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From: Joseph M. Newcomer on 5 Mar 2010 16:08 I can get something between a laugh and a ferocious glare when I tell Bernadette that an interface is "intuitively obvious". In fact, I now usually use this phrase when I mean to say "This interface is totally screwed up". As she rightly points out, these interfaces are culturally established norms, and like other cultural norms, deviation from them is perilous. I once spent time making a draggable listbox to hold a list of values, and even under it put "click and drag to change positions". In spite of this, I got complaints from the users that "to change the order of items, we have to delete them and retype them". So I added move-up-move-down buttons and they were happy! joe On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:14:46 +0000, David Lowndes <DavidL(a)example.invalid> wrote: >>Oh I know, having been down that road many times with my wife! ;) I just >>didn't expect to hear the same argument from Joe, an expert of Windows and >>the IDE! I don't think the IDE designers are necessarily wrong for assuming >>a certain amount of Windows background from VC++ programmers (such as >>knowing how a drop button and status bar in a MDI app work). Maybe those >>aren't optimal, but it's certainly not the first time we should have seen >>them. > >We can all miss things - I know I (and a lot of people) missed seeing >the drop down on the VS Open dialog until someone pointed it out to >me. Things so often are obvious - but only when you know. > >Dave Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP] email: newcomer(a)flounder.com Web: http://www.flounder.com MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
From: David Ching on 5 Mar 2010 17:11 "Joseph M. Newcomer" <newcomer(a)flounder.com> wrote in message news:24s2p55luarkpcb9rrm0cgrptbljphcuqt(a)4ax.com... > I know that a status bar exists, but I also know that it rarely, if ever, > has anything > useful in it when using most apps. So if it suddenly has something > interesting, I'm not > going to notice, because years of knowing it is completely useless have > conditioned me > against looking at it. In addition, as a concept, it is often a failure > because instead > of giving long-term status, it sometimes is erroneously used to encode > immediate state, > the sort of thing that we need to look at while correctly focusing on what > we are really > doing. As such, this is an abuse of the idea of the status bar. Um, as you've generated MFC AppWizard apps countless times, you would know that when you define menu items or toolbar buttons, you specify a string with two parts separated by a '\n', the first part is what appears in the status bar when it is hovered over, the second part is the tooltip (for a toolbar button). So how is it you don't know the status bar is used to display help for transient menu items and toolbar buttons that you are hovering over? And that it is a logical extension to display the full path of the project you are hovering over in the Start page? -- David
From: Hector Santos on 5 Mar 2010 17:13 Right Joe, this is why AOL shows this when a SMTP clients connects to their host: 220-mtain-de04.r1000.mx.aol.com ESMTP Internet Inbound 220-AOL and its affiliated companies do not 220-authorize the use of its proprietary computers and computer 220-networks to accept, transmit, or distribute unsolicited bulk 220-e-mail sent from the internet. 220-Effective immediately: 220-AOL may no longer accept connections from IP addresses 220 which no do not have reverse-DNS (PTR records) assigned. It is way we do the same thing for our SMTP product: 220-winserver.com Wildcat! ESMTP Server v6.3.453.2 ready 220-************** WARNING: FOR AUTHORIZED USE ONLY! ********************** 220-* THIS SYSTEM DO NOT AUTHORIZE THE USE OF ITS PROPRIETARY COMPUTERS * 220-* AND COMPUTER NETWORKS TO ACCEPT, TRANSMIT, OR DISTRIBUTE UNSOLICITED * 220-* BULK E-MAIL SENT FROM THE INTERNET. THIS SYSTEM WILL RESTRICT ACCESS * 220-* TO CAN-SPAM (US S. 877) COMPLIANT CLIENTS ONLY. * 220 ************************************************************************ It is why more and more server are doing it as well. It is SMTP form of a TOS requirement per US ECPA. Yes, the 1986 US ECPA set the provisions for "User Expectations": - Expectation for privacy. - No Tampering. - No Censorship. The rules were relaxed in 2000, this satisfy the SPAM and the "Mommy Market" and the new form of Electronics Publishers (blogs) to provide them rights that the brick and mortar Publishing "Letter to the Editor" market have. The critical thing is LOST OF MAIL - when a user presses SAVE/POST/SEND, the software must either reject immediately with a notification or provide a delayed notification for non-delivery. Silence Censorship is whats gets you in trouble. -- Joseph M. Newcomer wrote: > I think I mentioned this in an earlier post, but AOL employs, as its "conformance > officer", a Constitutional scholar. She gave us a lecture on the subtleties of 1st > Amendment (freedom of speech), 4th Amendment (search and seizure), 5th amendment, and 14th > amendment (the "due process" amendments) and their interactions with ECPA (which even more > severely restricts what can be done to your communication). > > Anyone who manages any form of electronic communication has to be painfully aware of all > of these issues. > > Censorship issues, even when there are "terms of usage", are problematic, both to enforce > and to complain about; for example, AOL got into trouble when they tried to censor a > newsgroup critical of AOL policies, and some of what they did is now prohibited by law. So > if you think something should be removed, you cannot force the ISP to remove it unless > there are compelling reasons, and even then, you risk annoying the ACLU. > > This is of the "you may not like what I say, but you can't stop me from saying it". > > We had a case here in one of the 130 jurisdictions in Allegheny County (near Pittsburgh) > where someone put a small "Vote for X" sign in his yard, and was told that it "violated > the terms of usage for the community" which prohibited signs in yards. The judge ruled > that political signs smaller than a (fairly generous) dimension in the weeks preceding an > election were a form of protected free speech and the cimmunity was not permitted to > prohibit them. In another case, there was a 30-day limit that was overturned. ECPA > extends many of those same protections to electronic media. And in some ways, ECPA is more > restrictive than wiretap laws, which