A new way of adding spice to my life
Inconsistent user interface. IUI. Just when you think you’ve got something under control, count on Windows to throw a curve into things. Unlike the Mac world, where consistency is Job One, Microsoft doesn’t have a game plan. Oh sure, the X in the upper right corner is useful, when things aren’t working well, but what about some of the odd choices made at Redmond for tasks that shouldn’t be difficult.
Today I had a call from a user who wanted to know why her “sent” folder in Outlook didn’t show to what person the message had be sent. A simple thing to remedy, right? Just click on the bar that has the other fields and add this little infobit. Not so… today I discovered that there’s a special floatie toolbox, where a list of elements can be dragged across the desktop to the new position. I’d never seen this variation before this morning, and I had imagined that my user question could be answered by my telephone support.
Now, climbing a flight of stairs (why that name? the steps don’t actually fly anywhere) and taking over the user’s seat is all in a day’s work, but I’m at a loss as to which wise programmer decided to invent a “new way” of adding an element, when it isn’t used anywhere else. How did this one slip by the group that tries to keep a certain degree of uniformity?
We’re starting to use a remote desktop tool for such things, but our users aren’t all up to speed on the idea. Besides, when things don’t work at all, I still climb stairs. Cheap cardio and all that.
The TV just reminded me that we have less than four weeks before American Idol starts all over again. Yeah!
