Archives for posts with tag: windows
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Remote Desktop Connection: Useless dialog

August 24, 09 //
0

Stop repeating the obvious! I see this twenty times a day, at least.

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I fully understand the implications (which aren’t even destructive! The session’s gonna be fine in the background!). You don’t have to remind me every fucking time. By definition, anyone who uses Remote Desktop is not a casual, naïve user. Why do you treat us as such? I’d argue that this dialog is entirely unnecessary, but if you absolutely insist on giving me this piece of data I already know, for fuck’s sake stick in a “don’t show me this again” option.

Patronizing, lazy, unnecessary. EPIC fail.

(By the way, the Mac version of the TS client doesn’t ask.)

(Also by the way, there might be some way to turn this off, but if I have to hunt for it, it’s less than useless to have it at all)

Expression Blend: Currently running

August 13, 09 //
2

Fix the problem, dammit, don’t just tell me about it! I see dialog in Expression Blend often:

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Here’s how I get there: I build the solution, I have a look at it, I see what’s wrong, I switch back to Blend, I fix the problem, I want to build it again, and– D’oh! I forgot to close the running app. So I have to close the dialog, switch to the app, close it, switch back, tell it to build again.

As is ususally the case with these stupid, stupid error dialogs, it doesn’t help me at all towards my goal. Yes, I forgot to close the running app so you can’t build on top of it. Yes, that was my mistake. How about not scolding me for it, but actually fixing the problem: close the damn thing, and build it again.

Lazy. Inconsiderate. Bitchy. Fail!

Last.fm: Duplicate Artist

May 21, 09 //
1

Aren’t computers supposed to deal with this crap for us? This UI does a not unreasonable service: it lets me know the track I’m playing has a nonstandard string in the Artist field:

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So, you know what the problem is and can tell me about it, but you can’t just make it work? How about creating an association between similar strings and not bothering me with it? “It’s not Beyonce, it’s Beyoncé” is just patronizing; “Please fix my tags”? Fix your damn interpretation of my tags. Maybe I didn’t write that tag; Maybe I can’t change it. Fail.

Windows Server 2008: Cryptic login failure

March 29, 09 //
0

You gotta help a user out a little, especially if the error is catastrophic. In the case of this ridiculously cryptic error message, it is indeed catastrophic, since the user is barred from logging in, and is absolutely stuck. I’ve seen this one before*, but managed to get a snap of it this time since it was in a VM:

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Well, now what? No help, no explanation, nothing. How do I fix this? What the hell is a trust relationship with a primary domain, anyway? There’s zero excuse for this abysmally terrible experience. Since I’m getting a friendly (heh) error string, not something like “Error 3X98C4” or “Fatal error in com.microsoft.security.DomainTrustController“), obviously someone bothered to write the string, associate it with the error and localize it. Why, then, isn’t there any information on what the causes might have been and (more importantly) what to do to fix it? Initially, I had no idea what to do, but learned through trial-and-error that logging in as Administrator and restarting solves it. Why does that work? No idea. How can I prevent this error in the future? Again, can’t say.

In general, I’m not a fan of help text. Nobody reads it, it’s often poorly written and an afterthought. However, in this case, there’s no alternative (i.e. a web search) to get the info.

*=And before you think this is a Server problem, and therefore not worth friendly user assistance, I’ve had it happen on Vista as well.

TweetDeck (sucks because of AIR)

March 4, 09 //
0

Calling a web app wrapped in a system window does not make it a desktop application. The concept of AIR is great: write once, deploy anywhere applications that can combine the best parts of web apps with desktop. Too bad they all suck. I have yet to find an AIR application that’s useful for day-to-day serious use. They’re usually fluffy, heavy, useless things not unlike the all-Flash web interfaces of a few years ago (no coincidence there, the same people write them). They’re toys.

Not that I haven’t tried. I forced myself to use eBay Desktop for a few weeks, but had to give it up. All the latency and wierdness of a heavy, transactional web app, with nonstandard controls and mediocre interaction.

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I tried again with TweetDeck, which has some really awesome features, but again fails for its half-assed system integration. Here’s the list of of things that suck about it:

  • (Right now) 159MB of wired memory in use (While it’s idle!)
  • No menubar (Mac)/notification bar (Windows) icon (see Google Notifier or Foxmarks for how to do a utility app right)
  • Horrific Flash text rendering
  • No Growl (or similar) integration
  • No keyboard shortcuts
  • Nonstandard controls for everything
  • Built-in notification brings the fucking window to the front every time

Note none of these problems are specific to TweetDeck itself, whose developers have valiantly tried to shoehorn in things like notification. It’s all AIR’s fault.

Could you solve these things? I’m not sure; probably not. Until every OS manufacturer adopts a common toolkit for drawing UI (not bloody likely!), developers will have to rewrite things for each target platform. For now, I’m going back to Twitterrific and hope they beef up the feature set to match the almost perfect UI.

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