Five years later, Windows 11 brings back much-missed taskbar options (and more)
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I just spotted the same thing. First I asked it how to turn it off and got back bogus instructions that hallucinated a workflow, and then i provided feedback stating that distracting and obscuring spreadsheet content is unacceptable, and that i only open excel to do excel things, not chatbot things. I'm sure it went to /dev/null, but i gave it an honest try.
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Actually, there is. I'm super stoked, too!
I went to Linux. Fully user-customizable UI, no forced updates (if you don't want 'em, you can roll back as long as you use TimeShift before you update, or just set them to run manually when you ask for them, and you can tell any that show up in the list to NOT install, too!). You can also opt to update when/if you want.
Best of all, no mandatory spying with accounts and AI's that steal your shit in some way. Your account is LOCAL, and you only sign into your computer. Not an Internet service.
Yes, there's a learning curve, but it's much less steep than before, you DON'T HAVE to understand the Terminal (it helps if you do), and for most computer users, it translates to the same experience - minus the built-in voyeur Redmond bakes into every Windows.
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A harmless pie
Ars Centurion
I'm excited for a sleek taskbar with tiny icons again. I can't imagine docking it anywhere but at the bottom though, just my trainin' I 'spose.
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Sweet! I'm a weirdo who has my left monitor with a right-aligned taskbar and my right monitor with a left-aligned taskbar. I love having a middle "taskbar area" between my two moni-
Oh goddamnit.
Oh goddamnit.
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TechAlter did a video like a year ago ranting about the 9+ different intrusive ways MS is trying to get people to accidentally invoke CoPilot. It is infuriating. I'm glad my work computer only has one unsolicited CoPilot button as of yet in Excel--but it is running an older enterprise version.
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It caused me to not upgrade to Windows 11. Nice, but still not enough without auto hide.
And clicking the clock doesn't show the clock, only the calendar!?
I'm already booting Ubuntu more often than Windows (10) on my laptop now.
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Yeah, I asked it to turn itself off and it responded (paraphrase) "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Unfortunately, that probably just juiced the usage statistics. "Since we added that button, the usage of Copilot shot up by xx%! Our users are loving it!"
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I couldn't care less how round our square the corners of windows are.
I hate the iterative rearrangement of menus just for cosmetic purposes.
I hate that "Copy" and "Paste" move around and are not next to each other, as some menu picks become icons at top and bottom while the rest are in a traditional list down the menu.
When the "Send" pick got moved to an unlabeled, blue button on the upper right, away from the rest of the menu picks at the left margin, it took me more than a day to figure out how to send my email message. "Oh, an unlabeled blue button with an upward arrow means Send now."
And, on my phone, I hate that the keyboard is at the bottom of the screen while the input field is at the top. The KB image is so crammed that I have to watch my typing, but I have to look up and down, up and down, just to type accurately.
Deeper and deeper into cosmetic enshittification we go.
Bah.
I hate the iterative rearrangement of menus just for cosmetic purposes.
I hate that "Copy" and "Paste" move around and are not next to each other, as some menu picks become icons at top and bottom while the rest are in a traditional list down the menu.
When the "Send" pick got moved to an unlabeled, blue button on the upper right, away from the rest of the menu picks at the left margin, it took me more than a day to figure out how to send my email message. "Oh, an unlabeled blue button with an upward arrow means Send now."
And, on my phone, I hate that the keyboard is at the bottom of the screen while the input field is at the top. The KB image is so crammed that I have to watch my typing, but I have to look up and down, up and down, just to type accurately.
Deeper and deeper into cosmetic enshittification we go.
Bah.
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Rather than depending on Microsoft's whims, I use free, stable and customizable Open-Shell Menu. It allows the user to adapt the position, choice of menu items, use of submenus, appearance of the Taskbar itself and buttons, etc.
It would be nice if the delay for Taskbar appearance could be altered, as in Linux, but for that i need another third-party tool, ancient and honorable Taskbar Activate.
It would be nice if the delay for Taskbar appearance could be altered, as in Linux, but for that i need another third-party tool, ancient and honorable Taskbar Activate.
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It's coming soon guys; we've only been working on it for well over five years after all!
