Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft
Windows 11 can't move the taskbar, and four years later, Microsoft still has no plans to bring it back. Here's why, according to Microsoft.
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Tali Roth, the then product manager working on the core Windows user experience, including the Start menu, taskbar, and notifications, took up the question and talked about how building the taskbar from scratch meant that they had to cherry-pick things to put into the feature list first, and the ability to move the taskbar didn’t make the cut, for several reasons that Microsoft values.
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!
If you have working code, why would you rewrite it from scratch? Refactor, sure. Overhaul, maybe. But why rewrite the whole thing?! You're gaining nothing but unnecessary bugs.
I know all the joke answers. To justify a product manager's salary, because Microsoft gonna Microsoft, whatever. I want to know the real reason. Why would you ever rewrite working code from scratch if you don't have to?
Probably to add something terrible for the user but good for MS. Ad integration? Easier to spy?
That's fair, but even with that, it's got to be easier to shove it into existing code. Especially if you're trying to do it in a way that people don't notice!
And actually, the Windows 10 start menu infamously had ads, too. So it can't be that.
Could be that refactoring the code for Windows 11 compatibility, and new features, would have been roughly equivalent in effort to rebuilding. If the code has been poked and probed for years already, still follows old patterns, and have devolved into a tightly coupled mess of scattered system dependancies… maybe it just becomes easier to justify rebuilding it as a way of clearing out technical debt?
The people responsible only had experience with React, so they rebuilt it using React.
I assume the code was just too old and convoluted to maintain properly. I'm a bad coder so I've definitely redone parts of my scripts from scratch rather than trying to refactor them.
Then again I'm not a small billion dollar indie company who's main focuses are spying on users and helping to commit genocide.
Exactly. Full rewrites nearly always end in failure.
I've only ever had it work for me once or twice, and it was always near the very beginning of a project when I was only losing a few days or a week of working code at most. When I discover that I fundamentally misunderstood or misjudged a core assumption and everything needs to be reoriented. Never when I already had code in production.
Yeah, I meant rewrites of complete shipped products, so your exception fits
Someone on Microsoft probably needed an excuse for their pay increase.
"I rebuilt/had the idea to rebuilt the taskbar" sounds a lot better to managers than "I maintained the taskbar".
They let their AI do it for them
But this was four years ago! Actually it was released four years ago. This decision was almost certainly made before there were widespread code assistance AIs.
There exist some horror stories about the code but I have no idea how to find them.
