Another reason why the Windows 10 Start Menu is better than the Windows 8 Start Screen

Unsurprisingly, most reviews and reviews of Windows 10 have focused on the return of the Start Menu and on the paradigm shift that means the return to the desktop As was also to be expected, all those who did not quite get used to the Windows 8 Start Screen (or who rejected it outright) have come out to praise the changes in Windows 10, leading to what Paul Thurrott has called an act of alchemy on the part of Microsoft: turning lead into gold , in the eyes of these users.

But playing with the Tech Preview I realized that the new Start Menu also means an improvement for those of us who were used to live tilesand the Start Screen , by resolving usability bugs that occurred in certain scenarios with Windows 8. In this note I'll explain those bugs, and how they've been resolved in Windows 10, in more detail.

Scientific arguments in favor of live tiles

"First of all, let&39;s review the reasons why Windows 8 live tiles would be better than the old-fashioned Start Menu>"

3 years ago, then-Windows manager Steven Sinofsky wrote this remarkable article on the Building Windows 8 blog, where he explained based on scientific literature why live tiles meant a step forward in terms of usability, at least as a concept.

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The first reason was that, according to research from Microsoft Research and several universities, it would be easier to use and manage a list of items (applications, in this case) by allowing sort them in 2 dimensions, and assign them distinctive colors and sizes, just as the home screen allows. This makes it easier for the user to develop a more effective spatial memory regarding where each item is located on the home screen."

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The second reason is based on the so-called Fitts&39; law, according to which the time it takes to reach an objective (such as a application in the Start Menu) depends on both the distance you are at, and your sizeThe smaller it is, the longer it will take to aim at the target with the mouse, even if it is very close, since we will require more precision."

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Under this principle, and according to the data handled by Microsoft, the larger size of the live tiles would imply that we take less time to reach them than the items in the Start Menu , although the distance to the latter is less. That&39;s illustrated in the heatmap below, where the greenest items are the easiest to access."

Taking the lower left corner of the screen as a starting point, we have that the number of easily accessible items is always greater on the Windows 8 start screenthan in the Windows 7 Start Menu.

The problem when using multiple monitors (and how Windows 10 solves it)

I think Steven Sinofsky was correct in defending the splash screen for the above reasons. I use it daily and share the feeling that organizing and accessing applications from it is easier and faster.

In Windows 8 many of the advantages of live tiles are lost when working with multiple monitors or frequently changing screens

However, there is a scenario where all the advantages of the aforementioned live tiles go to waste: the case of when using multiple monitors , or simply when we use an external monitor, connecting a laptop or tablet to a larger screen to work on a desktop, for example.

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I am going to explain this situation with my personal case. I have a 15-inch laptop with a resolution of 1366x768, but I mostly use it connected to a 22-inch monitor with a resolution of 1920x1080. So I have my home screen customized with the 22-inch monitor in mind. By drawing on it the heat map >."

Where the most green apps are the easiest to access, from the bottom right corner, and the most red ones are the longest to access.With that in mind, I have the tiles arranged so that my most frequent or necessary applications are closer to the green zone

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To better illustrate it, I have drawn a white line that delimits what we could call an easy access zone In this distribution, there are 13 live tiles that fall within or almost within that zone. Wonderful, right? Well this is what happens when I use the laptop without the external monitor:"

The effort to have an optimal distribution of tiles goes to waste, because the layout of the start screen changes completely when it is displayed on a lower resolution monitor. This readjustment (due to the fact that fewer rows of tiles can now fit) means that of the 13 applications that were originally in the easily accessible area now only 5 remain , less than half.And some are even almost off screen.

For the worse, by completely changing the layout of tiles , all visual memory that we have developed about tile placement is nowuseless I open the home screen, mouse over to where iTunes always is, but now there's the mail app. Wrong.

The problem of disorganization of the Start Screen when changing monitors would affect at least 10% of Windows 8 users

Someone will say that the problem is to personalize the screen with an external monitor in mind, when it should be done with the main monitor in mind. But it is the same. If I customize the splash screen for the 1366x768 main screen, the tiles will switch places when using the 1920x1080 monitor.

How many users can this problem affect? According to telemetry data provided by Steven Sinofsky in the aforementioned post, approximately 10% of Windows users worked with multiple monitors in 2011, a figure that should be higher today due to the rise of tablets/laptops capable of becoming workstations by connecting to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Anyway, the good news here is that Windows 10 solves this problem by combining the best of both worlds. We maintain easy access to apps through large, discrete live tiles, while preventing tiles from getting cluttered when switching monitors, because their position is fixed relative to the home button

Resolving this issue opens up interesting possibilities, such as giving the option to sync all start menu settings between devices, including live tiles and their size and position (since the organization does not change according to screen size/resolution, there are no problems). In this way, we would see the same start menu on any synchronized PC, and we could get used to it until we knew it like the back of our hand, knowing almost with closed eyes where each live tile is located.

Windows 10 solves the problem and at the same time preserves the advantages of the live tiles, by keeping the position of the live tiles fixed with respect to the Start button "

However, to make the Windows 10 Start Menu superior in everything>have more tiles within easy reach. "

Another step forward that can be taken is to allow having different configurations of the screen/start menu depending on the monitor used, or depending on whether we connect a keyboard and mouse. I am thinking in the case of tablets, where the criterion of proximity to the Start button does not apply, so it is likely that we want to organize the tiles in a different way there. Maybe Continuum includes customization options like that, but we don't know yet. But even if this were not the case, clearly the user experience offered by Windows 10 is superior to that of its predecessor, even for those of us who like the Metro interface and applications.