Believe it or not, there are some components of the Windows 10 user interface that don't meet expectations and no matter how rugged your hardware is. One such example is the list of shortcuts in Windows 10 that caught the eye of Google Chrome for Windows developer Bruce Dawson.
Dawson contacted Microsoft via WindowsDev GitHub repository and complained about how long it took Windows 10 to display a jump list after right-clicking an app icon in the taskbar. What's interesting is that Dawson complained about the same thing last year as well.
"I often right-click items on the taskbar to view their properties or close them. Last year I reported about a 500ms delay due to massively redundant ReadFile calls. This has been corrected. However, further analysis shows that there is still a 200-250ms delay between when the mouse button is released and the menu appears, "Dawson wrote on GitHub.
Microsoft has since moved its arms to fix it, but according to Dawson, the jumplist response time has only been reduced to 250ms from around 500ms last year. While this may not seem like much on human timescales, the lag is significant considering the speed of modern software and is "beyond ideal human interaction times and is a constant frustration." .
To give you a benchmark, Dawson has a Windows 10 PC that packs an Intel Core i7-7700HQ with 32GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. So this should be a rare case where the hardware is at fault for the jumplist's slow performance.
The developer said the menu should open "visually instantly" after the user clicks and suggested that the ideal response time should be less than 50ms or 100ms in a row.
Rich Turner, Senior Microsoft Program Manager responded to the reported issue. "Reopen this problem as the product team investigates. I will share the outcome of their findings once they solidify, "he said. Previously, it had been marked as closed by a Microsoft engineer who suggested Dawson post it on the comments hub.
It remains to be seen what improvement Microsoft can make in the coming days.