When Windows operating systems first came into our hands, we all tinkered with every aspect of it, as far as we can tell. Some of us went and turned on their music and spent hours watching the hypnotic videos of the media player. Some of us have also spent hours following the paths of the pipes in the screen saver.
In this way, each new operating system has left us with different features to tamper with. One of these features was the desktop tools that came out with Windows Vista and reached the greatest popularity in Windows 7. So why couldn’t we see them in later operating systems?
Microsoft made an official statement for this issue.
In the statement in question, the company stated that the support of the vehicle gallery was terminated and this was done due to security issues. At the end of the statement, he added that “attackers can both manage your computer through tools” and “change the behavior of tools”.
Also, these tools were based on ActiveX. ActiveX was Microsoft’s object-oriented programming tool, which at the time encompassed small programs that worked with the Internet. No need to confuse, of course. You just need to know that the tools in question work on ActiveX.
So was ActiveX safe?
Microsoft was showing a certificate for ActiveX-based applications that indicated whether they were trusted or not. However, the problems that occurred with the installation of the uncertified application were left to the user’s responsibility. It is not difficult to guess that this does not find much response on the end user side.
According to Mark Phaedrus, a software developer at Microsoft, the threatening part was that the vast majority of tools depended on ActiveX. For this reason, it was possible to access ActiveX controls through the tools (or at least there were vulnerabilities that made this possible). ‘ActiveX attacks’ started to become popular due to the vulnerabilities of ActiveX.
There was only one way left, both to eliminate this problem and to maintain the existence of the vehicles.
Because, according to Phædrus, it was almost impossible to close the loopholes of the system. With that in mind, it was necessary to re-develop the tools in a more reliable way without being ActiveX-based to fix the problem. So was it worth it?
According to Phædrus, the answer is no, and for two reasons.
Let’s start with the simplest. It would be like a hard pill to swallow, but ‘these tools were hardly functional’. You didn’t need a clock that you placed on the right, because you only had to look at the bottom right to find out the time. The same was true for the calendar.
Apart from these, although there were a few functional tools (such as performance monitoring), they were also complained about using too much system resources.
And here’s the other reason: Microsoft was already spending all the resources on Windows 8.
In Windows 8, we had a start screen and a desktop screen. And Microsoft was trying to steer developers towards the Universal Windows Platform, which became popular with Windows 10. We’ve seen the first steps of this on the metro-style start screen of Windows 8 and on Windows Phone models. But the return was not so good.
However, in this process, applications were generally tried to be transferred to the new operating system. However, these tools, which are normally placed on the free right part of the desktop, would not be in the focus. Because with Windows 8, Microsoft started to focus on mobile. In addition, a feature that allows applications to occupy a part of the screen was almost in a quality to close the gap of the tools.
The use of split-screen in current operating systems was a little more prominent in Windows 8.
Continuing a feature that was problematic in terms of security, would require a lot of work to adapt to the new operating system, and that it does not already have many fans, was also not worth much, according to Phaedrus.
Thus, we can say that we have said goodbye to those tools that we keep on the desktop even if we do not use them, because of Microsoft’s ideals. Universal Windows Platform was not very successful, but the company should still be congratulated for such a bold breakthrough.
- Sources: Mark Phædrus, Microsoft
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