Add setting to allow user to change default launch behavior

[Svish]

I loved the old Calculator because it was so quick to just Win, "calc", Enter, and do some quick math.

But now, this process is often super slow because the new Calculator app opens up with the last random mode I was in. Could be Currency, could be Length, doesn't matter. I love that the modes are there, but what I most often want when I open calculator is to do some quick math. It's very rare, if ever at all, that I actually want to do a conversion, and even more rare that I want to do the same exact conversion type that I did last time.

It's especially annoying because switching back to Standard mode is so slow.

0. Launch "Calculator"
1. Leave my keyboard
2. Find my mouse
3. Click the hamburger button
4. Scroll up to find Standard
5. Click on it
6. Move hand back to keyboard
7. Finally, Actually do the calculation

Steps 1-6 are super annoying. Please make Standard the default mode. Or at least default to the most recently used normal calculator (i.e. Standard or Scientific).

[MicrosoftIssueBot]

This is your friendly Microsoft Issue Bot. I've seen this issue come in and have gone to tell a human about it.

[HowardWolosky]

@Svish, just as an additional data point, steps 1-6 could be skipped entirely by typing ALT1. There are keyboard shortcuts for all of the modes and you can see them by holding down the ALT key.

If we were to pursue this idea, I think it should probably be a setting, similar to how it is with browsers (start where you left off vs with a single new tab).

[Svish]

What?! There are shortcuts? Maybe that fact should be made more discoverable somehow too. 😳

But yeah, I wouldn't mind it being configurable.

Would be interesting to see some usage statistics though, what people actually do right after they launch the app. Do they switch mode immediately, and if so, which mode do they switch to? And if not, which mode did the app start with?

[HowardWolosky]

What?! There are shortcuts? Maybe that fact should be made more discoverable somehow too. 😳

See #157 and #378

[MovGP0]

Opening the calculator in the most recent mode is the proper behaviour and should not be changed.

As a software developer I always use scientific mode (notice the irony in that 😅) and want to keep it that way, when I reopen the calculator.

[Svish]

Opening the calculator in the most recent mode is the proper behaviour and should not be changed.

As a software developer I always use scientific mode (notice the irony in that 😅) and want to keep it that way, when I reopen the calculator.

Exactly. So don't you find it a bit annoying that it doesn't always start in your preferred scientific mode, but instead the most recent mode, which could be the scientific mode, but could also be one of several other random modes you might have used?

[MovGP0]

it always starts in scientific mode. it works fine.

[phuclv90]

There has always been shortcuts in calculator. It's just that common operators (+-*/) are well-known, the rest have no indicators so people are often not aware of them

• http://www.shortcutmania.com/Windows-7-Calculator-Keyboard-Shortcuts-printable-cheatsheet.htm
• https://defkey.com/windows-calculator-shortcuts

[grochocki]

#157 should help improve shortcut documentation.

[ghost]

We reviewed the pitch and would love to explore this idea further! The pitch is a great start, but there are still some open questions. I am moving this issue into planning to iron out some of those details and I created calculator-specs/settingLaunchDefault to track progress. A human will follow up with some feedback on your pitch shortly. Keep in mind that not all ideas that make it into the planning phase are guaranteed to make it to release. For more information on next steps, check out our spec workflow.

[grochocki]

We think that updating the behavior to always open in Standard is too aggressive and that opening to the last used "standard" calculator mode could possibly lead to confusion, since the behavior would be inconsistent (or at least could be perceived as such).

That being said, it is reasonable to have this exposed as a setting, with the default option "most recently used" (today's behavior). This feature is dependent on #596.

[Chips1234]

I'm working on this and #596.

[grochocki]

@Chips1234, once #596 is merged in, we can explore adding a setting to switch default launch behavior. The spec for this one should be pretty straight-forward if we follow the same pattern for the "App theme" setting introduced in #596. We'll want to keep the default consistent with behavior today (i.e., "most recently used"), but we can expose the other Calculator modes as other defaults (i.e., so Calculator always opens in "Scientific" mode, for example).

How might we add this setting? A combo box feels like a good candidate here. For example, something like this:

Do you think that language is clear enough for all users to understand what it does? Should we include Date Calculator and every converter mode?

[Chips1234]

I've made a spec: microsoft/calculator-specs#30. Please take a look and share with me your suggestions (if any)

[Chips1234]

Would anyone please be able to check my spec? @grochocki, perhaps?