One might ask, Why are you so annoyed, and why are you so down on Microsoft? or Why do you hate Windows?
Would we have gone to so much trouble to build a resource like Annoyances.org for a product we didn't like or use?
Microsoft is, by far, the largest software manufacturer in the world that has done a lot for the PC platform.
On the other hand, Microsoft is an evil, monopolistic, intensely profit-driven company that, without criticism and competition, will do everything within its power to dominate as many markets as possible.
Here’s a little background that may help you understand the need for a website like Annoynaces.org.
There are many reasons that software, and Windows XP in particular, annoys us. One of the most common explanations (and a cop-out, in my opinion) is that software is designed to be used by a large number of people and to be compatible with a vast array of hardware components, and that no single piece of software can be expected to satisfy everyone. While that’s certainly true to some extent, it seems to be most often used as an excuse to hide the real motivations behind the design of the products we use.
It’s the Starbucks syndrome (sorry to all the coffee addicts out there): the larger a company becomes, the more things like quality and corporate responsibility take a back seat to profit margins and marketing strategies. We have the annoying new cartoonish interface in Windows XP mostly because Microsoft wants to make older versions of Windows look dated and obsolete, theoretically causing more of us to feel the urge to drop three hundred bucks on their latest and greatest. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this new interface is better than the one you’ve become accustomed to all these years.
Now, one of the terrific things about open-source, the category of free software designed and developed by hoards of volunteer programmers, is that it is designed by -- and for -- those who use it to meet their needs, rather than to earn billions of dollars for some large corporation. For example, Linux and Mozilla are open-source alternatives to Windows and Internet Explorer, respectively, and are, in some ways, superior to Microsoft’s offerings. (This is not to say that products like Linux are perfect, though. Linux has its own problems; at least as many as Windows.)
Naturally, Microsoft is trying to put a stop to this grass-roots movement; their newly-formed "Initiative for Software Choice" (http://softwarechoice.org), for example, is designed to encourage companies and governments to abandon open-source products in favor of corporate-backed software like Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.
But, it’s not all about the evil ways of corporate policy. There are other reasons that software is annoying; to omit ineptitude from this duscussion, for example, would be foolish. Often, software designers often don’t understand good user-interface design (or simply don’t understand users) and, therefore, create incomplete products that don’t work the way we expect or just don’t work at all. Likewise, users don’t understand software designers and, therefore, often aren’t able to comfortably follow the same lines of logic (or lack thereof ) that the designers used in creating the products in the first place.
Another truth, and one that most computer companies will never admit, is that consumer computer technology, in general, is still quite infantile. It’s truly amazing what some of the latest gadgets can do, but at the same time, the majority of technology available to the public hasn’t caught up to most users’ expectations or requirements.
There’s also an inherent difficulty with the role of the personal computer that ends up causing all sorts of problems. We expect every computer to flawlessly manage our finances, seamlessly connect us to the Internet and allow us to communicate, run our latest 3D games, create magazine-quality documents, and about 50,000 other things -- and all at the same time, too. Part of the solution to this has been the proliferation of special-function devices, most notably the Palm OS-based personal digital assistants (PDAs). Instead of trying to do everything (a mistake Microsoft, not surprisingly, has migrated to their PocketPC-based devices), the Palm OS has been kept extremely simple; it does only a few things, and it does them quickly and reliably.
In an interview several years ago, Bill Gates, head bigwig at Microsoft, bragged that Microsoft Windows had something like seven times as many lines of code as the software used in air-traffic control systems in the U.S. I was appalled. Think about the millions and millions of lines of code and the countless teams of programmers responsible for all the different elements of Windows XP—each programmer with different levels of skill, experience, and adherence to the theoretical interface standards. Instead of giving us a tighter, simpler product, Microsoft keeps making Windows more complex and cumbersome, adding more pointless wizards and market-driven features.
