Yuck. That'll keep me on 10 for the time being. With widescreen monitors it's so nice to be able to use as much of your vertical real-estate as possible.

This is a shame. I always was the odd one who put his task bar to the right, but it makes so much more sense if you have many windows open. I can scan over the titles much faster vertically. There's more space for task tray icons and I could easily add multiple rows of quick start icons in a folder. [1]

For some reason nowadays design trumps everything. I understand, it has to look good and I like how Windows 11 looks on those screenshots. But sometimes those Microsoft developers seem to forget, that with every cut feature they will annoy some users. For example, I fear the day they will finally get rid of the old Control Panel.

It's even more annoying if the change just happens because of "Design"...

[1] https://imgur.com/a/q7gOlIG

Why right instead of left as text is ltr?

Somehow it is easier for me. Can it be that I can drag the mouse faster to the right as a right-hander? Maybe because the cursor is more often on the right, because of scrollbars on the right side? Maybe because many programs have their vertical menu on the left side (Outlook, Teams, etc) and therefore the left side would be too busy?

But maybe I am just used to it.

To be honest, some of these are exactly the reason why I would keep the taskbar to the left - UI elements such as scrollbars or caption buttons are much faster to access with mouse, when they're glued to the edge/corner of the screen, because you can just "throw" your mouse cursor instead of having to aim for a 20x20px target. Having your taskbar to the right takes away that feature

Part of Fitt's Law. The corners of the screen infinitely large so they are easiest to target. As you said, just "throw" your mouse. The edges of the screen are infinitely long (1 dimension) but you still need to target the X range. Still easy to target. UX designers use to study this stuff and apply it. Now they unwittingly undo all of these thoughtful experiences with their cosmetic changes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

That only applies if you maximise your windows. I personally never maximise anything. My ultrawide monitor would be too big for that.

> Alignment to the bottom of the screen is the only location allowed.

That's incredibly disappointing! Having the task bar at the top of the screen makes a lot more sense for me. Application bars (tabs, urls, etc. in browsers) are at the top, so why place the task bar as far away from that as possible? It just doesn't make sense imo.

Thinking though how I use UIs, I like having one sidebar per screen edge because:

- I can spatially separate OS-level and program-level controls instead of visually/mentally hunting around in the same general area of the screen

- The effective clickable surface area of a button next to a screen edge is effectively infinite. For example, you can "crash" the mouse pointer downward onto a minimized window such that the bottom edge stops your mouse pointer from overshooting, and clicking will maximize that window. If you stacked OS-level and program-level control bars onto the same edge of a screen, one of them loses this UI perk

Well, hopefully something like this app still works https://github.com/CrypticButter/ButteryTaskbar (it makes it so the Taskbar is only visible when you press the Win key).

I switched to having the taskbar on the left in 1999 or so, then when I got a super ultrawide monitor I just realized I don't need/want it visible at all and found the program linked to above.

Ughhh. This is legit something that'll stop me from upgrading for at least a bit. Gotten so used to having it on the left side that I really don't want to go back.

Strange decision. It doesn't even seem like a design challenge to have the task bar on any side of the screen. I can't see any reason for such an easily avoidable limitation.