Finding the app I need from that list takes longer on average, as the app keeps changing position in it.
I can spot it instantly in a list of 15. Especially as I know when I'm about to open one how common it is. You surely don't have to look at each one? Some people do and I feel sorry for them (no actually I laugh at them), for example my neighbour was looking for an email from a company, in a list of 500 emails. She was slowly looking through the list, so I took her laptop from her and started pressing page down every second, looking at 30 at a time. She was astonished. I thought anyone could do that. I was just looking for one particular word in the page, I didn't have to read everything to check each word wasn't the one I wanted!
I only use it for situations where opening a separate menu to find the icon I need is an unnecessary burden. If you have to repeat a single mouseclick 100 times, it means that it can save you 100 mouseclicks. Simple logic. It serves the same purpose as pinning shortcuts to taskbar, but it doesn't clutter up the 'running apps' view because it is separate so it doesn't interfere with that. (Even, if the contents of the toolbar keep constantly changing on-the-fly─as a result of it being scripted like I earlier said.)
The human brain can do two things at once, so it doesn't take you twice as long to do two clicks. You're also buffering what you're going to do inside the app once it's open.
The features that are missing from it are the exact same ones that most SAB users didn't actually even bother to look for. They just installed SAB and spent the rest of the day typing messages about how great it is, not realizing the fact that you can't easily find something if you don't look. Then when someone points out how factually true that sentence has been, usually what happens is that the whole world catches on fire next. Again, not trying to point any fingers here. But what has been seen can not be unseen, even though SAB is certainly not the only example of a program that is able to fit in that category.
Name some features I may be missing out on.
"Your trial has expired" window on startup is what happens with SAB if you don't pay within 100 days.
Er.... yes of course that happens
And it's not so annoying if I had to I mean when I have to close it. I don't restart my computer very often anyway.
Let's face it, ClassicShell was here first.
Irrelevant. I got a program and it did what I needed.
The up arrow button is used to navigate to the parent folder of the current opened folder in File Explorer. It has the same effect as clicking on the 2nd to last breadcrumb in the address bar of File Explorer, the only real difference being, that you don't have to go look for the 2nd to last breadcrumb─similar to how a horizontal bar with just icons (i.e., no 'bricks with text' shown between the horizontally aligned icons) also lets you avoid being forced to go look for the item you need. This is really nothing new. Productivity 101. The blatant observation that Microsoft persistently fails to recognize it is also nothing new, and Panos Panay has been no exception, which, as a matter of true fact, is also nothing new. lol
It seems I have one and don't use it, since I never noticed it come back. I remember using the up arrow in very early versions of windows, it's like typing cd.. in DOS. Nowadays I press the back button, the one like in a browser, because it's better. Back may not necessarily be up a level. It's where you were. Lets say I'm in a folder of stuff I've downloaded or transferred from my phone or someone else. I cut or copy some music files, go to my music folder and paste them. The back button takes me back to the files I've received, so I can select some photos and copy them.
You are missing the fact that having to take a peek at the preview thumbnails just every once in a little while is taking a lot less effort than it takes to keep on reading through all that text like almost constantly the whole time.
Taking a peek means pausing with the mouse and waiting for it to appear, it takes too long. And if you're not sure which icon is which, you'd have to do it on more than one. But the most annoying thing as I've said is they're popping up all the time covering the text I'm trying to read in the current app.
Again, it doesn't take me more than a fraction of second to spot a word in a single line of text. and usually I subconsciously remember where on the taskbar it is. Something recently opened will be further to the right.
The pros of preview thumbnails far outweigh the cons, at least for me, but you'll never hear me say that every person should get used to experiencing the same. There is no standard answer to how much effort it will take for a given person to adapt to a certain UI change, procedure or workflow, or how much effort will essentially be wasted by trying to adapt. People who are more capable to easily adapt are not necessarily among those who will always perform better at everything. But Microsoft is a typical example of a company that, on so many levels, has been being way more than just a little bit myopic in that regard (and not only in that regard, for that matter...).
I think we agree - everything should be absolutely customisable in every way. You have to wonder why they remove customisation. Does it make it easier to code? Does it make the system run faster? Does it make it easier to explain to someone else how to do something because their screen will look the same? No that doesn't work, since when you look up how to do something, chances are you find instructions written before the last update.
I find the layout too distracting so it causes fatigue, which is important to me because the average person (myself included) needs at minimum half an hour to become fully focussed with workflow again after having taken another break, and, more unnecessary fatigue translates to taking more frequent, longer breaks so more energy gets wasted for nothing.
I don't do breaks unless I need food (which I just eat at the desk anyway), need to go to the toilet, or am called away to speak to someone. So fatigue doesn't come into it. It's just some nuts invented by unions so people can work less for the same pay.
How can you find the layout distracting anyway? It shows you an image of exactly what the app looks like. Just like the popups from the taskbar you like.
With SWS the Alt + key above tab causes it to only display windows that belong to the app that is currently active.
That would never come up for me. The only apps I have several things open in are tabbed.
Yes, the increased line spacing makes it more touchscreen friendly,
Apart from tablets and phones and kiosks, nobody uses a touchscreen on their desktop! This is a desktop OS!
I do find I click the wrong thing less often, but I'm having to scroll more often to find it. However I can now click inbetween the lines to paste a file into the folder. Before you had to scroll to the end or hope there was a blank space on the right!
but you can change it back to normal spacing by enabling
Compact View.
Ah! Thankyou! Now I don't need to buy a bigger monitor just to view a list of files. WTF were they thinking making the default that way round?
It seems people spend half their day hunting down how to put things back the way they were!
Only caveat, the nav pane still has some extra line spacing there, BUT... Classic Explorer of Open-Shell lets you fix that problem. lol
In that case you could always decide to use the command utility just to let the mic be unmuted again after the "Listen to this device" checkbox has been unchecked. I.e., let it be muted as soon as possible via Task Scheduler automatically each time after a user logon occurs, then when you've cleared the checkbox, unmute it again next. The idea would be to, as soon as possible each time after you reboot, get rid of the sound of the mic coming through your speakers, and still be able to achieve what you want (a few moments after that). Should you wish to automate the steps required to clear the checkbox by running a task in Task Scheduler, then that's possible to do by simulating keystrokes with things like, e.g., AutoHotKey (AHK) or AutoIt/AutoItX. These days I prefer to just compile a windowless app (.exe file) by using the built-in C# compiler (csc.exe) of the .NET Framework that is already installed by default on Win 11, but I used to do it with the SendKeys method in VBScript─until one day I got fed up with the quirky behavior of SendKeys. The free PowerAutomate Desktop (PAD) from Microsoft could also be used for this purpose. But that one kept logging me out of it each time when it updated itself through the Microsoft Store (although it looks like maybe this issue has recently been solved by Microsoft), and the free edition doesn't easily let you run a Flow from within Task Scheduler (although you can work your way around that limitation).
Argh you've lost me. Look, there are two different settings going on here, and I can't see the distinction in the instructions you've given. Is the mic being recorded (I want that on all the time), and is the mic playing through to the speaker (I usually want that off, but want to be able to easily turn it on briefly.
Now, I'm not suggesting that everyone who uses SAB falls in that category. A lot of people just assume that I am, and this plays a fundamental role in how the strategy works.