are pretty restrictive already. > joe > > On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:44:56 -0500, Hector Santos <sant9442(a)nospam.gmail.com> wrote: > >> I will say one thing David, >> >> In recent weeks, I some of my messages being "Expired" just the one I >> responded to your message here to basically point out there is no >> standard for NNTP clients or any RFC based mail client to display >> anything beyond what is standard or BCP (Best Current Practice). >> >> If this is just a technical mistake, I can understand that but I can >> guarantee you that if Microsoft begins to go into vendor support >> system with an CENSORSHIP aspect for PAYING CUSTOMERS, they will be >> running into legal issues with US ECPA violations. They are not the >> exception to this long time issue with all online hosting entities - >> its the law. Can be just DELETING MAIL just because some young punk >> MS engineer doesn't understand basic LAWS of the LAND and put MS at >> legal risk. The more you move towards PRIVATE system the MORE the US >> EPCA applies. I've developing and marketing for 30 years, this is not >> just talk. >> >> So if someone is DELETING my mail at Microsoft, they better begin to >> think twice about the can of worms you are opening. > Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP] > email: newcomer(a)flounder.com > Web: http://www.flounder.com > MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm -- HLS
From: BobF on 5 Mar 2010 18:27 Joseph M. Newcomer wrote: > See below... > On Fri, 5 Mar 2010 07:19:38 -0800, "David Ching" <dc(a)remove-this.dcsoft.com> wrote: > >> "BobF" <nothanks(a)no.spam> wrote in message >> news:##QLuxGvKHA.3708(a)TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl... >>> Last year I participated in ASP.Net forums for a few months. Those forums >>> have (had?) an nntp interface that worked fine without an additional >>> process running on my machine. >>> >> Microsoft's contention is that NNTP does not provide things like rating >> posts, marking posts as answers, etc. Windows Live Mail does have these >> features, which I assume work with the bridge. > **** > (a) No ratings? So what? I don't take time to rate posts; it is not part of what I care > about. I don't read the ratings. Even on forums where ratings occur, I don't read the > ratings. > (b) A followup on a post is an answer. > (c) I avoid anything with the word "Live" in it. > **** >> >>> The only reason I can think of to have an additional local process is to >>> provide some other data mining capability for MS. But I'm paranoid about >>> process communicating over the net for no apparent [good] reason. >>> >>> Anyway, yes, you should look again. > **** > But if the purpose of the process is to provide an interface for what you are going > anyway, why is it a problem? > joe > **** It's a problem b/c it's unnecessary. Everybody and their brother wants to have more processes running our machines.
From: Joseph M. Newcomer on 6 Mar 2010 00:26
So running one more process to get me a decent newsgroup-style interface is a problem? Duh. My smallest machine right now is my email machine, a poor little dual processor with 1GB of memory. My new machine (not in yet) will have eight cores and 9GB of memory. My recently-deceased workstation was a quad processor, two dual-cores, and my main development machine is a 64-bit quad processor, two dual-cores, albeit small with only 4GB of memory. Both my servers are quad processors with 4GB. My laptop is a a dual-processor machine with 4GB of memory. Memory, disk space, and computing resources are not the bottlenecks. Bandwidth to information is the bottleneck, and the Web forums have *abysmal* information bandwidth compared to a newsgroup reader. Microsoft has confused functionality with bandwidth. Functionality might be interesting, but the ONLY important part of the operation is the content, period. And I can't get that as fast with the 1990-style Web interface. A modern interface would support threading of messages local copies INSTANT access to ANY message that is already downloaded background downloading of message headers and message bodies Ability to read and respond to messages while other messages are downloading Ability to download groups of messages, possibly hundreds, at a time In 1990, a Web interface allowed looking at a page, clicking on a link, getting another page, reading that, etc. We have not matured this interface in the slightest. I fail to see how adding "Ratings", cute graphics, or other allegedly "cool" features has improved my bandwidth to the information I care about. The search is slower, the ability to navigate the information is marginal and horrifically slow, and it is only the lowered expectations of the current generation make the design even marginally excusable. joe On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:27:32 -0600, BobF <nothanks(a)no.spam> wrote: >Joseph M. Newcomer wrote: >> See below... >> On Fri, 5 Mar 2010 07:19:38 -0800, "David Ching" <dc(a)remove-this.dcsoft.com> wrote: >> >>> "BobF" <nothanks(a)no.spam> wrote in message >>> news:##QLuxGvKHA.3708(a)TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl... >>>> Last year I participated in ASP.Net forums for a few months. Those forums >>>> have (had?) an nntp interface that worked fine without an additional >>>> process running on my machine. >>>> >>> Microsoft's contention is that NNTP does not provide things like rating >>> posts, marking posts as answers, etc. Windows Live Mail does have these >>> features, which I assume work with the bridge. >> **** >> (a) No ratings? So what? I don't take time to rate posts; it is not part of what I care >> about. I don't read the ratings. Even on forums where ratings occur, I don't read the >> ratings. >> (b) A followup on a post is an answer. >> (c) I avoid anything with the word "Live" in it. >> **** >>> >>>> The only reason I can think of to have an additional local process is to >>>> provide some other data mining capability for MS. But I'm paranoid about >>>> process communicating over the net for no apparent [good] reason. >>>> >>>> Anyway, yes, you should look again. >> **** >> But if the purpose of the process is to provide an interface for what you are going >> anyway, why is it a problem? >> joe >> **** > >It's a problem b/c it's unnecessary. Everybody and their brother wants >to have more processes running our machines. Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP] email: newcomer(a)flounder.com Web: http://www.flounder.com MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm |