Windows11 Users will no doubt be pleased to see Microsoft scrapping an idea introduced in testing late last year, which was recommended websites showing up in the Start menu (and a second unpopular change just got the elbow too).
In the latest preview release of Windows 11, these changes have been abandoned, build 25272, which has just rolled out to the dev channel (early testing).
the start menu Feature that has been deprecated first appeared in November 2022 in Preview Build 25247 and enabled general site recommendation at the bottom of the menu pane.
When Ghacks (opens in new tab) spotted in the blog entry (opens in new tab) Regarding the changes for the latest Windows 11 preview, Microsoft also noted that a proposed action to search copied text in the Edge browser was also deprecated. This meant that if you’ve selected text, for example to copy it into a document, an inline panel will appear where you can click and search that selected text in Edge.
Microsoft said: “Thanks to all the Insiders who gave us feedback on both of these experiences. As a reminder, features and experiences we try in the Dev Channel may be removed and never released outside of the Dev Channel as we develop new ideas and receive feedback from Insiders.”
Analysis: retreating from the edge
Build 25272 also applied a whole host of fixes, including resolving an issue where the search box in the taskbar was corrupted by visual glitches, and fixing a whole bunch of bugs with the task manager.
There’s definitely some useful stuff going on here, even if there aren’t any new feature launches. And it’s good to see the back side of the two functionalities mentioned, the first of which presented fairly unnecessary clutter in the Start menu and raised concerns that Microsoft is pushing third-party sites – and its own, of course edge browsers in both cases.
While Microsoft carefully advised when it rolled out the recommended website feature last year that it could be turned off for those who didn’t want it, clearly user feedback has been loud and clear even when they tried to turn this into the Bringing the Start Menu – The Good The news is that the company is listening to that feedback.
Nevertheless, the constant attempts to push the edge browsers in Windows become quite annoying, I have to say.
