(no subject)

[torkell]

I apparently have two choices when it comes to computing:

a) stick with obsolete, buggy, insecure programs that actually work and actually have a sensible user interface

b) upgrade to current, less buggy, marginally more secure programs that don't work and have truely awful user interfaces

This is why I still use IE6 (the IE7 interface sucks under XP), why I still use a 15-year-old FTP client (nothing else actually does what I want), why I still use mplayer2.exe (clean, simple, effective) and why I still use an 8-year-old cellphone (it Just Works, damnit). Sometime in the past few years almost all of usability and practicality went out the window in favour of shinyness and buzzwords.

This rant brought to you by discovering that RealPlayer 11 only lets you resize using the bottom-right corner of the window.

Comments

[link077.livejournal.com]

I don't know why you just don't switch to Firefox if you don't like IE7. It has an interface comparable to IE6 and is faster, more secure, and less buggy, and can actually handle modern web design standards.

[pleaseremove.livejournal.com]

I can understand your views to a point.

There is nothing you do in WS FTP (which I assume is what you are talking about) that can't be done in something like Filezilla. It does just as well, interface is slightly different, but nothing wrong with it.

Firefox is I retain still the best option. It is getting better and bar your scroll issue on your laptop it works just fine. Yes, I know it is a little annoying it only lets you run one instance, but then again, it does recover tabs these days. AKA, open Firefox, open up a few tabs, browse in them, kill the process, open Firefox and restore session, then click back in a couple of tabs. If anything this is better than IE6 because in IE6, yes, you don't take everything out, but what does go is most certainly gone.

As for real player, meh to you, real player has no use these days, not now the BBC has the good grace to support something else. I bet they were just trying to be all Mac like. I never liked the Real player interface anyway.

Mplayer2, yes, nice and light and simple, although to be quiet honest, WMP is up in under a second these days so who cares.

As for your phone, I agree it does just work, but then again, so do most of them these days, yes they don't have a common interface, but most of them have got fairly decent ones. Plus, we cant really move on with phones like yours. It is all very well, but actually, things like picture messaging etc are handy from time to time... and your phone just isn't build for these multimedia times.

There is a lot of new and pretty out there (see, Vista) but there is also a lot of it that is starting to come with real usability backing it up (see Windows 7 and Office 2k7).