{"id":43083,"date":"2003-07-22T16:36:00","date_gmt":"2003-07-22T16:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2003\/07\/22\/why-do-you-have-to-click-the-start-button-to-shut-down\/"},"modified":"2003-07-22T16:36:00","modified_gmt":"2003-07-22T16:36:00","slug":"why-do-you-have-to-click-the-start-button-to-shut-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20030722-00\/?p=43083","title":{"rendered":"Why do you have to click the Start button to shut down?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Short answer: The same reason you turn the ignition key to shut off your car. <\/p>\n

Long answer: Back in the early days, the taskbar didn’t have a Start button. (In a future history column, you’ll learn that back in the early days, the taskbar wasn’t called the taskbar.) <\/p>\n

Instead of the Start button, there were three buttons in the lower left corner. One was the “System” button (icon: the Windows flag), one was the “Find” button (icon: an eyeball), and the third was the “Help” button (icon: a question mark). “Find” and “Help” are self-explanatory. The “System” button gave you this menu: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
 Run…<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
 Task List…<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n
\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
 Arrange Desktop Icons  <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
 Arrange Windows<\/td>\n 4<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n
\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
 Shutdown Windows<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

(“Arrange Windows” gave you options like “Cascade”, “Tile Horizontally”, that sort of thing.) <\/p>\n

Of course, over time, the “Find” and “Help” buttons eventually joined the “System” button menu and the System button menu itself gradually turned into the Windows 95 Start menu. <\/p>\n

But one thing kept getting kicked up by usability tests: People booted up the computer and just sat there, unsure what to do next. <\/p>\n

That’s when we decided to label the System button “Start”. <\/p>\n

It says, “You dummy. Click here.” And it sent our usability numbers through the roof, because all of a sudden, people knew what to click when they wanted to do something. <\/p>\n

So why is “Shut down” on the Start menu? <\/p>\n

When we asked people to shut down their computers, they clicked the Start button. <\/p>\n

Because, after all, when you want to shut down, you have to start somewhere. <\/p>\n

(Besides, if we also had a “Shut down” button next to the Start button, everybody would be demanding that we get rid of it to save valuable screen real estate.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Short answer: The same reason you turn the ignition key to shut off your car. Long answer: Back in the early days, the taskbar didn’t have a Start button. (In a future history column, you’ll learn that back in the early days, the taskbar wasn’t called the taskbar.) Instead of the Start button, there were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-43083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Short answer: The same reason you turn the ignition key to shut off your car. Long answer: Back in the early days, the taskbar didn’t have a Start button. (In a future history column, you’ll learn that back in the early days, the taskbar wasn’t called the taskbar.) Instead of the Start button, there were […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}