On Fri, 6 Jul 2007 00:32:02 -0700, Marcc
Thanks cquirke for your replay... Hmmm there are times I really HATE web
browser email forms! Looks like my reply to you got lost so I will have to
retype it..
Tell be about it... try creating content on a Wiki that logs you out
if "inactive" for 5 minutes, so that your edits are rejected and lost.
Doesn't always happen; only when you've spent > 5 minitues, and
therefore have more effort to waste.
The key here is that when you edit via IE, you are editing a local
file as managed internally by IE. Unlike Word, IE has no
auto-save/recover facility for such material.
Because your editing is done locally in IE, no keystrokes go to the
site you assumed you were editing on.
When no keystrokes arrive in X minutes, the site reasonably assumes
you closed the page without logging out (a significant and common
security risk) and kicks you off.
IMHO, if you ask me, it seems as if Microsoft has wandered off the edge of
planet Reality on this one and gone down the rabbit hole.
No, they just listen to the loudest voices from those who buy the most
expensive stuff (server OSs etc.) and who speakl their language - the
professional IT system admins from the corporate world.
There may be more of us in consumerland, but there are many reasons MS
may not give us the attention we deserve:
- there's no "voice" that represents us
- what "voices" they are, don't speak the same (tech) language
- we don't spend enough on MS products, comparitively speaking
- our market is mainly fed via OEM, so MS talks to OEMs instead
- no competitive threat (Linux is best suited to server/back-end)
- we don't really matter, i.e. don't create "important" data etc.
- all we need is "ease of use"
So what we get is glossed-over hand-me-downs, i.e. products developed
for the corporate world with some features ripped out and bigger dummy
icons to be "easier to use".
The realities are:
- most consumers are buying replacement, not first, PCs
- our needs are fundamentally different to corporate slaves
I use the word "slave" in the sense of "wage slave". Corporates have
the right to overrule user's control of the PC, but we as "home
consumers" are supposed to be free. We aren't treated as free,
though; all that happens is there's no-one holding the reins that are
welded into the products we use, so they are left up for grabs.
The whole idea of assigning rights according to "who" logged on, is
totally misplaced in our world. Instead, we need limitation of rights
assigned at the level of which program we are using.
There's a slow sense of this clue in the Vista age, what with UAC that
allows users to override what alleged "administrators" are trying to
automate, and IE7's Protected Mode.
Sure, it's ugly, but then again; how elegant were the first horseless
carriages, compared to modern cars? Should we have stayed with horses
forever, even when they don't "work" for city commutes?
Vista Wonderland you are telling me that someone on the Microsoft
design team has come up with this marvelous notion of having folders/short
cuts/"junction points" that don't really connect to anything except for
backwards compatibility sake???
The MS design team's assumptions would be:
- if you don't change default settings, you won't see them
- if you do change default settings, you'll understand what you see
The above is not unreasonable if you think that the defaults are OK.
But once you realise the defaults also limit your ability to assess
risk, and so increase the opportunity for malware to spoof you...
http://cquirke.blogspot.com/2006/10/rungbua-exploits-bad-design.html
....then you're more likely to turn on the ability to see things like
junctions, even though you didn't really want to see them and don't
have the (new) skills needed to understand what you see.
Nor do they inform the user in plain language that clicking on them
won't get you anywhere???
You aren't supposed to see them. If you do see them, there's an arrow
on the icon that differs from the usual "shortcut" arrow. Once you
understand what a junction is, you will know what to expect the next
time you see those sort of arrows
Nor why the paradigm we have grown so accustom to has changed???
Frankly, MS's approach to user data has sucked ever since they started
dabbling with it (when MS Office first imposed the "system object that
cannot be changed" My Documents on us in Win9x or earlier.
It sucks slightly less as time goes by, but they are still playing in
a field they should either stay out of, or think through properly AND
provide us with an easier UI to manage properly.
In that sense, the changes in Vista...
- bulky My Pictures/Videos/Music no longer nested in MyDocs
- moving malware-risk downloads out of the MyDocs "data" set
- shallower paths to these data locations
....are worthwhile. What we still need:
- ability to pre-set shell folder paths for new-account prototype
- better UI to relocate these objects
- less bugginess when these objects are relocated
- ability to create arbitrary new shell folder types and behaviors
- safer defaults for hi-risk locations
There's no risk awareness at all, though at least we have IE dumping
downloads in Downloads instead of Documents. We still have IM clients
dumping unsolicited incoming files in Documents, and email attachments
are still hidden in message stores (though in a seprarate file per
message); I'm still waiting for MS to catch up with what I've been
doing since 1995. As others will have other ideas on where things
should go, we really need a more open, flexible system.
Nor why no magical protection/permissions/privilege incantation is
going to work anymore! !!???
You're still missing it; junctions are not inaccessible because they
"don't allow you" to access them, they simply are not capable of doing
what you are trying to do with them.
The whole purpose of GUI is to act as a guide that leads us users
down the path to the realms of solutions where we can find nirvana
and SOLVE our own problems.
See tag.
Some things can't be safely glossed over by an abstraction layer that
ignores differences that matter - such as "open" vs. "run program",
"edit data", "view data", or the differenvce between unique data you
create and off-the-peg (possibly infected) material that you get from
elsewhere, or arrives by unsolicited delivery.
General advice: Learn now, rant later.
IOW, pin down what things are (and maybe why they are so) rather than
immediately ranting about what may be mistaken assumptions on your
part. Yes, it's a problem if you aren't aware your assumptions no
longer fit, but it is a different kind of problem.
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Things should be made as simple as possible,
but no simpler - attrib. Albert Einstein
