waste vertical space? I wanna move it to the left again...

Microsoft’s data shows such users are really small when compared to the number of users who are asking for other newer features in the taskbar.

Asking for things like AI integration everywhere?

Quote from Microsoft..."You will be happy in your work!". /s

Tali Roth, the then product manager working on the core Windows user experience, including the Start menu, taskbar, and notifications, took up the question and talked about how building the taskbar from scratch meant that they had to cherry-pick things to put into the feature list first, and the ability to move the taskbar didn’t make the cut, for several reasons that Microsoft values.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!

If you have working code, why would you rewrite it from scratch? Refactor, sure. Overhaul, maybe. But why rewrite the whole thing?! You're gaining nothing but unnecessary bugs.

I know all the joke answers. To justify a product manager's salary, because Microsoft gonna Microsoft, whatever. I want to know the real reason. Why would you ever rewrite working code from scratch if you don't have to?

This almost makes me want to move my panel in Plasma just because I can.

If it takes so much effort to move the taskbar, why did it need to be fully rewritten in react native when everything worked before?

For anyone interested, Google the app called WindHawk. It makes it extremely possible to push the taskbar up.

Microsoft applied a data-driven approach to find out which features to add now, which features to add later, and which to completely avoid.

WHAT DATA?!

Is this what hearing Vogon Poetry is like?

So Microsoft is hanging on the coat-tails of KDE, copying the enshitification from KDE3 to KDE4, 17 years later?

Windhawk and ExplorerPatcher will allow this while windows still resize correctly, so it's a mystery to me as to why MSFT won't do it.

The bit about apps having to reflow seems nonsensical. They have to reflow any time the user resizes their windows.

I'm not accepting any excuses from MS about limited resources when Linux desktop environments built by hobbyists have the feature in question.

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 have a wonderful experience in those environments is just huge

It was working fine in windows 95. Suddenly all programmers became incompetent and can't handle something like that?

Why can't they just ask copilot to program that for them?

Let’s be real, it’s because it makes it easier to train AIs on the Recall screenshots if it always has the taskbar in the same position as a reference context

It really seems like Windows really needs KDE to come back to the platform...

I'd guess it's for the same reasons why we can't have a local account

it’s safe to assume that the company isn’t interested in pouring its engineering resources into pursuing something that won’t benefit a majority of users

I mean, they could just let their awesome Copilot vibe code it, couldn't they? Another reasons why I love being on Linux; you can do whatever even it it doesn't make sense to the majority of users.

"We specifically made the product worse, because that saves us money we don't need and gives us additional control over users' computers, since so many are locked into our ecosystem."

Seriously, read the article. That's basically it!

Please, consider trying out linux if you haven't: you can usually make a "live usb" and take it for a test drive without having to actually reinstall (if you don't like it, just take the usb stick out and reboot back to windows).

I would dearly love to never again have to hear about the latest bullshit Microsoft is foisting on people.

Do your part! Switch. Everything just works better over here.

My wife was given a new work computer. Windows 11 and not enough RAM. She has been finding a new reason to hate it nearly every day, starting with how every change made to windows has fucked up her workflow in some way.

Me just nodding in acknowledgement as my little Dell Inspiron 15 purs along on Mint with Cinnamon.