![]() The Start menu, and the Taskbar on which it appears, were created and named in 1993 by Daniel Oran, a program manager at Microsoft who had previously collaborated on Great ape language research with the behavioral psychologist B.F. The Start menu is a graphical user interface element that has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, providing a means of opening programs and performing other functions in the Windows shell. The good news is that Microsoft isn't as tone deaf to feedback like it was in the Windows 8 days, so we should hopefully get more tweaks that will make the Start menu a major feature of future Windows versions for years to come.Graphical user interface element included in Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 ![]() While the Start menu in Windows 11 has some good features, it has nevertheless become a source of controversy for many people who feel that it doesn't meet the needs compared to the ones in older versions of Windows. Instead, you can pin your desktop apps right on the menu. ![]() ![]() You also got a search bar on top of the menu, and thankfully there's no Windows 8 "Live Tiles" anymore. Thankfully, you can make some quick changes in settings to place it on the left-hand side. For the first time, the menu didn't appear on the left-hand side by default but was placed in the center of the desktop screen. In 2021, Microsoft launched Windows 11 and with that came yet another makeover of the Start menu. Those tiles could be resized in the menu, like they could on the Windows 8 Start screen. The left column was for desktop apps, along with the PC categories on top, while the touchscreen Windows tiles from 8 and 8.1 were on the right hand column. However, the Windows 10 Start menu was similar to what was shown back at Build 2014. However, at it turned out, Microsoft decided to wait until the launch of Windows 10, with a technical preview version in late 2014, to fully launch a new version of its Start menu, two years after the debut of Windows 8. When Microsoft first showed the Start menu back at its annual Build developer conference in a keynote speech in April 2014, a massive cheer and applause came from the crowd. In 2014, two years after Windows 8, Microsoft finally said it would return a version of the Start menu for a Windows 8.1 update. It wasn't really what people wanted, but it was, pun intended, a start. Not the menu, but the Start button for the desktop. Just a few weeks after Stardock's Wardell revealed that five million download number for Start8, Microsoft confirmed that some version of the Start button would be back for Windows 8.1. Those kinds of numbers from third-party apps showed that there was still a need for the Start menu in Windows. Indeed, Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell told AllThingsD in May 2013 that Start8 had five million downloads since it launched in late 2012. Some of those programs continue even today, with StartAllBack (launched as StartIsBack) and Stardock's Start8, which has now evolved into Start11. Lots of small and big software developers rushed to create programs that added a version of the Start menu to Windows 8. They hated it so much that they helped to launch a cottage software industry. In short, people hated Windows 8 in general, and its lack of a Start menu in particular. They still needed a UI they could use, but Microsoft didn't want to give it to them in Windows 8 when it launched in 2012. The colorful "Live Tiles" were meant to be used on touch displays such as laptops and tablets, but Microsoft seemed to forget that there were hundreds of millions of PCs out there with no touchscreens, especially ones that were desktops that used a mouse and keyboard. Microsoft felt that every computing device was moving into a touchscreen interface, so the company decided to develop a Start Screen. While there were major changes in the design of the Start menu since it was introduced in Windows 95, it seemed like this was a desktop feature that was going to be refined well into the future. The right column also listed categories in your PC instead of direct folders. You also got a sliding menu for the left column that replaced the right column when you clicked on some programs. That included putting in a search bar on the bottom of the left Start column to find files and programs, which I found particularly handy for finding things like downloaded PDF files and images. Windows Vista, as badly as that operating system was received, did include some small but important adjustments to the Start menu in 2007 that carried over to Windows 7's version in 2009. It was definitely a nice evolution from the original, which on occasion could flood the desktop with menus. The left hand side had all of your programs, with the most used ones getting the prime menu space, while the right side had links to your PCs more important folders. Instead of one column when you hit the Start button, there were two. Windows XP made a big update to the Start menu in 2001.
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