This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Simple solution is to switch to Linux. Ubuntu Cinnamon 24.04LTS had worked great for me so far.
If you absolutely can't or won't switch look at openshell https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/
What’s funny here is that in Microsoft’s Feedback Hub, the feedback related to “taskbar”, with the highest number of upvotes, is the one that asks the company to “Bring back the ability to move the taskbar to the top and sides if the screen on Windows 11”. We are not sure which data Microsoft used to get to such a conclusion…
The one they get from their ~~spyware~~ telemetry, probably.
"Microsoft applied a data-driven approach to find out which features to add now, which features to add later, and which to completely avoid.
Unfortunately, for the enthusiasts who had a left-aligned or vertical taskbar in Windows 10, you would have to settle for the fact that 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."
100% of the users that are smart enough to care about moving the task bar are also smart enough to turn off all optional telemetry. This sadly a part of why tech companies are making products for the dumbest people and pushing away power users.
I just find it hilarious that the top/right/left toolbar was possible in windows 95/98/ME
but its to much of a technical problem to do today.
I guess thats what you get with AI doing all your coding..
Microsoft is doing great when it comes to supporting the rise of linux.
I'm on linux because of Microsoft
So, to cater to the maximum number of users at once, Microsoft applied a data-driven approach to find out which features to add now, which features to add later, and which to completely avoid.
I call bullshit, because nobody uses the "modern" devices and printers interface in windows 10, because it fucking sucks. Everyone goes to the control panel instead. In windows 11, you have to use the "modern" interface, and it drives me crazy, especially because the old, fully functional, and reliable one is still in the OS, but Microsoft decided to hide it/make it a PITA to get to.
for power users? absolutely. but nobody who isn't tech savvy even knows what control panel is anymore.
Over the years I came to realize that tech savvy when it came to windows doesn't actually mean anything. It just means you are able to fight through the bullshit and get things done with what you have.
They keep re-implementing things.
Just the Start menu. You can see how 95 evolved into 98 evolved into ME, then they changed it for XP, and they never stopped making big pointless changes. In many cases, those big pointless changes have been lengthening the process of going from the bare desktop to the thing you need by adding pointless screens and dialogs. Or, like the Start menu, they just drastically redesigned it such that a user used to Win XP tries to use 7 and they just...stare at it because it's not what they were expecting. Windows 7's Start menu might even be objectively better, Microsoft's software engineers could very well produce good research documentation about UI design based on observing or polling users about what features they wanted and then they made the thing people seemed to want, but to people who got used to how it already worked the new thing was bad because it's different.
I could be convinced Windows 8.1 is a mental unwellness simulator. In Sierra's FMV horror game Phantasmagoria 2, the player character goes insane at work, and this is simulated by the paperwork he's working on flashing scarier words for a split second. You're reading this document and then near the bottom of the page an ordinary word like "recommended" turns to "murdered" for a few frames. Win 8.1's animated tiles reminded me of that. Plus the whole "The desktop and all normal Windows apps therein is itself just an app that can be run in split screen next to special phone-like single tasking apps which pretty much only we will develop for and we won't include desktop versions of so you have to deal with this." I hate Windows 8.1.
What's real fun is you can tell when they abandoned work on a project by which drastically different UI it's encrusted with. The modem dialer looks like Windows XP, the fax program looks like Vista, some things have the flat purple stank of 8, some things have the dark glass look of early 10.
For printers, go to DEVICES > let it load it all > more devices settings (towards bottom) - to open old school printer control panel. Major pain in the ass.
I watched a YouTube video by Dave Plummer about why you can't move the taskbar and it made more sense than whatever. this link is that I'm not clicking on
Because microsoft sucks at ux
That's disappointing; I always thought the one thing they got right was the 98/XP interface that Cinnamon copied.
Just because they suck at it now doesn't mean they always have
I’ve been using ExplorerPatcher to correct this and it works pretty well.
I'm using Linux Mint to correct this and it works even better
Yeah I'm using startallback and it just works.
Except for the notification bar, which shows up on the wrong screen, but i don't much care about that.
“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.”
This is such utter fucking nonsense. They already have to deal with the concept of a "client area" that encompasses variable-sized screens and (worse) the multiple-monitor situation. Movable task bar is trivial.
They didn't just rewrite it, they rewrote it in ~~feces~~ React
That's the start menu. They probably built the task bar with Electron.
Is there no fix for this? I hate having the taskbar on my main monitor and ive been looking everywhere for a way to move it to another monitor. =/
wait, did they do away with the primary monitor designation?
isn't that like the only thing that makes a "primary monitor" special - the taskbar? why can't you just set another monitor as primary?
I don't use win11, if it's not obvious, lol
So i'm an idiot and you literally just solved my problem. I just set my other monitor as my main and the bar moved over lol. Thank you.
lmao I love when it's just a dumb little thing like that
you did make me realize that that may not be quite so obvious anymore, though, with how they constantly change menus and setting names around. how many other things that we've learned over years & years of using Windows are just different in future versions, or not possible any more. and how many of those things were ever obvious settings in the first place, rather than 'common knowledge' learned from years of familiarity
It's still there.
Display settings > select monitor, check box "main display"
That’s quite an article to say they forgot about it after re-writing the task bar for no reason. It’s such a basic expected feature.
just MS things. changing things for no apparent reason to make it worse to use and also remove existing features that people actually liked
Probably written by CowPilot
TLDR: We rewrote the taskbar and didn't bother implementing it.
This really stuck with me. “Rewrote” implies feature parity. What they really did was replace the taskbar.
laughs in KDE
Plasma is everything I used to wish Windows' desktop could be, but isn't because of... honestly I have no idea what they're thinking over there. I am so glad I dumped that trainwreck. Love everything KDE <3
I guess the AI writing windows 11 code keeps getting the taskbar wrong.
You also can't add folders as toolbars anymore.
But widgets!!!
/s
