Perhaps one of the strangest idioms of the Windows platform is the desktop society, the digital workplace that users see all the time, with explorer.exe, the program above over File Explorer and file management. Even if you think the desktop area is related to the user’s Desktop folder, other parts of that experience, like the Taskbar, just don’t make sense. After decades, it seems that Microsoft is finally changing that and removing Windows Taskbar from Explorer.exe.
The connection between the desktop and the file manager may have made sense in the earliest days of Windows when the desktop was actually just a special case for a folder displayed in a certain way. Today, that connection is hardly intuitive but has unfortunate side effects on end users. Heavy file and resource intensive operations, such as copying large or sized files, can render a Windows taskbar unresponsive. Worse, hitting the explorer.exe process also hits the desktop and vice versa.
According to a tweet from the Windows programmer, Microsoft has started removing at least the taskbar from the file management program. The Taskbar resides in a different software component, aptly named Taskbar.dll, which makes it easier to change various applications at runtime without the need to restart Windows or the desktop. It should also make the assignments stronger and will not bring down the entire desk in case one or the other accident happens.
However, there may be an even greater reason for the change. Separating the Taskbar from Explorer.exe allows Microsoft to quickly fly over the Taskbar without affecting the rest of the system. One of the biggest examples of that is the new Windows 10X view for the Start Toolbar and menu and this paves the way to making the development process easier.
Of course, users will not see and feel any change when the split occurs in a future version of Windows. THey may only notice when, if not, something goes wrong and we are surprised to see the Windows taskbar still in use despite a crash.