Can you repeat the question please ?

There is this action user did. You just want to make sure he understands the consequences. So you craft up a nice little message box asking him to confirm the action and explaining what will happen.

Unfortunately, you forgot Steve Krug's advise : Once your text is ready, remove half the words. Then remove half the words again. Then remove half the words again. So your explanation is too long.
Even worst: you put your lengthy explanation after the question that user is supposed to answer. Then you added a lot of useless yet very distracting text such as complete version and build number displayed twice (!) , a link to message help (in addition to the already existing Help button).

Conclusion: Either user is scared and histerically tries to dismiss the dialog, whatever the consequences. Or (s)he carefully reads your prose to figure what you want but then by the time he's done reading the text, he doesn't remember what the question was.



In this case, I even had to read it 3 times to realize there IS a question ! But OK, maybe it's only me...

Language != Country

Earlier today, James B. sent me a list of remarks about appTranslator, including this one :

Here are a few things I'dlike to see <...>: Being able to hide or disable a control between languages. For example, Spanish names don't have middle initials. They don't have a Social Security Number either. For the Spanish version, I would like to hide these fields.

Here's my reply :

Your remark about selectively hiding fields is interesting. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to make these changes in translations rather than in the code: What would happen if a spanish speaking american user wants to use your Spanish version ? He would need the social security field (and probably the middle initial as well). The reverse also exists : Let's say you provide English and Spanish. What happens to your Italian users. They will most likely use your apps in English. But they don't have social security numbers or middle initials. Or even simpler: what happens to Spaniards who don't realize there is a Spanish version of your app (e.g.: their Windows is in English hence your app starts in English).

I'm not sure it would be a good idea to bind language to country. Although it would probably be a good idea to use this relation to make some guesses.

Google Desktop v2

Am I the last one on the planet to realize that Google released Google Desktop v2.0 ? Actually, I didn't even know that v1.0 was once officially released.

I gave the first beta version a try but I quickly uninstalled it: For some reason, indexing was very incomplete, even among the very few supported file types. I wanted to use it to look for terms in Visual C++ Include and source files, in the hope it was more efficient (understand faster) than Visual Studio's Find In Files. It unfortunately proved plain useless for such searches.

I'll give this version a try. But as opposed to many out there, I'm not easily convinced by Google products: They are very efficient BUT the price usually is very reduced feature set for power users.

For example, in the plain usual Google Web Search, the advanced syntax is ridiculously... unadvanced. Another example: In Google Desktop, you can't reduce the scope of the search to a given directory or open the file found in a specific editor

But, OK, enough bashing... Let's give this thingie a (re-)try ;-)

When was the last time you used a floppy disk ?

Earlier today, Raymond Chen asked when was the last time you formatted a floppy disk. As far as I'm concerned, it's been longer than I can remember. Most likely more than 10 years ago.

But when was the last time you _used_ a floppy ?

Me ? Well... The 2 or 3 times I wanted to use a floppy during the last 5 years, I discovered each time that the floppy drive no longer worked :-( When I bought the computer which is now my work station (it was in summer 2003), I bought the parts and assembled it myself. I decided not to spend 10 or 15 Euros for a floppy drive. The only time I needed to read a floppy since then was when I installed Win98 in a virtual machine to test appTranslator. (appTranslator is of course a Unicode app but it's linked to the MSLU to provide minimum support for Win9x).

Windows 98 CDs were not bootable so I needed a floppy to boot the virtual machine. I decided to take it as a challenge: It was (early) 2005 and I-WAS-NOT going to put a floppy drive in my computer ! I eventually managed to find an image of the boot floppy (they are .img or .vfd files, not .iso files) that could be read by Virtual PC, which did the trick.

Is Windows Vista the last Windows version ?

Remember when Microsoft announced that IE6 was the last version of IE, meaning that all future enhancements would come as additional components, rather than as a complete new version ? (OK, I hear you, they changed their mind since then. But it was only because the market pushed hard enough).

Remember when Microsoft announced WinFS, Avalon and Indigo as the next big things that would make up Longhorn Vista ? Then they said that WinFS would come later. And they said Avalon and/or Indigo would be backward compatible with earlier versions of Windows.
If they can be plugged in later and they can be made backward compatible, it means they are components, right ? Then why do we need a new version of Windows if all major new stuff is a set of components ?

Why do we need a new version of Windows to solve the today's biggest consumer problem : Making the Internet safer ? It's all about releasing enhancements of IE and Outlook (Express).

Also, it would make it much easier to release quality software : Don't ask everyone to be ready on the same day. Allow each team to release sooner or later.

No, really, who needs a new version of Windows ? I mean... except for Microsoft ! Because making people pay for components is another story...

Interesting blog

What I like most in Jeff Atwood's blog is that very often the guy writes about something and I think 'Yeah! Sure. I totally agree." but somehow I never thought of writning about that topic !

For example, a few days ago, Jeff wrote about how primitive the Windows clipboard is: It provides room for only one item. As soon as you copy something, the previous content is forever lost.

Jeff mentions a utility that addresses this issue. I just wanted to name another one : ClipCache Plus. OK, this is not completely innocent ;-) ClipCache Plus is translated in different languages using appTranslator.

BTW, if you are an ISV and want to improve the quality of your software, I suggest you offer a copy to John Williams (ClipCache Plus author) : This guy is a great tester, if you see what I mean ;-)

Cool illusion

Just in case you missed this one on Larry Osterman's blog : A cool illusion. The kind that makes you wonder what the hell happens in your brain...

Microsoft feels your pain...

Yes, they do.

Truly excellent :-)

(Through the Code Project).