gf-tech.com

Don't clutter my desktop with shortcuts!

On my computer, I control my desktop, and I absolutely hate shortcuts to programs on it. I put special files that I access often, and I use it as a temporary space. Sometimes I will put a shortcut to certain folders, but other than that, I like a clean desktop.

I get very frustrated by software that doesn't give me the option of disabling the shortcut on the desktop. Even worse is an upgrade to something that restores a shortcut that I previously deleted.

What puts a smile on my face is when an installer asks me if I want a shortcut on the desktop, and the default choice is no.

I've been playing with browsers at work recently. I installed IE 7 on my backup machine, and on my main machine I installed Firefox 2 alongside Firefox 1.5 in a setup that allows them to run side by side.

IE 7 first thoughts were bleh. There isn't anything there to make me switch back. To me the UI isn't better than Firefox, and it isn't more useable. It really isn't all that special. Nothing jumped out at me that was a key feature.

Read the IE7 feature set here. All of their "Makes every day tasks easier" are things that Firefox has been doing for a while. Enahnced security with IE7? I don't feel it. Improved platform? I would agree with that, but it still feels like a catch up to me.

Now with Firefox 2 I found something to get excited about within 10 minutes of using it. Read their release notes here. Phishing protection, session management builtin, better handling of web feeds, inline spell checking (that is awesome), and more.

I don't forsee using a browser to manage my web feeds any time soon, but with Firefox 2 I can set which application I want it to use to handle my feeds. I changed the setting to RSS Bandit, and now when I encounter a new site, and Firefox informs me that it has a feed, I click the icon, and RSS Bandit pops up with the add feed already in progress. If there are multiple feeds on the site, there is a drop down to choose the feed I want. Very, very handy. I like it.

The inline spell checking is very handy. It works like a spell checker should, and I can modify the dictionary to suit my needs.

Even more astounding, almost all of my Firefox 1.5 extensions worked with Firefox 2. The ones that didn't, were on my nice-to-have list, so I can live without them for a while.

Verdict: I will keep Firefox 2, and still won't use IE very much.

Software useability is a big topic.  I tend to like software that works easily out of the box, or right after installation.  I shouldn't need to tweak something too much to make it work for me.  This is a sign that the solution is not right.

Websites should abide by useability considerations as well.

Last weekend I was looking for the local Michaels store's hours.  Easy enough to do.  Got to Michaels.com, click on Store Locater and you will end up at the above screen.

I entered my city and province, then clicked search. This generated the error seen below.

At first I was confused, but then saw the country selector at the bottom. I re-entered Victoria, BC, and chose Canada. The results then showed what I was looking for.

Thinking about this 3 things pop to mind.

1) Why do I need to enter the country? I told the site it was the province of BC. That alone should be enough to indicate the country.

2) The error message says nothing about the country, and I had assumed (from its placement) that the country selector was for the zip code.

Side note: you can easily guess the country if the user had only entered a zip code too. Canadians use postal codes which are a combination of letters and numbers. The US uses zipcode which are strictly numbers.

3) Why did it clear out my entered data? A likely course of action would be to try submitting again. The site could easily keep my data and present that back to me.

How would I fix this? First, after an error, the user entered data would be re-populated with what was submitted. I would also include a clear button to allow the user to start from scratch. Next, I would ditch the country selector since it is not necessary. The zip code field would be renamed zip/postal and its validation would be intelligent enough to decide which country the user chose. Finally the country can also be determined by the State/Province drop down. To me that is more useable.

This past weekend my mom bought a new Logitech Harmony universal remote. It is a pretty fancy unit. Internet programmable, USB upload, controls pretty much every electronic device in your house.

Too bad Logitech totally screwed it up. Way too comlicated to set up. Even for me. I never have problems configuring and customizing software, yet this thing took me over two and a half hours to get completed. The first hour was just getting the software installed. Holy crap.

The first step was to plug in the remote to the computer and have it instal some USB related crap. Then I popped in the install disc and ran the the setup and got the software install going. Next thing I know the remote needed its firmware upgraded. OK. Fine. Go, do it. The firmware upgrade completed, the software install finished, and it was time to configure the remote.

Opening the software it started up and had me create an account on their website. It asked for some irrelevant data like where I heard of them and where I purchased the remote. It was mandatory. Why is it necessary to use the remote control to tell Logitech where it was purchased? I just filled in some randam crap that is useless to them.

When I eventually got to run the software, it checked for a newer version, and found one. It downloaded version 5, but it required that the previous version be uninstalled first. Thankfully the software automatically started the uninstall process. The resulting wizard had 3 options. Install, repair, or uninstall. Of course repair was chosen. Being unsure, I changed the selection to uninstall figuring I could always start over if that messed something up.

Apparently that was the right decision. Version 5 was then installed.

Finally I am ready to start configuring the remote.

I entered all the devices, manufacturers and model numbers, then confirmed each of the related settings (ie watching tv means turn off all other device, set the tv input to be the tuner). I had to confirm the setting for watch tv, watch a dvd, watch a recording, listen to cd, and listen to the radio. Upload the setting to the remote, and away you go.

Except that the watch dvd didn't work properly. I had to spend an hour figuring out that the remote was somehow flipping the tv to the auxilary input, then back to the tuner when going to watch a dvd. A whole hour to figure out how to make the remote use a different command that the tv understands. 2.5 hours of my time spent configuring a damn remote control. To top it off, version 5 of the software was crap. Slow as molasses, counter intuitive, not what I would call user friendly. Lots of time was spent waitng for the program to respond. Version 5 was an ActiveX control inside a branded internet explorer. It was made to look like a regular app, but didn't act like it. Click on next, wait for the refresh. Choose option, click on next, wait for the refresh. Not what you were looking for? Too bad, hit back, wait for the refresh. Too much time waiting for the app to refresh.

Way, way too complicated. Why couldn't the boxed remote and the boxed software just work together. Why did they have to be upgraded right away? Obviously they were released at the same time, so it would make sense that they should work.

Anyway, in the end I figured it out, but I just had to rant about the stupidity of the whole thing. There is no way my mom could have figured that out for herself (she even said so). If she had attempted it, she would have ended up returning it, and most likely would have thought twice about any other Logitech products. A simple concept turned ugly.