1761

whether it should be segmented or not (I vote yes, but apparently I’ve been shouted down in 8.1)

Oh my God I fucking hate you. NO OFFENSE, and all, but… holy fuck. Just holy fuck. Easily the dumbest design mistake in Windows 8.

As for the rest:

  1. What magical world do you live in Chris Nahr where people use more than maybe 8 apps max in their daily life? Email, Browser, Twitter / Facebooks, maybe 1 or 2 other pet things… done. So yeah, in that scenario, the “slap a few icons on a page” approach is fine because who cares? Any problem is easy with a small n.

  2. If you do have a lot of apps for whatever reason, you pretty much HAVE to use search. I can’t find jack on my iPad without using the search. Yeah, 8 pages of icons, that’s an absolute joy to page back and forth on to find the app I need.

  3. As for “the desktop search isn’t Google”, in the broadest sense, you’re 100% right: Google search is winning over even desktop apps. People will type in what they want to do in the Googles, get an “app” that is JavaScript running in a modern browser, and game over. This has already been happening for many years now, and it’ll only accelerate over time. Atwood’s Law in action.

1762

Sure, most people don’t need any facility to find anything because all their apps fit on one screen. When you do, though…

  1. If you do have a lot of apps for whatever reason, you pretty much HAVE to use search. I can’t find jack on my iPad without using the search. Yeah, 8 pages of icons, that’s an absolute joy to page back and forth on to find the app I need.

…you would of course not use random disorganized icon dumps across multiple pages. I agree that’s impossible to handle without search. What I do is organize my beloved Start menu into intelligent nested categories. Behold, faster finding of anything than with either search or icon dumps! In other words, simply expose the internal hierarchical directory structure of application shortcuts. That’s what the old Start menu did, and it works just fine for power users.

1763

Well, in the beginning I used an app called “Executor” which is basically a launcher/finder. You press the hotkey to use it (Win+R)(Alt-Space) (or anything else you want) and you can start typing; for example “windows” and it will list apps/shortcuts like “Windows Update” and whatnot.

You can configure Executor to index all start menu apps and basic windows folder, then add your own folders and have it make index to files that for example end with .lnk and .exe in “D:\Games” etc.
You select how deep a folder structure it should index. It also lets you make shortcuts where you can for example type “imdb <movie name>” to have it open your web browser at imdb searching for that page, etc.

http://executor.dk/ (using the 64-bit beta available from their forums)

However; recently I haven’t used it much and I only use Win+R to launch stuff, which means I type the whole path to executables. Also have a bunch of shortcuts linked to my taskbar. So, yay, I guess.

Microsoft adding a ‘start button’ in 8.1. but continuing to throw the metro in your face when you press it is just silly. As I do not have a need for such a feature hopefully it is disabled by default. Login directly to the desktop would be good though.

1764

God, this is about the dumbest counter-argument I can possibly imagine.

Google is solving a completely different problem, but if you must go there, it frequently doesn’t work on a variety of subjects. Because you don’t know the right search terms, or because the appropriate search terms are too common and bring up everything but what you want. While Google frequently works, everyone encounters cases where it doesn’t “work fine” every day.

What’s more, you know what everyone uses once they finally do find a page? Bookmarks. Because no one likes having to search for a page unless they have to. Search is for cases where you have no other option. Search issues are why people ask for links.

Really?

First of all, “where to look for it” has rarely been a problem unless it’s an obscure program they have never used or rarely use.

Second, if it is something that don’t use frequently, they may not know the precise name. Program names are like brand names, they usually aren’t subject names like google search terms. The issue is most obvious when you’re looking at secondary files, like the utilities that ship with Windows, which the user may not know even exist. I’ve never used the “math input panel” under Accessories, for example. Without a visible folder system, I suspect that most users will never, ever be aware of it under Windows 8.

This is true of lots of commercial software. The Canon camera disk includes PhotoStitch, a utility for creating panoramas from multiple photos. Installing doesn’t create a desktop icon for it, and new camera owners are probably completely unaware of it. If you search for “panorama” it’s not going to show up.

This is the real bullshit. I’ve used search, it’s a simple name search, not a subject search, and it can’t be. This isn’t even theoretically possible without subject tags, and programs do not have those in our world.

Windows 7 and earlier had the search box, the feature isn’t new. Yet most users have never used it, and there’s a reason for that.

You guys sound exactly like the dweebs arguing for command-line interfaces 30 years ago. Because it’s worked so far for you and you can’t imagine that everyone isn’t exactly like you.

1765

It would be nice if Windows and OS X had more intelligent searches. If I type in “text editor”, I want to see a list of text editors I have installed, for instance. Maybe I forgot I had “Sublime” installed and couldn’t remember the name. Cruising through the Start menu can be worse as you often have to remember the name of the company.

I guess you’ll be able to do this with OS X Mavericks, which will have tags. But what a PITA to have to fill out tags every time I install a new program.

1766

Is it possible that developers can pre-tag their software? I don’t see why not, if it’s a file attribute that they can attach to executables. We’ll see, I guess.

1767

Microsoft can allow devs to include 5 tags in the .msi package, so wen you install a program from a .msi file, these 5 keywords are registered in the search.