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A bad implementation doesn't mean the concept is a bad idea. Making the taskbar configurable via an ad hoc drag-and-drop interface rather than cleanly separated (and also more discoverable) options in Control Panel/Settings was a mistake, sure, but that doesn't mean you need to take the option away; you just need to implement it more predictably.
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What the actual FUCK?! Super glad I've got Office 2024 Pro!
Once that no longer gets security updates in several years, time to compatibility test OSS alternatives!
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Window decorations are my personal axe to grind. Can you tell which window is active? I sure can't.
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This would get a failing grade in GUI school for being an accessibility disaster that assumes users have the visual acuity to see the details. There are some subtle clues indicating that the window on the right is active — the -+x icons have slightly more contrast, and its casting a tiny bit of a shadow on the left window. If you're not paying 100% attention to those details, it's a tossup that can be resolved with a click (in theory). I miss when GUIs used color and translucency to distinguish this type of state with a bit of whimsy, and even THAT had to be carefully tuned for accessibility.
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My primary work monitor is 32:9, losing the left-hand taskbar was a serious downgrade vs Win10, I'm glad they are finally fixing this.
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I'd been using side-located taskbars since the 90s, I was just glad MacOS still respected my choice in that regard.
I guess I'll be less irritated at Windows now, but it's a minute late. Plus I'm still concerned about the use of Windows Professional as a sales revenue channel rather than a OS that helped you get to work.
Such a shame. There were things I actually liked about 11 -- the File Manager immediately comes to mind. I like the "quick access" space, I like how it can tab, I like how they reworked the buttons to reflect normal use cases rather than 10's showcasing of rarely-used buttons (UX failure there).
I guess I'll be less irritated at Windows now, but it's a minute late. Plus I'm still concerned about the use of Windows Professional as a sales revenue channel rather than a OS that helped you get to work.
Such a shame. There were things I actually liked about 11 -- the File Manager immediately comes to mind. I like the "quick access" space, I like how it can tab, I like how they reworked the buttons to reflect normal use cases rather than 10's showcasing of rarely-used buttons (UX failure there).
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What really annoyed me was that the functionality was there and they made sure to remove all the registry workarounds etc.
I used double-height taskbars at work as the ERP alone is up to 15 windows/tabs, plus 3-4 Excels, OneNote and...nope sorry I'm going to bunch up your open tasks and hide them behind a menu arrow.
Maybe I'm stupid but alt-tab or stacked tasks feels a lot slower than just clicking on the task I need.
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So, taking the most obvious complaint about Windows 11, half-assing it and hope people will not pay attention to the rest of the stuff they have done nothing about for the past 15 years?
Search? Settings/Control Panel? Apps hijacking focus all the time? Slow UI in general, and whitespacing everywhere.
With the lack of copilot adoption, I am guessing there are many sad and unused GPUs sobbing in their datacenters and I am guessing this is their real motivation for "fixing" things.
Search? Settings/Control Panel? Apps hijacking focus all the time? Slow UI in general, and whitespacing everywhere.
With the lack of copilot adoption, I am guessing there are many sad and unused GPUs sobbing in their datacenters and I am guessing this is their real motivation for "fixing" things.
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Gee I didn't even realize you couldn't move the taskbar. But then, my exposure to 11 has been, shall we say, extremely limited. Thank goodness. May it continue to be so.
Back when I did use Windows though, and on my Linux desktop, I stick the taskbar (or equivalent) on top, something I've been doing since 9x days because.. I dunno it just felt right. Some people thought I was a Mac user.. well, I am NOW but that's a fairly recent development. Curiously on both my personal and work Macbooks, I put the dock on the left, have it auto-hide, and barely ever interact with it, much different from how I operated on Windows and now Linux.
Can't really explain why I do that other than Mac is different enough that I learned a whole new way of working with it, while on Linux, XFCE and KDE bring over enough familiar UI baggage that I tried to make it feel the same.
Back when I did use Windows though, and on my Linux desktop, I stick the taskbar (or equivalent) on top, something I've been doing since 9x days because.. I dunno it just felt right. Some people thought I was a Mac user.. well, I am NOW but that's a fairly recent development. Curiously on both my personal and work Macbooks, I put the dock on the left, have it auto-hide, and barely ever interact with it, much different from how I operated on Windows and now Linux.
