I’m not a Win 8 hater like most seem to be, but the one thing I do find a little frustrating is the existence of a fairly comprehensive menu of installed programs a la the Start Menu.
I know there are Start Menu replacement mods for Windows 8 but before I resort to that, I am wondering whether there’s a native option that I’m missing. It doesn’t have to be exactly like the Start Menu, but I’m just looking for a place where installed programs are organized into a menu of menus. File explorer doesn’t quite do it because it shows me things that aren’t programs. “Programs and Features” (right click on start button) doesn’t do it because those aren’t organized except alphabetically, and anyway I don’t think you can click on them to run them anyway.
The windows 8 “start screen” doesn’t show everything, and anyway is far too unwieldy.
Is there anything else I’m missing? I keep having to do a search for programs instead of simply running them with a couple of mouseclicks.
The Start Screen is the replacement for the Start Menu. There’s not another “Start Menu” hidden someplace. If what you want isn’t on it, search for it once, right-click on the resulting icon, and choose “Pin to Start” to put it there.
Based on announcements from Microsoft, this will change over time back to something more like the original start menu, but for now, that’s what you’ve got.
I’ve only used 8 a tiny bit, and had this same problem. Somewhere in the “Start Screen” is a hierarchical menu similar to the original menu that organizes your programs (for instance, listed by publisher, has an “accessories” folder with notepad, calculator, etc).
The underlying structure of the old start menu is still there, just hidden in the start screen, under an icon marked “programs” maybe. The mod programs simply restore the original appearance and button.
Go to the Start Screen. Move your mouse and you will see a downward facing arrow on the left bottom side of the screen. Click it… all of your apps are there in a list. You can organize it by name or category.
The app list isn’t exactly a hierarchical menu system but it can be sorted by category, recently used, most used, and alphabetical. It’s sort of like sorting different views in windows explorer. It’s pretty functional. If what you’re looking for isn’t on the list, just start typing the program name and it will be displayed in the search bar. From there you can pin it to the start menu or the taskbar.
You can also use a 3rd party program called Obly to make pretty metro icons if you don’t like the way an older program’s icon is displayed.
All in all, it works great. The only reason to need a heirarchical menu for the UI is that it helps find the item you’re looking for. The Win8 UI is trying to get away from the idea that individual items are discrete objects that live in one special place. With the Modern UI, you don’t have to remember (or care about) the folder the structure. Just type the name and the computer finds what you want, which you can pin to the start menu, if you want to find it regularly.
That isn’t the only reason, but that certainly is one of the primary reasons that makes a hierarchical menuing system so effective.
The absolute last thing I want to do is revert back to the keyboard when navigating and worse have to remember the name of something (I have way too many names of things to remember, adding more to that list is a pointless step backwards).
Yes, I wanted to come back and say that the app list is the thing I didn’t know about which basically does what mostly takes care of most of what I want. I still miss the full hierarchical menu thing but this’ll do for now.
I’ve never felt like the start menu relied on the idea that these things are discrete objects that live in one special place. It was very clear that I could find a way to execute the program in many different places. The start menu. File explorer. Shell. Command prompt. Search. There are probably others I’m forgetting.
But for quick access the start menu worked well for programs I didn’t use often enough to want to clutter my desktop or taskbar with.
See that just strikes me as such a strange thing to say. Isn’t it much easier to remember a folder structure than to remember the name of a program? Isn’t it better to keep with the mouse instead of having to switch to keyboard? The things you list here as advantages strike me as blatant disadvantages.
Exactly, this drives me crazy. Indeed, I have a friend who is a developer at Microsoft and he makes two infuriating claims:
(1) Most people only use a few applications, so what’s the problem? [There are about 20 apps that I use at least weekly]
(2) If you want a certain application, it’s just easier to type the name into the search bar.
When I try to argue with him, he just gives me the look: ‘you poor clueless end-user…just learn to receive our wisdom with grace.’
That said, I’m hoping that maybe I actually will learn to appreciate the Windows 8 interface. Although I’m the guy who configures Windows 7 to behave as much like XP as possible, so I’m skeptical…
This attitude drives me crazy, too. We have decades of UI studies now showing that people are much, much better at recognition than recall (i.e. recognizing the item you want in a list is much easier and faster than remembering the name to type it). Worse, the Windows UI has no visual indicator that would tell you that typing to it is even possible: no text box, no cursor. In studies, it never occurs to most users to type there, so they click the search button (requiring them to use the mouse), then type (requiring them to move back to the keyboard). (It also doesn’t help that the Win 8 search has zero tolerance for errors. Misspell a program name by a single letter (and program names are all “cute” misspellings of something these days), and you won’t find it.)
Hierarchical lists are even better: they provide a dense amount of “recognition” in a small space–but they don’t translate well to touch.
As usual, this comes back to: if your number one goal is to make the interface exactly the same between touch and desktop, you’re going to end up with something that’s substandard on one, the other, or both. And if you ignore everything we’ve learned in a couple decades of UI work (like visual feedback, affordances, and leading), it’ll be even worse.
Luckily, it seems like the lesson’s been learned, and that Windows will start moving back to a more usability-focused interface over the next couple of releases, assuming Microsoft’s public announcements and presentations are any indication.
(Disclosure, I work at Microsoft, but not on Windows. I don’t speak for Microsoft, and can’t talk about unannounced plans even if I knew them–which I don’t.)
Hierarchical lists were (checks forum description) for me, a nightmare that Windows 8 woke me up from.
It was only when I lost my Start menu that I realised what a horrible mess it had been when I used it in XP - program shortcuts nested in five layers of hierarchy that had to be carefully mouse-navigated or the menu would just snap closed before I got to the thing I wanted - it was so bad I had reverted to having themed folders full of commonly-used shortcuts on the desktop (a Windows 3.1 habit).
I have hundreds of small applications and utilities that I use at various times - and In My Humble Opinion, being able to search and reliably find them with a few keypresses is more comfortable than any other method I have used.