Windows 11 ExplorerPatcher versus Start11 versus ?

David Lal said:

David Lal said:

gscotten wrote:But Win11 changes are not like the Win8 Metro interface, and there is clearly no widespread criticism.

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Thanks George. It is good to know that there is at least one happy customer!

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There are two of us. My wife is happy, too, and that is all that matters to me.

David Lal said:

My perspective is that there was no need for the interface to change at all. I dislike the very fact that is unnecessarily different - and some of it, such as the fat taskbar, just aesthetically displeasing.

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I do not understand your "fat taskbar" comment. Mine is the same size as it has been as far back as I can remember.



--
George

gscotten said:

I do not understand your "fat taskbar" comment. Mine is the same size as it has been as far back as I can remember.

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I have installed Win10 and Win11 in a dual boot configuration on the same PC which has onboard graphics circuitry which talks to a HP 2010i screen. Thus the apparent taskbar sizes are directly comparable.

Not that I have specifically measured the screen height but the Win11 one is ± 150% that of the Win10 one.

This is a common complaint. See: https://softwarekeep.com/help-center/change-windows-11-taskbar-size

and/or Google:

https://www.google.com/search?q=win...yNTM4ajBqMTWoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

In the early days of Win11 a simple registry hack was all that was required to make the takskbar height adjustable via TaskbarSi at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advancedbut Microsoft disabled that.

Good that your wife is happy with Win11 too.

David Lal said:

Good that we are all different. Good for me too that I am getting lots of opinions on how to deal with the Win11 user interface. Do I detect echoes of Win8/Vista user dissatisfaction?

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I couldn’t believe how bad the Win8.1 was when I started up my non-touch laptop; it seemed to be jumping between touch and mouse modes at random. Luckily, I had read about Classic Shell and that fixed it. Strange that MS didn’t give the option to switch to the traditional GUI.

A friend also had trouble with Win8.1, even though he did have a touch screen. The catch was, he is of short stature and his arms wouldn’t reach to the extremities if the large screen! I gained considerable kudos by installing Classic Shell. As far as I know, he used that computer trouble-free for many years.

MS apparently thinks that changing interfaces is a by-product of keeping up to date. I see that there’s a cosmetic adjustment coming for Office 365; some nonsense about rounded corners and colour schemes. I can hardly wait!

Worst thing that MS ever did was change the MS Office interface (2007 I think). Previously, the toolbars had a rich selection of features and were customisable, but the new system of context-sensitive menus and other annoyances took many people by surprise and retraining was required. I found it particularly annoying, because I was very familiar with the older menu system (which was consistent across the Office applications), and I had been able to guide customers though common tasks over the phone, even when I wasn’t in front of a screen.

MS Word, in particular, remains a brilliant application and I’ve been using since the earliest versions. I’ve been a long-time advocate of using the built-in features for working with complex documents (Styles, Templates) but sadly, most users just use it like a text editor.

New Wrycuda said:

MS Word, in particular, remains a brilliant application and I’ve been using since the earliest versions. I’ve been a long-time advocate of using the built-in features for working with complex documents (Styles, Templates) but sadly, most users just use it like a text editor.

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Ah, well, I shall demonstrate my great old age (and wisdom?) by commenting that I remember when Word Perfect was the leading word processing package. As far as I am aware, MS bought in the first incarnation of MS Word and much later MS Access. For a long time MS Word retained 16-bit and then 32-bit code internally. I was very comfortable with MS Office 2003 - did a huge amount of developing in it. To this day I still use MS Office 2007. I just don't need any of the stuff that was foisted upon us in later versions.

It seems MS just changes the interface to things willy-nilly. Totally unnecessary.

David Lal said:

New Wrycuda said:

MS Word, in particular, remains a brilliant application and I’ve been using since the earliest versions. I’ve been a long-time advocate of using the built-in features for working with complex documents (Styles, Templates) but sadly, most users just use it like a text editor.

Click to expand...

Ah, well, I shall demonstrate my great old age (and wisdom?) by commenting that I remember when Word Perfect was the leading word processing package. As far as I am aware, MS bought in the first incarnation of MS Word and much later MS Access. For a long time MS Word retained 16-bit and then 32-bit code internally. I was very comfortable with MS Office 2003 - did a huge amount of developing in it. To this day I still use MS Office 2007. I just don't need any of the stuff that was foisted upon us in later versions.

It seems MS just changes the interface to things willy-nilly. Totally unnecessary.

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I may be being unkind, but I think that willy-nilly interface changes are what software developers do. Every new generation has to make the product their own.

Regardless of the amount of teeth-gnashing it causes in their customer base.

Suits me fine.

--
Bouldergramp, USA

BobKnDP said:

David Lal said:

New Wrycuda said:

MS Word, in particular, remains a brilliant application and I’ve been using since the earliest versions. I’ve been a long-time advocate of using the built-in features for working with complex documents (Styles, Templates) but sadly, most users just use it like a text editor.

Click to expand...

Ah, well, I shall demonstrate my great old age (and wisdom?) by commenting that I remember when Word Perfect was the leading word processing package. As far as I am aware, MS bought in the first incarnation of MS Word and much later MS Access. For a long time MS Word retained 16-bit and then 32-bit code internally. I was very comfortable with MS Office 2003 - did a huge amount of developing in it. To this day I still use MS Office 2007. I just don't need any of the stuff that was foisted upon us in later versions.