Can't really explain why I do that other than Mac is different enough that I learned a whole new way of working with it, while on Linux, XFCE and KDE bring over enough familiar UI baggage that I tried to make it feel the same.
Wait wait, I thought being the weirdo who liked 8 was MY claim to fame. You mean there's ANOTHER ONE OF US? Ok, sure I installed ClassicShell and forgot about the Start Screen but still.
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And the lack of titlebars on any modern OS making it insanely annoying to try and grab a window to reposition it (Linux and macOS are guilty of this as well)
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Right click the square and select dock. it will change to a thin bar on the right. not great, but better.
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It's been hours since I closed those windows and my middle-aged memory is not so great, but I'm pretty sure it was the window on the LEFT that was active.
![:\](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/civis/data/assets/smilies/slash-1x.png "Slash :\")
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Sure, thats real cool. Now to start the bug hunt to track everything they broke doing so as I'm sure whatever they broke will turn out to allow yet another zero day vector for all the criminal hackers swarming like flies around a dead carcass.
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Oh, yes. I've spent HOURS making XFCE usable. The difference, however, is that you CAN make it usable.
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Coming to a monitor near you, it's .... Zombie Clippy returns but with new and improved annoyance levels! Will the intrepid opensource Zombie Hunters be able to save the world? Stay tuned.....for the exciting next chapter of our saga!
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I would have liked to have gone with the non-subscription version, but unfortunately the latest standalone version came out just before they added a few features that I've been wanting for a long time.
But now almost all their new features are AI related. I'd have been happy with an Excel 2025.
It returns right back to its original position on every new window.
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So I have one device with a Copilot key (Surface Pro 11) and while I expected to hate it, when I started using the keyboard I was surprised to find that it only ever acted as Context Menu for me.
This was great as I use that key a lot: I eventually discovered that it only acts as Copilot if you have FN-Lock on to disable the F1-F12 keys like a heathen.
As I use the F keys for their intended purpose, I am spared the Copilot key: karma is real!
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Yeah, focus follows mouse is something I really miss when using Windows. Somuchextraclicking
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Alt-drag for the win! Also just arrived in minimally usable form in Windows PowerToys as "grab to move" .
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Let me guess, We're going to get all of what made windows 7 and 10 good right before Windows 11 EOL, then they'll say for Windows 12 they just can't include these features.
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In notepad in win 11, the "chrome" of the window is using mica alt The color of the window is affected by your wallpaper.
On my computer:
You can see the difference because the blue is coming through the active window.
The problem is
- It's very dependent on the wallpaper
- Turn off transparency effect and it's all off white
- Turning on accent color does not affect mica alt
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The only way to really tell is look at the minimize/maximize/close buttons. The ones that are 15% darker are on the selected window.
It's made that way because to the designer's eye it looks better in screenshots. Actual usability of course suffers.
It's made that way because to the designer's eye it looks better in screenshots. Actual usability of course suffers.
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Really, it's been five years already? Fuck you, Microsoft, for not listening. It's too late, I already went Linux a long time ago. Microsoft had always pissed me off before, but I tried Win 11, you know, just to see if I could stand to use the most popular OS. It took about five minutes, and....NOPE! So glad I didn't toss Ubuntu. Again, Microsoft, you're too late. And fuck you.
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This article kinda sounds like the myth of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Who cares about the task bar when Windows is progressively getting more buggy, updates breaking or not actually fixing bugs, with security holes you could pilot a super carrier through?
I've already jumped ship at this point. I'm tired of dealing with the broken crap at home AND at work. I only tolerate it at work because "them bitches pay my bills" to paraphrase RuPaul.
I've already jumped ship at this point. I'm tired of dealing with the broken crap at home AND at work. I only tolerate it at work because "them bitches pay my bills" to paraphrase RuPaul.
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You can add a colored border around the active window by going into Windows's Settings -> Personalization -> Colors, and enabling "Show accent color on title bars and window borders". The visibility depends on your chosen color and light/dark theme though. (And for some apps the whole titlebar becomes colored too, which you may or may not like the look of.)
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Buying 3rd party software to fix MS's negligence, as rimbaud described, in an era of wide and ultra-wide screens.
I'm amazed at how differently different people can see this. You seem to be fine with it. I made it a point to shut down my last Win10 box at EOL.
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