Tuesday 8 May 2007

It's the little things that really piss you off...

There are a million and one things that annoy me about Microsoft software, and usually it's not the errors, the bugs, the overt problems that do it. It's the inconsistencies, the user interface WTFs and the seemingly random omissions.

Here's two recurring Why, God, Why problems that have already bugged me this morning:

There is no "Open location" right-click-menu option for desktop shortcuts in WinXP. Suppose I have a shortcut and I can't remember where the actual document is. This happens more often than I care to acknowledge. If I want to delete it, or drop something into the same folder, or any one of a hundred reasons to have direct access, I would like to be able to go from the shortcut right there. I'm not the only one who's thought of this: I've seen it in other interfaces, I know I have.

There is no "save as shortcut" option in File menus in Microsoft Office 2003. I have a desktop littered with shortcuts, for commonly accessed databases or files or, specifically, for files I am currently working on and can't afford to forget. I would like, if creating a new file, to be able to save it to its correct directory and as a shortcut to the desktop without messing about wasting time with File Browser windows and more right-clicking.

I'm positive I'm a victim of Microsoft trying to do away with the desktop - just look at the useless XP default settings.

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