Yoz Grahame's Cheerleader: threedegreasles

February 26, 2003

threedegreasles

Following up from yesterday: A large number of people seem to have linked to my piece, which is nice, though most of them referred to it as a "review", which is a little scary, as I never got the software in question to run. I should stress that, as superbly biting as the piece is, I did walk knowingly into a highly-flammable beta situation and thus deserve everything I got, no matter how candy-coated and teenager-enticing that situation was. Plus, some people think that I was accusing the required P2P patch of being spyware. I don't think it is any such thing, though the bizarre trip into Microsoft's beta-programme underbelly that the installer gives you did make me feel like one of the kids in The Goonies.

On the other hand, there really is no excuse for an install screen that looks like that, nor for Windows Media Player to lose important features with every new version (Anil pointed out the reason behind the loss of .mov support, but that doesn't excuse the more recent stuff), nor for the MSN 5 tabs thing. Having said that, m'colleague Tim pointed out that you can turn the tabs off - look!

'This is a shared computer so don't display my tabs' What?

Can you see it? And can you see where in the Options tabs it's buried? And, most importantly, does the name of the preference in question make any sense at all?

<Yoz> I just don't understand. It makes no sense. <Yoz> The privacy settings are on a per-user basis anyway. <Tim> Well, tabs contain personal info, I suppose - they have MS Money support and all that shite. So if you're using a shared computer, you might not want it visible. But then you'd only get that if you logged in. So it makes no sense. <Yoz> Exactly. <Tim> MSN now has quite a big InstallDance procedure <Tim> [X] Don't do the stupid faces [X] Get rid of the stupid faces toolbar [X] Turn that bloody side panel off [X] Wiggle random privacy settings [X] Turn off the 'randomly launch a fucking browser window whenever I log on' feature. [X] etc <Tim> [X] Beat MSNIM design panel to death with a black rubber cock

Looking back on it, it's suddenly occurred to me that it may have happened like this:

MS Pointy-Haired Boss (force of evil): Everyone must have tabs! Don't let them turn the tabs off! Stock quotes! Ads! Expedia deals! Yummy!
MSNIM Team (force of good... relatively, anyway): But we like the window going nice and narrow! If you have tabs it's too wide and...
PHB: Tabs for everyone!
Team: But...
PHB: TABS TABS TABS TABS TABS!
Team (sudden moment of inspiration): PRIVACY!
PHB: Huh?
Team (hurriedly winging it): Tabs are lovely and gorgeous and contain lots of useful stuff including gorgeous furry personalised alerts which are individual to the user and may contain private information so those users should be able to turn the tabs off to prevent other people seeing private stuff!
PHB: Eh?
Team: Privacy is important! Security! Remember? We're meant to do lots of that security and privacy stuff!
PHB: But... tabs...
Team: We'll take away the easy right-click tab removal and put a tickbox in the Privacy section of Options. No one will ever find it, but our asses are covered.
PHB: Oh, good. Okay. Whatever. Hey, why can't I browse the Internet any more?

Oh, and:

<Tim> Spookily, the 3 Degrees did a song called "Can't You See What You're Doing to Me" <Tim> Seems appropriate <Tim> although "When Will I See You Again" seems to fit your IPv6 problems better

The happy ending at the end of all this is that my networking problems have been solved; I uninstalled the IPv6 stuff (like what Jeremy said in the comments) and everything was fine again. MSN and Threedegrees are now able to run. The problem I face now is this: How the hell am I meant to test this thing given that, after yesterday, I can't persuade any of my friends to install it?

Posted by Yoz at February 26, 2003 07:18 PM | TrackBack

Comments

I have a feeling that "But...tabs..." may have to become something of a catch-phrase :-)

Posted by: Tim on February 26, 2003 09:13 PM

What is the worlds fixation with tabs? The entire Mac OS X using community seemed to go mental because Safari didn't have tabs and has gone mental again because a leaked beta shows it may have.

Tabs eat real estate - they are just bad.

Posted by: Neil on February 27, 2003 10:21 AM

But Neil...Tabs!

Posted by: Nick on February 27, 2003 01:36 PM

Neil, once you have tabs you never go back (for browsing anyway). I got 5 open now and I middle click (open window in new tab) more then I left click.

Posted by: Sam on February 27, 2003 10:01 PM

Middle button? Ahhh.... you aren't using the one true pointing device... a Mac mouse :-)

Tried tabs, don't like 'em. Take up vertical real estate which raises the 'fold'.

Thankfully they are likely to be optional in Safari. If not, time to use a different browser (or make enough noise for Apple to pay attention).

Posted by: Neil on February 28, 2003 12:11 PM

Mmmmm. Tabs.
I like tabs because I can have 30 browser 'windows' (tabs) open at once and they only actually sit inside three *real* browser windows and I can bookmark all the tabs in a window as one bookmark and...
Need I go on?
I think it is a personal preference.
The real estate thing is a valid issue, but I got over that by moving my dock to the left of the screen and not the bottom.
BTW, I use Chimera Navigator (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/chimera/). Tabbed browsing it purely optional and configurable in CN and should be in Safari as well. I may move to using Safari if the next stable release still has optional tabbed browsing...

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Posted by: rising on January 26, 2006 04:53 PM