The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed
- Reference: 1722255552
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/07/29/windows_start_menu_port/
- Source link:
Retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer regaled us with tales of porting the Start Menu from Windows 95 to NT [1]earlier in July , but it appears more than 30 years ago, somebody took a look at his solution and thought "nah..."
Plummer worked on elements of the Windows experience, such as the Task Manager, and had a hand in porting the Start Menu from Windows 95 to Windows NT. While he gave a nod to the Windows 95 design team for the iconic interface element, he explained how he'd worked out a way of avoiding a library of localized bitmaps by figuring out how to display sideways text.
[2]
Or so he thought.
[3]
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In an email to The Register , Plummer told us: "Long story short, in the production builds, I've learned they went with bitmaps rather than the programmatic version.
"My guess is that's the way the art team had always delivered them ... and so it was just easier, but I don't have any real idea. I stay away from source code leaks so don't want to investigate the technicals!"
[5]Porting the Windows 95 Start Menu to NT
[6]A cheeky intern nearly turned MS-DOS into NSFW-DOS
[7]Windows Format dialog waited decades for UI revamp that never came
[8]Plummer talks to us about spending Microsoft's money on a red Corvette
Plummer talked to the shell's main developer, who confirmed the story. He said: "I wrote the programmatic version in '94 and we ran it internally, but it appears the setup/design team made the change after the code was written, and didn't use it. It came as news to me as well!"
It seems it was only the code that got ditched from the shipping version. The rest of Plummer's recollections around the launch were accurate.
[9]
The shock of discovering that your work was unceremoniously ditched years after the event is something that will be all too familiar to engineers and designers of a certain vintage. More than once, we've examined a product and wondered what happened to our contribution. However, in the case of this writer, the removal of code was more likely due to it being terrible than anything else.
Either way, the Task Manager was frequently a lifesaver when Windows misbehaved, so we'll cut Plummer some slack on this one.
Have you ever done something that you thought was clever but later discovered your contribution ended up on the cutting room floor? Share your tale in the comments below. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/porting_the_windows_95_start/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zqe8pJ0GvTCQXpPmJ5SOjwAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/porting_the_windows_95_start/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/08/ms_dos_easter_egg/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/windows_format_dialog_temporary/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/08/spending_microsoft_money_on_a/
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[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "it appears the setup/design team made the change after the code was written"
And the start of a long process.
Called out by a commentard
[1]On the previous article
Do we really need a whole article for every piece of nonsense Dave Plummer says?
[1] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/07/17/porting_the_windows_95_start/#c_4896147
Re: Called out by a commentard
Only a commentard's view here:
- A couple of his recent articles have been pertinent around the ClownStrike debacle.
- I would argue that this one is correcting a previous article which, journalistically, is important.
Re: Called out by a commentard
That is a bold claim.
So, back up your words and explain to us what you would have done to ensure that the time clock on the taskbar not take up too much resources, since you're so much more knowledgeable.
And then, when you've done that, why don't you give us your insights as to how UEFI should have been implemented.
With code examples, please.
Re: Called out by a commentard
Yes - because :
A) he makes sense
B) he's been at the sharp end of one of the most divisive and contributory OS's of the modern times
and
C) he's probably delivered more than you..
Re: Called out by a commentard
Poor attempt at trolling, even by your low standards Cyberdemon!
Once upon a time in a distant land...
... our team were faced with the opposite problem.
There was a chunk of functionality which a certain computer manufacturer was committed to deliver and which the then comprehensive, printed documentation elaborated in some detail - which a team member had forgotten entirely to write.
I'm not a fan of test-driven development (on the grounds that the kind of tests that you can write before you know the kind of bugs to which the code might be subject are likely to be trivial) but in this case even the most trivial test added to the build system would have exposed the omission. But, equally, a manager paying slightly more attention might have been even more helpful.
The cost of pulping the manuals was excessive and customers were waiting on features in the code that had been completed so the product had to ship with a rather shamefaced set of release notes advising that a range of pages in the manual were to be ignored until a subsequent point release.
Re: Once upon a time in a distant land...
It may not be possible to workout what bugs you will likely get - however you should be able to identify the desired happy paths and test the code does at least that and that increases the chance the the code is run to some degree before it get's deployed.
Standardization
I run Systems Engineering groups the last decade or so. I've had some really great creative people work for me over the years, but sometimes no matter how great a solution, when one looks at the Big Picture (not just the product, but the manufacturing as well), sometimes sticking with "the standard way" makes the most sense. That's not to mean the "new way" should be forgotten, but you don't optimize systems by optimizing each part in a vacuum. (More so when talking about hardware.)
As a slight observation, I notice we have a lot of Windows "Start Menu" articles.
Dear The Register author... We need to let it go. The Windows 95 start menu was perhaps the best, nicest, most cozy bit of interface design in our lifetime... but it is gone and it isn't coming back. Please stop reminding me of how far we have regressed!!!
:)
Your are aware that besides Windows there are other environments which still use Start menu, right? Happily writing on Ubuntu MATE with a Start menu ;-)
"it appears the setup/design team made the change after the code was written"
And that was the precise moment when the rot started.