F*** you too Microsoft
Posted on August 29, 2003 @ 13:30 in Software
My strong suggestion is that someone at Microsoft is decapitated for messing up in a small, but supremely annoying way. It has to do with how Office 2000 handles multiple documents.
There are basically two ways for working with multiple documents. Method A opens a new instance of the program that handles the document in a new window. This is the way that for instance Internet Explorer works. It means that you can find the various instances of IE in your taskbar and you can close them independently from eachother. If you encounter programs that work this way, you expect the upper right corner of the window to look something like this: only one close button (snapshot actually from Word 2000).
Method B's way of handling multiple documents is to have one and only one instance of the program handling the various open documents. This is the way that a tabbed browser, such as Opera handles multiple documents. There is only one instance of the browser visible in the taskbar, but within that program's window, you can deal with multiple documents. If you're working with a program that handles multiple documents in this way, you would expect the upper right corner of the window to look something like this image: double close buttons, the upper close button for closing the program and all its documents, the lower close button for closing only the active document without closing the whole program (snapshot actually from Excel 2000).
Now what did those nitwits at Microsoft do wrong? They made it so that Word 2000 uses Method A, but Excel 2000 is using a messed up version of Method B! When you open more than 1 document in Excel 2000, you get a second instance of Excel in your taskbar... but not really! That second taskbar icon is really only another Excel document. If you use the upper close button in one of the instances of Excel, ALL instances of Excel will close. That is NOT the behavior that the user expects. If you have multiple taskbar icons, then these programs must be closable independently. I didn't lose much work, but I'm extremely annoyed. Let some heads roll.
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that'll teach you; if you want consistent interfaces, don't go to mcsoft. there is a nifty blog by one of the mcsoft ui designers that explains some of the implementations gives coding example and occasionally reveals the differences between windows 98 and windows 98 se, the difference: the box. do business at your own risk.
Posted by jeremy hunsinger on August 29, 2003 @ 14:53
You're SO right, Frank! It's exactly this problem that made me feel so paranoid when I close programs.
Posted by Tommy D. Nordkvist on September 02, 2003 @ 00:42
GUIs have become too complex I think. Not even Apple manages to offer a consistent interface anymore. Linux is even worse I think, not just with a zillion programmers making their own calls on interface design, but with more than a dozen GUI toolkits at their disposal.
The good news is that so far I'm pretty fond of OpenOffice, which seems a genuinely well developed program.
Nah, Windows isn't all that bad, it's just the little inconsistencies and unexpected behaviors that will drive you mad, regardless of the OS.
Posted by Frank on September 02, 2003 @ 09:44
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