A few years ago I blogged about the History of the Windows Start button and with the releases of the Windows 8 Developer preview and the Windows 8 Consumer preview I thought it's time to revisit the start button again.
As you may have read in my previous post about the start button one of the main issues with it from a usability point of view is that users click on the 'Start' button to start everything they have to do such as launching programs and they also have to do the same to 'End' what they have to do as well such as when shutting down a pc. With the release of Windows Vista Microsoft seemed to change the start button by removing the text start from the button and this looked like it has addressed the issue of the start button usability and the same was brought across in Windows 7.
However, with the Windows 8 Developer preview and the introduction of the new start screen for the Windows 8 touch functionality I think Microsoft shifted the inconsistency somewhere else. Whilst the start button still had the start text removed as per Windows Vista & Windows 7, clicking the button made users switch context between Windows 8's desktop mode and Windows 8 touch mode. I have personally found this to be very unusable and confusing. The main reason for this confusion in my view is that a lot of us are probably quite used to using the start menu to launch programs and do quick searches, and in Windows 8, by default this was my expectation too. Nevertheless every time I clicked on the start button in the Windows 8 Developer preview it took me to the Windows 8 touch mode rather than allowing me to launch the programs in the same way I did in previous versions of Windows. Annoying eh... yes, BUT this is where the Windows 8 Consumer preview comes in.
With Windows 8 Consumer preview one thing that Microsoft did that I thought was very clever is actually get rid of the start button all together. With that change, I think Microsoft managed to remove the old and new expectations of what the start button should do and thus making in easier for consumers to get used to the new changes. With the start button removed, I now don't get confused any more when wanting to launch programs or things like note-pad or the run command and cmd shell. The reason for this is, I now know that I can just use the context menu by right clicking in the bottom left corner of my Windows 8 screen and it'll present me with all those menus in an easy to access manner that I think is no longer confusing!
I believe that the introduction of the context menus such as the one above and others that you see when exploring the corners of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview were some of the nice usability changes that have been introduced in this latest version of Windows.
Nice one Microsoft!
A couple of years back when Windows Vista came out I blogged about the several Windows Vista Shutdown options that were available back then after reading an article on Joel Spolsky’s blog.
It’s really great to see that a suggestion I had back then on a possible solution to this problem has actually been incorporated in Windows 7! I may not have been the only person who though of this but hey I did think about it and now it exists as a feature!
Here’s a snippet from what I wrote back in January 2007
“So Microsoft here is my suggestion, I would like to be able to do something like this, right click the sleep button, click a menu item that says set default action or something like that, and then choose the one that suits me. I think this way the problem that Spolsky mentioned of too many choices would be minimized and I would be able to shutdown my computer by clicking the button...” link to the full post is above.
Now if you are using Windows 7 you can change the default action of the shutdown button – a.ka. the power button to be whatever you want from the possible options by doing the following.
From the start menu right click on the word Shutdown as shown below then select properties
when the properties dialog pops up go to the second tab as shown below
In this example I’ve chosen restart to be my default option. Now after updating if I bring up the start menu again I see Restart as the power button name/action. Cool!
This is one of my best liked features so far in Windows 7 aside from the document grouping by application.
Here goes my first post in 2007. Happy New Year to you all.
I was recently reading this post on Joel Spolsky's blog about the number of shutdown options available in Windows Vista. Even though they are quite a few and can be narrowed down like he suggests. I think I have a better idea!
I have been using Vista for almost a year now but for some reason I never thought about this. But for me I tend to shut down my computer most of the time if I'm not using it and to do so I always have to bring up the start menu point the arrow to the shut down option, and now I think this is a bit annoying because I hardly ever use the Sleep button or the Lock button which are available directly on the start menu without having to go the second step.
Now here's my idea. It would be nice to be able to set a default action action on the sleep button that suits everyone's needs and this way you can setup the button to do the action that most fits your needs using one step.
I'm quite sure that most people use one shutdown option regularly and the others less? So doing so would make me use the function I do regularly without having to click the arrow and see all options every time.
So Microsoft here is my suggestion, I would like to be able to do something like this, right click the sleep button, click a menu item that says set default action or something like that, and then choose the one that suits me. I think this way the problem that Spolsky mentioned of too many choices would be minimized and I would be able to shutdown my computer by clicking the button...
Vista has finally arrived!
See here and here