Well it has been a while since I bothered to post anything here but the time has come again.
Microsoft has exceeded all previous attempts to screw up something that was starting to look promising and I'm talking about Internet Explorer 9.
All they had to do was bring IE up to meet current standards; primarily HTML5.
Instead of that they had to mess with everything including the user interface. Are they ever going to listen to users? The answer is a resounding NO!
They don't care what you and I think about anything they do, after all they are Microsoft - Kings of the jungle so people will take whatever garbage they want to push our way.
Try the "New" search feature in IE 9. I don't know about you but when I search for a term I want to see what I searched for show up in the search field of my preferred search engine (certainly not BING) but instead they have to send it with the URL encoding. Is that serious? No but it certainly is annoying. I know what %20 means but does everyone else? No they don't. Do search engines understand plain text without the encoding? They certainly do or they would be long gone. Fortunately I only installed IE9 on one of my operating systems, Windows 7. After an hour of trying to customize it to work the way I want it to I spent 2 minutes ripping it out by the throat. Forget about sending feedback because they are not accepting any more comments from the users, unless of course you like it.
The above is only one example of several things I found to be irritating. Now don't get me wrong here. There is no such a thing as the perfect browser and I'm not yet ready to go with something because it's prettier and I certainly don't intend to install any of the current "geekware" browsers. I'm just going to stay with IE 8 for now even though it's not HTML5 compliant.
This did draw something I have been considering for a while to the forefront though.
I've toyed with the idea of dropping support for all Microsoft software from my web site. I think it's a good time to start working on that. I will be replacing it with pages where you can vote on a User Experience index based on what you think of any individual piece of MS software by version. I'm probably not going to make it so you can leave comments there but the votes will continually be tallied and charted so they are displayed on the pages.
I can see where I won't even stay with Microsoft software for much longer. Each generation seems to get worse and with Microsoft making a move towards cloud computing it will soon be time to make the switch. I've never had a problem working comfortably in any OS so for me it's not a problem to make the switch in fact I very often use a linux distro to fix Windows issues.
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2 comments:
I find it interesting that you post about IE being such a computer savvy person I would assume. I am nowhere near your level of expertise but since IE 6 I have not used IE. There is a great deal or other browsers out there that by far outclass IE, hell IE does not even play in the same league as those other browsers and no I am not talking about Safari here. So why would a software developer/coder/advanced computer user/admin use IE these days? What does IE have that those alternatives have not got or already do much much better than IE?
Fair enough question and I'm sorry that it took me so long to notice the comment.
I'm not suggesting that IE is the best browser available. Years ago I learned that the average user will stay with the standard software load. They don't feel at all comfortable using Geekware in place of something they have trained on. Also some of those browsers are downright nasty and certain clients of mine will dismiss employees for installing them on company systems.
I do on occasion run multiple browsers on my own system but that is simply for testing purposes. In my role as a support person I'm required to assist people on a daily basis and I find that the majority are still using IE therefore it is mandatory that I know the ins and outs of IE. IE by the way has been critisized for years now and that crticism is because of things that were true back in the IE3 and IE4 days but are no longer valid. You have no idea how many systems I can get working properly simply by reverting to a standard software load.
The same holds true for the other standard software offerings from MS. Is there better alternatives to Notepad? Certainly there are. In this case several. Does the average user require one of those alternatives? No; simply becuase they generally don't reguire anything except the simplest of text editors if in fact they need a text editor at all.
I also make it a point of testing as many of the MS Beta products as I possibly can. Right now I'm running IE10 on a system and that's after really not liking IE9 at all. If I had discovered the tings that I know now back in IE9 I might be upgrading people to that but as it stands I upgrade them to IE8 and that's it.
Now I know I can modify IE10 enough to make it comfortable and more familiar to users, I'm going to revist IE9 at some point.
With Windows 8 I have yet to dtermine if it is wise to even remove IE10 using Programs and Features in CP.
By the way I will soon be blogging about Windows 8 as well. I can already tell you that you are looking for trouble attempting to run it in a multi-boot environment. It also requires a lot of mods to make it even remotely familiar to users. I have it at the stage now where it is more like a very fast Windows 7 than a whole new operating system.
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