Evolving the Start menu
Context & Ripple Effects
This post extends the public walkthrough of the Windows 8 shell that Microsoft began with Improvements in Windows Explorer at the end of August 2011. With Explorer covered, the Start menu is the next — and most familiar — piece of the desktop interface to get the redesign treatment.
The stakes are higher here than in the Explorer post: the Start menu is the navigation surface every Windows user touches daily, so any change to it forces relearning on hundreds of millions of existing installs rather than on a niche tool.
First-order effects
- Windows users upgrading to Windows 8 will have to relearn their primary app-launching habit, since Microsoft is changing the element they interact with most.
- Developers whose applications rely on Start menu placement for discoverability must adapt to whatever launch model replaces or reshapes it.
Second-order effects
- PC makers face pressure to ship touch-capable hardware if the redesigned shell presumes touch input, making the interface change a hardware roadmap question as much as a software one.
- Utility vendors that sell Start menu customization and replacement tools gain an immediate market opening among users unwilling to relearn.
Third-order effects
- If Microsoft carries the same launch surface across both traditional PCs and touch devices, the standalone desktop Start menu tradition ends and Windows converges on a single full-screen app launcher — a structural break with two decades of shell convention.
The trend: Microsoft's sequence of Windows 8 shell posts — Explorer first, now the Start menu — shows the company rebuilding long-standing desktop conventions into one interface meant to serve both mouse-and-keyboard PCs and touch devices.