Microsoft should stick to its guns and keep the Start button gone

[CyberAbc 290]

Microsoft has shown some screenshots of some of the user interface improvements and alterations it's going to deliver in Windows 8.1 later this year.

These include more personalization, a Settings app that doesn't force you to use the Control Panel, richer multitasking with more apps visible on-screen, multimonitor support for Metro apps, and unified search.

Also being brought back: the Start button. When running desktop applications—but not Metro applications—a Start button with a Windows logo will be on the taskbar and when clicked it will take you to the Start screen.

Logical progress

Overall, these are sensible changes. Many of the problems we previously noted—such as the incomplete Settings app, the segregated search results, and the way that installed apps dump a load of icons onto your personal Start screen—look like they will be resolved by the update.

Windows 8's interface was in some ways over-simplified. The fixed split, for example, was not without its merits. It forced developers to consider how to design their interfaces for a narrow view. As a result, many apps have well-designed snap views. This is in contrast to most desktop applications: although desktop applications are generally freely resizable, most applications don't handle this at all elegantly. Give an application a small window and all too often its toolbars get truncated and its document area gets shrunk to near-nothingness.

Enlarge / The split view that allows the simultaneous use of multiple Metro apps is now flexible, allowing you to pick how screen space is apportioned.

Microsoft

But the fixed split is also limiting. For example, the lack of a 50-50 split (as used on the desktop since Windows 7 introduced Aero Snap) meant that it was difficult to use the split view for two applications that are equal peers—say, a browser used for research on one side of the screen and a mail client on the other. The flexible split should allow this kind of working. We'll just have to hope that developers don't forget about the importance of adjusting their user interfaces to cope with narrow windows.

I'm not sure, however, that all the changes are worthwhile. The pressure to reinstate the Start button was immense. Its removal was, and still is, widely complained about and many complainants will no doubt feel vindicated at its return. But it's the wrong thing to do.

The problem is this: Metro apps themselves—including things like the Settings app, Search, and the Start screen itself—don't show a taskbar and won't have a Start button. While many users will, no doubt, continue to use the desktop for much of their work, the use of these things is (third-party software excepted) unavoidable. As such, unless Microsoft does something even more radical, such as make the taskbar a permanent on-screen fixture, Windows 8.1 users cannot depend on being able to see a Start button.

Windows 8 was consistent in this regard. There was never a Start button in the bottom left corner. You always had to use the Windows key on your keyboard, or the Windows key on your tablet, or the Windows key on your mouse, or the Windows logo in the charms menu, or the bottom left hot corner. Whether in a Metro app or on the desktop, the set of tools available to get into the Start screen was uniform.

By backing down and reinstating the taskbar's Start button, Microsoft is making an interface that lacks this consistency. You'll be able to look for, and use, that on-screen visual clue sometimes. Some of the time it will be there. Some of the time it won't. Users of Windows 8.1 will still have to learn about the hot corners, or the charms, or the keyboard buttons, or the mouse buttons, or the tablet buttons, because they'll have to use them when they're in Metro apps. Putting the taskbar button back doesn't remove the need for that knowledge. And yet, for anyone who has learned that knowledge, the button itself is entirely unnecessary.

The problem with Windows 8's lack of Start button was not the removal of the button per se: it was the absolutely abysmal job that Redmond did of telling people what to do instead. Yes, anyone reading this site is likely to know what the Windows keys on their keyboard are for and probably uses them habitually anyway. But that's probably not true of the wider computer using audience. Those people are conditioned to look for a Start button. Changing the way that they invoke the Windows application launcher (be it Start menu or Start screen) requires education, and except for a brief tutorial that's woefully inadequate, Microsoft has done nothing to attempt to educate users.

This is unlike the way that Microsoft introduced the Start button way back in 1995. Windows 95 contained a variety of visual cues to remind users what to do. Windows 8 had nothing. It left new users high and dry—and if Windows 8.1 continues to depend on hot corners and other techniques to invoke the Start screen from within Metro apps, it too will leave new users high and dry.

The Start button isn't the only victim of this poor education: the company has done precious little to explain what charms are or how they work. Likewise app bars. However, apps can to some extent overcome this, for example by including magnifying glass search icons within the application, to allow users to search without having to know how to invoke the search charm. The Start button offers no such easy in-app solution.

On top of all this, if Microsoft thinks that putting back the Start button will put an end to the complaints about Windows 8, it's sorely mistaken. While many mourn the loss of the Start button, many more mourn the loss of the Start menu. They don't just want the button back; they want to be rid of the Start screen itself. For that group, merely bringing back the button misses the point.

The Windows 8.1 Start screen allows for bigger tiles such as the pretty weather app, smaller tiles such as the quartet in the upper right corner, and the use of the desktop background.

Microsoft

Some of the other changes that Windows 8.1 will bring may go some way toward appeasing those calling for the return of the Start menu; the better customization, the ability to default to all programs view, and the unified search results all redress some of the Start screen's deficits relative to the Start menu. But for those who regard the Start screen's full-screen nature as a deal-breaker, nothing short of the return of the Start menu is likely to matter.

Ignoring Metro isn’t an option

One confounding factor is the use of Metro apps in general. I've heard it argued that it doesn't matter that Metro apps don't include a Start button because desktop users won't, in general, use Metro apps and so will never get "trapped" inside them. In some ways, there's some truth to this. The first generation of Metro apps, especially those for core tasks such as e-mail, is weak, giving relatively little incentive for anyone to use them.

This isn't, however, an intrinsic, inevitable feature of Metro apps. The built-in Mail client doesn't support POP3, for example, but that has nothing to do with Metro and everything to do with Microsoft being unable or unwilling to use its existing POP3 code in the Metro mail client. While there are still certain omissions and limitations to the Mail app, the March update made it a great deal more useful, and one could easily see it becoming a solid, useful, usable app that is good for both touch users and mouse users. Metro isn't standing in the way of that.

And once the apps, especially those core built-in apps, become good enough that people want to use them, they'll have to face the whole "how do I get out of this app" problem. A problem that isn't solved by putting the Start button on the taskbar.

Similarly, the problems with the charms and app bars aren't solved by a Start button.

I'd also argue that Microsoft has a strong incentive to get even traditional, non-touch device users interested in using Metro apps. The only way to establish a thriving, successful marketplace of Metro apps is to ensure that there are lots of people using Metro apps. Right now, there aren't. Microsoft peculiarly boasts of just 250 million app downloads, and while that does sound like a reasonably big number, when divided between the 100 million Windows 8 licenses the company has sold, it doesn't sound so big any more: it sounds like Windows 8 users are downloading 2-3 Metro apps and then giving up entirely.

This might not be fatal for the desktop, but it cripples Microsoft's tablet ambitions. Windows 8 (and its ARM sibling, Windows RT) do actually work—and work well—on tablets. But they're hamstrung by a shortage of high-quality Metro software. Microsoft needs Metro to be taken as seriously as developers take the iPad if it wants to be able to compete in this space. Creating Metro apps that all Windows users find useful will go a long way toward achieving that.

Rather than backing down and putting back this superfluous, redundant button, Microsoft should instead be educating. People can learn new interfaces. They did with Windows 95. They did with the iOS (which, let's not forget, also bucked trends by having no on-screen home button, relying instead on a hardware button or touch gestures—just like Windows 8, in other words). They just have to be taught. It's about time Microsoft tried.