1768

Being able to type and search for a program OR just pick it from a list, man wouldn’t it be sweet if we could just do both (either or) with a single button click?

Oh, wait.

1769

I read this thread for the rich sarcasm. I hope no one minds that I’m borrowing some of these techniques!

1770

In Windows 8, you aren’t really forced to use search. You can browse all your apps, but its terribly round-about right now.

Hover-over the lower left hand corner to get the start screen popup. Click it
Right click, bar pops up from the bottom
Click All-Apps

There, all your apps, both Metro apps and Desktop applications for your perusal. Its terribly obtuse in Windows 8, but Windows 8.1 makes this a bit easier with the option to view “All Apps” as your default view (instead of the Live Tiles view).

And I’m certainly NOT arguing for Windows 8. I tried to give the Windows 8 and Start Screen and all the new UI paradigms a fair shake, but I’m not convinced its ready for prime time on mouse driven interfaces. 8.1 makes it better, but still there are a lot of annoyances.

1771

Yeah. I know. It’s an unpopular attitude. I’ve explained it before.

I possibly have a different attitude to Win8 because 90% of my usage of it is touch- I have a transformer-style tablet. I like the gestures (in from the top, in from the sides, etc.)- they all work really, really well. When I go back to an Android tablet, I miss them terribly. I like the Charms. The segmented search charm is great, to me. In older versions of Windows (or desktop search in Win8), I get back every result possible on my computer- files, folders, programs, and if you have contents turned on, even the contents of files. So, if I want to start Photoshop, I start typing ‘photo’, and I get every folder with ‘photo’ in the name, every file, every document with the word photo in it, and yeah, the shortcut to the Photoshop executable. It’s a mess, a hodgepodge of a bunch of stuff I don’t need- 99% of the time I’m looking for something, I know what type of thing it is. The segmented search lets me make one touch and filter all the noise out. Plus, with other apps being search-enabled, I can swipe to get to search, start typing, and then just click the app name from the list below the search box and it automatically launches that app and runs the search. It saves time- no going back to the start screen or searching for the app, launching it and then running the search, etc.

I upgraded to 8.1 preview, and was bummed to see the big blank box beneath the entry box in the search charm. No more options for me! I get everything again. Bleh.

1772

Sorry, you said ‘utilities on your system that you only need once a month or so’, so I kind of thought you were talking about windows utilities. You’re right that for other installed stuff, you have to know the specific name. As others have pointed out, I can’t imagine a scenario where I would forget the name of the program I installed that I’m looking for, though. I’m not a power user though.

1773

What the f…

Immediate reaction after doing that.

Win 8 focus testing must have shown that most people only ever have 4-8 apps installed so there was no need to show them ‘everything (Gary Oldman style)’

1774

In 8.1 you can choose to use the all-apps screen as your default start menu. That pretty much solves things.

The only thing missing is the recently opened files pop-out for each app that we had in Win 7.

1775

My main PC has something on the order of ~120 pieces of software installed, some of which are extreme edge cases. For instance, I’ve got converters for very specific video formats, file joiners and splitters, CD and DVD burning software, several image editors/viewers, several video players, music organizers and taggers, multiple browser installs (e.g., FF release and beta, audio editors, video editors, text editors, etc. And, of course, games. this is all on top of built-in stuff.

I could probably–if you gave me thirty minutes and a pad and pencil–list out about 80 of those by name or a reasonable approximation thereof. The other 40? When the once-every-six-months use case for each of them crops ups, I just scroll the start menu. Takes about 20 seconds, tops, assuming the program needed starts with a “Z.” Win8 turns this process into even more of a hassle. Given that the “all apps” list often excludes things like safe modes, configuration utilities, readmes, etc., it’s even worse than all the extra steps outlined above to get to it in the first place.

This is one of about 20 minor or major frustrations I have with the software. My organization got about 50 Win8 tablets for free to distribute to our participants. By this point–given the sheer number of problems the hardware AND software have caused them–I am EMBARRASSED to think that we gave them these tools to work with.

1776

That works in win8.1 because you can sort by most commonly used programs. You can’t do that in win8.0, so what you get is a huuuuge list of programs like going into all programs in win7, except with every folder expanded.

Of course win8.1 gets rid of the ridiculous segmented search too, which is even better yet. I’m looking forward to win8.1 primarily for that one change alone.

1777

Interesting. In Win7 if I search for “photo”, the Photoshop executable is the first highlighted result, with all the other categories of results sorted below it.

Oh well, I’m sure they’ll eventually get Win8 up to the level of functionality they had four years ago.

1778

I haven’t used desktop icons to launch programs for years. If I use it regularly, it’s already pinned to the taskbar, or in a jump list from a pinned item. Otherwise, windows key + search is pretty much what I was doing in Vista and Windows 7, and it works better in 8.

But I’ve always thought the hierarchical program list in the start menu was kind of dumb.

1779

It was especially dumb for mobile phones. I remember my first look at Windows CE and the screen was all Start menu, cascading out to here. Just ridiculous.

1780

Behold, one of those “only uses about 10 programs ever” people.