Well, now that you mention it...



  • I got this wonderful dialog while trying to load a network document into Microsoft Word 2007.

    "Cannot open the specified file. [OK]"

    Well, that's normal. Down on the bottom, however, there was a final line:

    "Was this information helpful?"

    Um... actually, no.



  • Would it have been more helpful if it'd stayed silent? :)



  • It depends on what you expect.

    Having no feedback is worse than failure.

    Having useless feedback, isn't really helpful, but it does at least let you know it tried.

    Now if it told you why it couldn't access it, that would be helpful.

     

    It all depends on your expectations, MS products have worked for years to lower those to the point where simply saying "I can't do it" is considered helpful, informative and the final word.  No additional info is giving nor expected.



  • @KattMan said:

    It all depends on your expectations, MS products have worked for years to lower those to the point where simply saying "I can't do it" is considered helpful, informative and the final word.  No additional info is giving nor expected.

    No kidding. Half the time, I have to fire up Filemon/Process Monitor to figure out just what the hell is causing the failure. God help you if you've ever been on the receiving end of MS SwearPoint 2007's constant barrage of "Unknown error" responses; you have my sympathies.



  • @KattMan said:

    It depends on what you expect.

    Having no feedback is worse than failure.

    Having useless feedback, isn't really helpful, but it does at least let you know it tried.

    Now if it told you why it couldn't access it, that would be helpful.

     

    It all depends on your expectations, MS products have worked for years to lower those to the point where simply saying "I can't do it" is considered helpful, informative and the final word.  No additional info is giving nor expected.

     

    The funny thing is that MS UI guidelines (best practices) suggest that error messages should provide suggested methods of fixing the problem if at all possible.

    However, my favorite errors are always the "an unknown error occurred". How you encounter an exception and display a message and not know anything about what happened is beyond me.

     

     

     



  • @unklegwar said:

    The funny thing is that MS UI guidelines


    They quit following that at all with the 2007 line. Look at Internet Explorer 7. The menu bar is below the address bar! Since they locked the address bar to the top, so there's no way to get the Menu to the top. And what is up with that crazy panel/tab/whatever system in Office 2007? I thought toolbars were supposed to be commonly-used functions, not the entire menu system displayed as buttons.



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @unklegwar said:
    The funny thing is that MS UI guidelines


    They quit following that at all with the 2007 line. Look at Internet Explorer 7. The menu bar is below the address bar! Since they locked the address bar to the top, so there's no way to get the Menu to the top.

    In IE7, the buttons on the right give you all you need. Keep the menubar hidden. You do not need it.

    And what is up with that crazy panel/tab/whatever system in Office 2007? I thought toolbars were supposed to be commonly-used functions, not the entire menu system displayed as buttons.
     

    I haven't used the ribbon, but I only hear praise for it. Why not have the entire system menu as buttons, if apparently it works so well -- when well-designed?


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