I’m on the computer pretty much all day and I consider myself a power user; I need my system to behave the way I expect to maintain productivity and sanity. Every so often something comes along that throws a wrench in that smooth operation and makes me want to flip off my monitor. Lately that wrench has been programs that decide to reinvent the wheel and change the order of the options of the taskbar right click menu. What am I talking about? Right click a program in your taskbar and look at the order, close is the bottom option right? Well let’s try another scenario, hit F1 to bring up the Microsoft’s Unhelpful Help and right-click that. You’ll probably see the same atrocity that I see below:
SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HELL! Thankfully only a handful of programs were developed by morons who thought this modification to the standard Windows experience was a good idea. One principle I follow when I do user interface design is don’t make the user think. With this right-click scenario I instinctly click the first option to close. When it doesn’t close the program I have to stop what I’m doing and figure out why my computer decided to do something different than I intended. Sorry for the rant, but these flaws are the kind of things I try to avoid in my own applications and have become more aware of.
I’m a sporadic computer user compared to you, but I still am super used to CLOSE COMING LAST on a menu. That’s just what I expect to be at the bottom when I close up icanhascheezburger.
yah, i’m all about not letting things go into my shell doober.
haha, on an unrelated note, at about 11:45 this morning i clicked on the xkcd link to the right. it is now 5:31 in the pm and i just realized i have been scrolling through cartoons all day, minus the short lunch break i took this afternoon. many of them were over my head…but many of them made me laugh a whole lot. so…thanks?
xkcd and User Friendly are pretty geeky. xkcd is a little more accessible, but inappropriate at times. I like this one from a ways back, Ninja Turtles.
haha yes, that one was good. i got all the way to #148 before i realized how much of my day i had wasted. (is wasted the right word for it? i enjoyed my time spent at xkcd…)
Linux (Ubuntu) is the way to go, especially for “Power Users”!
Windows will be windoze, call it the beginning of the end!
S.K