Yes, I admit it: I am a Windows person. Two years ago this summer, I traded an overworked Windows 7 laptop that was literally screaming in pain for an SFF Windows 10 box as my main machine. But 10 could spell the end of this writer, who has been using Windows since the late 1980s. Admittedly, it’s for a rather trivial reason: Microsoft has deprecated the taskbar support for alternate locations in Windows 11. Just like in, you can have the taskbar anywhere you want as long as it’s the bottom of the screen.
Years ago, I moved my taskbar to the top for various reasons. First, it made more sense to me to have everything at the top and nothing at the bottom to interrupt the visual flow while reading a web page or a document. Many people move it to one of the sides or hide it for the same reason when not in use. More importantly, I thought moving the taskbar to the top would help with my neck/shoulder issues, and I believe it does. Oddly enough, this one little thing might be the deal breaker that leads me to switch to Linux after thirty years, where top-aligned taskbars are more or less the norm.
I’m not alone in my fierce defense of a movable taskbar – a post about the issue on the Microsoft Feedback Hub has received more than 17,000 votes for being one of the most requested features. However, in a recent Reddit AMA where a user asked about moving the taskbar to the sides, Microsoft basically said the UI reflow there is hard to implement and not worth the effort, so they removed the feature. What? Yes, you read that right. That ‘really small’ group of users who took the time to get to the feedback hub? Sew them, I think, and legions more who went to other internet shops to complain and feel sorry.
(And) if you look at the data, while we know that there are some people who love it that way and appreciate it very much, we also recognize that this group of users is very small compared to the group of other people who care about ask for other functions. So right now we’re going to keep focusing on things where I hear more pain.
— Tali Roth, head of product at Microsoft, via Neowin
What I don’t understand is this: if they’ve already implemented it in the previous versions, what’s so hard about doing it again? Did they completely rewrite the codebase for Windows 11 or something and didn’t want to do that part this time?
It seems the problem was so long ago when they implemented the default case of the bottom taskbar and treated the top and side locations as exceptions and coded them that way. That’s clear enough.
So they’re probably tired of that workaround now, and whether they’ve rewritten the codebase for Windows 11 or not, they probably recognize that the entire taskbar object has to be built from the ground up in such a way that it’s each of the four locations, and just don’t want to bother implementing or tweaking other features.
Of course this is all wild speculation. Not even sure if this box of mine will run Windows 11. So feel free to pick up where I left off in the comments. And I think I will follow your Linux distro recommendations as well, because I think some of you will do it anyway. I’m thinking KDE Neon or something.
On the other hand, there are a few advantages to Windows 11: it has an OS-wide dark mode and they brought back the idea of the startup chime. Remember when you reassigned the startup sound to an MP3 you ripped from a CD from Napster? Those were the days.
Images via Microsoft
This post Mobile-focused Windows 11 leaves the taskbar hanging at the bottom
was original published at “https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/mobile-focused-windows-11-leaves-taskbar-stuck-along-the-bottom/”