>it appears when you start typing.

This is a shockingly common problem for people. I can tell they feel uncomfortable just typing without a place "where" the typing will go. Many people will click the magnifying glass and then again place the cursor into the search field. Same with google, they will click the search field, then the cursor moves to the address bar, they feel surprise, and then place the cursor in the address bar a second time.

In many applications (JIRA, Vim) typing without being in a text input field can cause all kinds of trouble. Heck, in browsers if you type 'backspace' you can end up going back and page and blowing away all of your precious form input. Not to mention the very real possibility that their work, the text they've typed, will be dropped on the floor. We have been trained by these dangers to avoid typing without a text prompt.

This is why Google switched the 'Back' function to Alt+Left Arrow in Chrome. You could be trying to delete something out of a web form and accidentally leave the page.

I resisted this change (in Firefox) because I thought it was horribly unintuitive. Oh, how backwards I had gotten it.

Alt+Left arrow makes _loads_ more sense than "Backspace, but conditionally, only when not engaged in a text entry field."

The main problem I run into with it is webcomics bind left/right to page navigation, and aren't smart enough to not do it when alt is held.

I absolutely hate the new way! Used to be so much better by just clicking Backspace. Can I have it back,please?

You can do that in Firefox.

That's when I switched to Firefox. I've been using the backspace key to go to the previous page or directory since the mid-90's and I never accidently left a page when trying to delete stuff.

good point

Not to mention all the times when the index has borked its self and search just returns results from Bing instead.

It's also really annoying on a tablet. I can't get an onscreen keyboard without some sort of target.

I think in the current iteration of Windows, you're supposed to get a permanently visible keyboard icon in a taskbar when in tablet mode, clicking which will summon the on-screen keyboard. At least that's how it worked on the two Windows 2-in-1s I worked on over the last year.

Doesnt the magnifying glass next to start work?

I will admit still being baffled why Google wants us to type searches into the address bar. When I first saw that behavior, I thought "but what if it's a valid URL?". Sure enough, I've made that mistake several times.

I'm sure it's a mess for less tech savvy people trying to do searches on companies that have .com or .net suffixes on their names.

Because they want you to use google as your portal to the internet.

I change my Firefox copies to have separate boxes, and no search from url bar. I don’t recall offhand as it’s muscle memory, and I’m on a phone, but I think it’s ctrl-k for location and ctrl-l for search.

I know a computer programmer, well former web developer, who still tries to dabble in programming who "clicks the magnifying glass" to search the start menu. Same with the chrome search bar on a new tab.

He also refuses to learn shortcut keys because he never learned to touch type, and refuses to type even 1 character more than he has to, so he has a lot of common things he would type stored on a virtual clipboard that he recalls with ctrl+`, and will paste from that to avoid typing.

That's a terrible idea. Once people have been trained to do that, attackers can probably get them to type their password somewhere they shouldn't.

I would not at all be surprised if the Cortana-powered (or whatever it is) start menu search failed to find Notepad if you started typing. I don't know how they can screw something like that up so badly, but it's almost unusuable without installing Classic Shell to override the normal behavior.

I can't count the number of times I've hit the Windows key, quickly typed in "Windows Update", hit enter, and was presented with a web search result for "Windows Update".

I'd wonder what MS is smoking, but I think I know. Windows is such a low priority to them these days that they put all their most inexperienced or terrible coders to work on it. That's why it's full of webdev-flavor awfulness.

This is what it looks like right now (notice the "Type here to search", can't get much more clear or explicit):

https://imgur.com/9pxTjgv

When I start typing N-O-T, this is what it does:

https://imgur.com/lxeaTSe

I have no complaints.

Visual cues matter. Lots of people will never realize that typing is an option if they don't see a big visual indicator that says "you can type here."

There's a huge searchbox in the taskbar by default that says "type here to search". You can click there and type "notepad" as well.

But a user wants to search the Start menu, not the taskbar (and who knows what else, Cortana). That's not an obvious way to communicate equivalence.

Step 1. In the interest of "simplicity" and hiding details from users, make more and more functionality only available through the search box.

Step 2. Move the search box to an annoying position on the task bar.

Step 3. Give users the ability to hide the search box.

If you click the windows key on the keyboard or the task bar, until you start typing, the search field is hidden.

It used to be the case in older versions of Windows 10 that typing in Start would just sometimes mysteriously not do a search... that seems to have been fixed for a while now.

It's still broken on my machine. Half the time typing doesn't do anything in the start menu, and I have to close and re-open it for the search to work.

> Go to Start menu

You should probably say to go to click on the windows icon. Somebody new to Windows would have no idea that used to be labelled "Start".

On my work desktop, this fails semi-regularly. Sometimes pressing the Windows key and then typing just opens the menu and then nothing happens.

FWIW, I've been using Keypirnha [0], and find it way faster than the start menu and not as ancient as Launchy.

[0] http://keypirinha.com/