Citing multiple sources, Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft has quietly canceled plans to add Sets to Windows 10.
As you may recall, Microsoft announced Sets in late 2017, and originally planned to release this feature—which would have added a tabs-based shell around application windows—as part of a 2018 version of Windows 10. But after briefly testing Sets, Microsoft pulled it from pre-release Windows 10 builds and hasn’t since mentioned it in any official capacity. We know that it will not be included in Windows 10 version 1903, which was recently completed, because it was never tested as part of that release.
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But this past week, Sets fans were given a bit of hope when a Microsoft senior program manager said on Twitter that “adding tabs is high on [Microsoft’s] to-do list” despite Sets not being included in Windows 10 version 1903. I speculated at the time that the delay had to do with Microsoft’s transitioning of its Edge web browser to the Google Chromium code base: Sets was based on the tabs functionality in classic Edge, and since Microsoft is dropping that product, it would need to start over.
That bit of speculation has been confirmed: Foley’s sources say that the Edge transition to Chromium “helped finalize the decision to [cancel] Sets.” It just would have been too time-consuming to reimplement the feature using Chromium.
As to whether Sets—or something like Sets—will ever come to Windows 10, Foley is less positive.
“Windows 10’s ‘Sets’ feature is gone and not expected to return,” she writes. As bad, “the feature generally wasn’t well received or understood” anyway, indicating that a system-wide Sets replacement is unlikely.
In the good news department, Sets-like tabbed user interfaces do appear to be coming to future versions of File Explorer, Windows 10’s file management app, and to the Windows 10 console applications. That should satisfy the most common needs for Sets-like functionality, and avoid the issues that mainstream users might have had with tabs popping up all over Windows.
RIP, Sets. Like so many Microsoft ideas, it seemed like you had a future. And then you didn’t.
skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#422609">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>It depends on how you look at it. Certain dll's that were part of the IE install were necessary for some applications (I know because we used them). The government's demo of "removing" IE was complete BS. One could argue that perhaps those dlls should have been delivered separately, but Gates claim was essentially true. </p>
skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#422760">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>Pretty similar to how Unix and Linux have networking functionality embedded in X Windows although a disconnected computer has no need for it. Anything is possible, but design decisions are made under the conditions and the environment that they are developed under and if the software persists those basic design decisions persist. </p>
skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#422815">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>Sure, and the C standard library is an optional component of C, but in both cases they are always included in typical use. </p><p><br></p><p>But X's main purpose isn't as a client-server, that's just an implementation choice. Better to have built the windowing system independently and then provide a client-server capability it could optionally use. It was designed the way it was because networked terminals were the most common way to run Unix at the time. Since there was little or no need for local use, it was convenient to couple both functionalities into one, although separating them would still have been a better design.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#422867">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>Perhaps in ANSI C the standard library is required, but originally as described in the first edition of "The C Programming Language" it was optional and not part of C. That allowed C to be used with very limited resources if the functionality didn't require library functions. This was particularly true for embedded systems where in many cases, text, sorting and other functions were never needed.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
bharris
<blockquote><a href="#422560"><em>In reply to VasiS:</em></a><em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Virtual desktops could be made way more useful if you could save what files are open in what app on what virtual desktop and have everything go back to that just by clicking on a file. That seems to be a less complicated way of doing what sets would have done since it is an improvement to an existing and tested feature</em></blockquote><p><br></p>
Stooks
<blockquote><em><a href="#422568">In reply to bbold:</a></em></blockquote><p>How was this a consumer feature?</p><p><br></p><p>This never saw the light of day for 99.999% of users. For those that did see it, it was very brief glimmer. </p><p><br></p><p>Basically a nothing burger that never launched and then was quietly canceled. Much to do about nothing. </p>
skane2600
<p>I'm not sure how useful Sets would have been, but I don't see why it's implementation should be dependent on Edge. I would hope that Edge is treated as just another program and that general Windows functionality isn't coupled with it.</p>
dontbe evil
<p>Will paul and mary jo will be once again wrong? will see next year</p>