TheRegister's platform is a leading technology news website, offering insights into IT industry news, hardware reviews, and software updates. Through articles, analysis, and opinion pieces, TheRegister offers insights into cybersecurity threats, technology trends, and industry developments. Readers can stay updated with the latest news and analysis from the world of technology and IT business.

The Register

Former Microsoft CVP Mikhail Parakhin revealed that Windows 11's locked taskbar position resulted from a design vision to create symmetric panes with widgets on the left and system controls on the right, pushing the Start menu to center. This decision removed Windows 10's taskbar customization options, including the ability to move it to different screen edges—a feature present since Windows 95. Parakhin acknowledged fighting against removing customization options, though Microsoft prioritized the widget-centric design over user flexibility.

Why is Windows 11 taskbar like that? Ex-Windows man explains

F#ck widgets. Are there people out there actually using them? Are those users so lucrative that they locked down everything because of them?

Microsoft - failing at widgets since 2007 (Vista’s release year) 😁
Also, locking the taskbar in place, horizontally, in the age of wide and ultra-wide displays sounds like a Microsoft idea. 😆

They first removed some usefull features. One customer of mine used the grouping auf Folders that can expand. Now you can hack it but you don’t see the labels. They remove good features and the whole thing is so buggy.
I have switched the Fileserver and some clients had the mapping in the Explorer. Then the explorer hang and won’t work. The whole system starts to hang and is unusable. First when you remove the drive mapping it’s working again. When you have something in the Favorites he tries to open it and kills the system.

Widget based are actually easier to scale for different type of device/screen? Android, iOS, MacOS, etc are building around widget.