It seems MS just changes the interface to things willy-nilly. Totally unnecessary.

Click to expand...

I may be being unkind, but I think that willy-nilly interface changes are what software developers do.

Click to expand...

Software developers at Microsoft do not make UI design changes.

New Wrycuda said:

Carey Brown said:

davesurrey said:

SecondTimeAround said:

davesurrey said:

Carey,
You can move the Taskbar to the left by the following:

Right click on the taskbar.
Left click on Taskbar Settings
Left click Taskbar Behaviour.
On Taskbar Alignment select Left.

HTH
Dave

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That serves only to left-align the taskbar buttons, not move the taskbar to the left edge of the screen, as was possible with previous versions of Windows.

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Correct.
If that's what he wants then I misread it.

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Yes, attach bar to left edge of screen is what I'd like.

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That's where the notification panel comes up.

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My notifications come up on the right. I don't remember having to do anything to make that happen.

New Wrycuda said:

Down the bottom of the screen in the auto-hide taskbar is fine for me.

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I have a number of apps that I have to run full screen and they happen to have scroll bars on the bottom. Also, because I have a 43", 4K monitor, I use a high resolution mouse which speeds the cursor across the 43". This results in occasionally overshooting my target, which, if I happen to be reaching for the bottom scroll bar, can cause the taskbar to pop-up thus blocking the scroll bar till I back way off and wait two seconds. This happens often enough to be very annoying and never happened when the task bar was on the left edge.

New Wrycuda said:

Often-used apps go there and there's an indication for minimised apps.

My desktop has short-cuts to shared resources and some frequently used utilities live in a desktop folder. I also find it handy to have File Explorer as a shortcut. Other than that, I rarely use anything else of the GUI.

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--
Photos at http://inasphere.com

Robert Zanatta said:

BobKnDP said:

David Lal said:

New Wrycuda said:

MS Word, in particular, remains a brilliant application and I’ve been using since the earliest versions. I’ve been a long-time advocate of using the built-in features for working with complex documents (Styles, Templates) but sadly, most users just use it like a text editor.

Click to expand...

Ah, well, I shall demonstrate my great old age (and wisdom?) by commenting that I remember when Word Perfect was the leading word processing package. As far as I am aware, MS bought in the first incarnation of MS Word and much later MS Access. For a long time MS Word retained 16-bit and then 32-bit code internally. I was very comfortable with MS Office 2003 - did a huge amount of developing in it. To this day I still use MS Office 2007. I just don't need any of the stuff that was foisted upon us in later versions.

It seems MS just changes the interface to things willy-nilly. Totally unnecessary.

Click to expand...

I may be being unkind, but I think that willy-nilly interface changes are what software developers do.

Click to expand...

Software developers at Microsoft do not make UI design changes.

Click to expand...

Really?

Then who does it? Marketing?

I admit that my experience with developers is at a much smaller scale.

Carey Brown said:

New Wrycuda said:

Carey Brown said:

davesurrey said:

SecondTimeAround said:

davesurrey said:

Carey,
You can move the Taskbar to the left by the following:

Right click on the taskbar.
Left click on Taskbar Settings
Left click Taskbar Behaviour.
On Taskbar Alignment select Left.

HTH
Dave

Click to expand...

That serves only to left-align the taskbar buttons, not move the taskbar to the left edge of the screen, as was possible with previous versions of Windows.

Click to expand...

Correct.
If that's what he wants then I misread it.

Click to expand...

Yes, attach bar to left edge of screen is what I'd like.

Click to expand...

That's where the notification panel comes up.

Click to expand...

My notifications come up on the right. I don't remember having to do anything to make that happen.

Click to expand...

Sorry, it’s some other useless stuff that comes up on the left.

David Lal said:

New Wrycuda said:

MS Word, in particular, remains a brilliant application and I’ve been using since the earliest versions. I’ve been a long-time advocate of using the built-in features for working with complex documents (Styles, Templates) but sadly, most users just use it like a text editor.

Click to expand...

Ah, well, I shall demonstrate my great old age (and wisdom?) by commenting that I remember when Word Perfect was the leading word processing package.

Click to expand...

WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was good, but the various attempts at porting WP to Windows were notable failures. A customer claimed that WP was standard in the US legal system and therefore essential for his work. He had every version of WP for Windows in the known universe, and they were all appalling.

David Lal said:

For a long time MS Word retained 16-bit and then 32-bit code internally. I was very comfortable with MS Office 2003 - did a huge amount of developing in it. To this day I still use MS Office 2007. I just don't need any of the stuff that was foisted upon us in later versions.

Click to expand...

Later versions are very reliable and nice to use once you’ve learned the ropes. We need the latest version for absolute compatibility with colleagues, students and academic institutions. Recent versions incorporate PDF export which is handy. When used efficiently (Styles, Templates etc.) long and complex documents almost seem to write themselves.

I would encourage folks to take a look at Xfce.

Best with the "Applications Menu" versus the "Whisker Menu" (which was clearly inspired by the horrible Windows Start menu).

Clean, simple, intuitive and easily customized. The Windows taskbar is clearly designed around Microsoft's needs including their desire to promote their other products and services. Xfce is designed with the user's preferences at the fore.