Let me give you a very simple, yet not readily apparent, example of a design decision that has led to a tangible annoyance. Common file dialog boxes -- the little windows that appear that allow you to choose a file to open or specify a filename with which to save -- look basically the same in nearly all applications, because they’re a function provided by Windows itself. This concept of common file dialog boxes was introduced more than a decade ago in Windows 3.1 and has since undergone an evolutionary process as the dialog boxes have been improved in each successive version of Windows.
An annoyance that plagued these boxes since Windows 95 was that they were not resizable and therefore were awkward to use with large displays (or, likewise, too large on small displays). Fortunately, this problem has since been fixed, and in Windows XP, we enjoy resizable file dialog boxes. And although Windows will remember the size and position of each application’s file dialogs temporarily, this information is forgotten when the application is closed. Of course, this means that if you want a larger dialog box, you’ll have to enlarge it again and again, and do it separately for each application.
However, a more serious problem (in my opinion), still not remedied in Windows XP, is that of the Look in (or Save in) list. When you go to open or save a file, the only clue to where the currently displayed folder is located in the grand hierarchy is the name -- not the entire path -- of the folder. So, for example, if the current folder shown in a file dialog box is called images, there’s no way to immediately determine if the folder you’re looking at is c:\projects\images, or d:\webpages\ personal \images.
What’s worse is that Microsoft knows about the problem and has done nothing about it; in fact, they’ve taken steps to hide it. The smoking gun, if you will, was the online help way back in Windows 98: if you clicked the [?] button and then clicked the Look in list, you’ll see this note: To see how the current folder fits in the hierarchy on your computer, click the down arrow. Instead of fixing the problem in Windows XP, Microsoft simply removed the explanatory text.
The simple truth is that this would be very easy for Microsoft to remedy, and has been for years.
Case in point: Explorer has an option that allows you to fix a similar problem with folder windows by turning on the Display the full path in title bar option in the Folder Options dialog box (under the View tab). Yet this option has no effect on file dialog boxes, which ironically have been designed to behave just like small folder windows. The full path of the current folder could be displayed just below the Look in list. Why has Microsoft neglected to fix this very basic design flaw?
My guess is that it’s part of Microsoft’s ongoing strategy to hide as much information as possible from the user, in an effort to make the computer easier to use. This is the same type of backward thinking that resulted in hidden filename extensions (see the discussion of file types in Chapter 4). What Microsoft has always failed to realize is that making users ignorant is not an effective way to make any product easier to use.
Of course, it could also be a question of priority -- naturally, it’s a higher priority to make changes that Microsoft could list on the outside of the Windows XP retail box as marketable "improvements" to Windows than to cater their products to their users’ needs. Or perhaps the decision-makers at Microsoft simply prefer "cute" dialog boxes to functional ones.
So, how do they get away with it, year after year? Microsoft is in a unique position, in that it is powerful and wealthy enough to devote substantial marketing resources to ensure the commercial success of its products, regardless of the quality or intelligence of design.
Ultimately, the commercial success of any particular product depends on you and me, the consumers. In other words, every purchase is a vote. Every time you choose Internet Explorer over Netscape/Mozilla or choose Microsoft Word over Wordperfect, you are only feeding the beast. The problem, of course, is that extensive marketing in the computer industry creates standards to which we must adhere. Purchase decisions are often based upon these standards rather than quality or usability, which helps to explain the success of marginal products like Microsoft Word. Sufficeit to say, it is the goal of this website to help readers live with their purchase decisions.
Has Annoyances.org changed?
If you haven't visited Annoyances.org in a while, you may've noticed our new look and layout.
If you're concerned that the content you've come to know and trust is gone, nothing could be further from the truth.
Quite the contrary, in fact: tons of new content have been added.
More versions of Windows are now supported, both with solutions and the discussion forums (links are to your left).
Lots of new features have been implemented, such as the ability to easily discuss articles in the forums.
There is now an entire line of Annoyances Books, but all the content on the website is still free: always has been, and always will be. The books don't detract from that.
Go ahead and explore, and you'll like what we've done!
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