Stop creating desktop and start menu shortcuts

[oliversalzburg]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. You are creating desktop shortcuts for your application. I discussed this with your support team already, so I'm just quoting my original email here:

The reasons for not messing with the user's desktop are outlined well at:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/uxguide/winenv-desktop#guidelines

I'm quoting some relevant parts here:

• If your users are very likely to use your program frequently, provide an option during setup to put a program shortcut on the desktop. Most programs won't be used frequently enough to warrant offering this option.

• Present the option unselected by default. Requiring users to select the option is important because once undesired icons are on the desktop, many users are reluctant to remove them. This can lead to unnecessary desktop clutter.

You are offering to start Postman right after installation. That already fulfills your goal to get users started right away. Littering their desktop, does not. In fact, it might even leave a bad first impression and cluttering the desktop will not lead to a faster starting experience overall.

The Start menu is already a very convenient way to start applications (as the name implies). It offers search capabilities and even highlights recently installed applications. I believe that an API developer should be perfectly capable to find Postman in the Start menu.

The desktop is a user's personal space, where many users like to personalize. By automatically placing shortcuts on it and maybe even re-creating them when installing updates, can be very frustrating and annoying.

It also seems like had fixed this in the past already: https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/2942

Describe the solution you'd like Don't create desktop shortcuts for your application.

Describe alternatives you've considered I considered to stop using the software.

Additional context

[lgmorand]

@jviotti how is it possible that's this bug is still present after 4 years ? Why don't you let us choose whenever we want shortcut on the desktop or not ? That's so boring that I'm thinking on removing it for an alternative (after 10 years of use), just because of that

[oliversalzburg]

Queue the "everybody is doing it, so why bother investing time into changing it?" response. 😂

[jviotti]

@imranmunir312 The problem is more tricky than it seems. We, as most other Electron apps out there (like Slack, etc), rely on https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows for providing auto-updatable Windows installers.

Sadly, Squirrel is quite limiting in terms of configuration, pushing for a "sane default" that doesn't let users opt-out from certain things like creating shortcuts. On top of that, Squirrel.Windows is not being actively maintained anymore (last release 3 years ago) and not accepting PRs, etc.

We are slowly moving to another installer technology, but even than has been tricky given auto-updates and how Squirrel is ingrained in the Electron world. We'll get there though!

[lgmorand]

thank you so much for the explanation <3

[dajomo]

In my current workplace, the enterprise has made the desktop read-only. This means that Postman is no longer installable due to the mandatory desktop shortcut creation failing.

[lgmorand]

@jviotti looks like quite easy to implement, to NOT create the shortcut: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42970309/squirrel-windows-create-multi-shortcut-on-desktop