We first heard rumors about a possible comeback of the Start menu
button in Windows 8.1 last week, but now sources speaking to The Verge have
confirmed that this will indeed be the case, only it’s probably not what most
detractors were hoping for. The newly reintroduced button will reportedly sit
on the traditional bottom left corner, and will look near-identical to the
existing Windows flag used in the Charm bar, but clicking on it will simply
bring up the tile-based Start screen rather than the old Start menu.
There are already
several quick ways to get back to the Start screen from the desktop. Users can
just press the Windows key on their keyboard, or hover their mouse over the
lower left corner of the screen until a Start screen thumbnail shows, and then
click. So while there’s nothing new here functionality-wise, Microsoft
apparently hopes to appease at least some of the criticism by adding a shortcut
users might be more familiarized with.
To be fair, you can
already do everything the Start menu allowed with the redesigned Start screen
-- searching, opening recent files, quickly launching apps, jumping to the
control panel and so on. But those who have been criticizing the change have an
issue with having to jump back and forth between Modern UI and the desktop to
do these things.
Another noteworthy
change expected to arrive with the upcoming “Blue” update is the addition of
a boot to desktop option. So far only hints of this have
appeared on internal builds, and there’s currently no toggle to enable it
through the operating system’s UI, but Microsoft is apparently working on how
to add this feature -- News sources confirms this feature might be limited to Pro and
Enterprise Windows 8 SKUs only.
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