WMP Group - PLEASE FIX WMP You broke it!

JasonOlson wrote:


No, these are NOT facts. Don't even try to say they are with no back-up proof. This is one of the problems with blogging in general. It is a huge echo-chamber and is so self-referential. It's like a big feedback loop (feedback as in the electronic meaning).

What people have to realize is that bloggers are a_vocal minority_. Bloggers' opinions are not the be-all-to-end-all of opinions when it comes to feedback for the OS. Bloggers are geeks and engineers for the most part still. And the reason the OS has gotten as unusable as it has in previous versions (unusable to the actual average end-user) is because these same type of people were the ones creating the UI.

(As I type, IE 7 in Vista just bugged me about using the freaking clipboard to pasted text!!! Yet another stupidity!  Learn the difference between a real keyboard event and a programatic keyboard event MS!!! The two are different, one denotes permission, the other does not. Only ask in the second case, not the first!!! Stupid security = useless security! (more proof))

I'm not just talking about bloggers. I have sat 10 people down infront of Vista and asked them to shut off the computer.  They were of varying computer savy from a 62 year old woman that uses computers lightly to play solitaire and look up her lottery numbers, to a computer programmer.

Of the 10, 5 of them gave up and pushed the off button (which fortunately does what it's supposed to!) and were shocked when it just didn't shut off and go away, but instead shut down correctly. 3 of them found the click out menu after wondering what the heck the other button did for a while because it's not clear and they couldn't read the tooltip and then looked at all of the options and actually asked me if Shutdown would actually shut the computer off!  2 found it (the programmers) and shut it down correctly... after saying "f-ing MS and their stupid UI" (direct quote)

Hence, this isn't just bloggers, this is everyone that sees this mess.  Windows Explorer is another perfect example of people in MS not getting it and making it more complex not less.  Changing screen resolution is not a ton of steps that aren't obvious instead of 1 like it used to be. And on and on and on.

Proof made.

JasonOlson wrote:


Other than the givens from above, you have to realize that you are not (and most of us are not) the typical end user. I think the mark of how usable our OS is how well my computer illiterate relatives can use the OS, not entirely how well geeks and engineers can use the OS (although it certainly is a part of it). And the two non-computer-oriented relatives I have that have been using Vista are able to get around it better than they were with XP.

See above.  Point made. Since I deal with probably 100 computer users every day and have been preparing technical support people at our company to deal with Vista on the desktop I know what I'm talking about, I've done the tests, and I've done them carefully. Since MS doesn't help people with problems with Windows worth crap (i.e. India tech support anyone?), we end up being their technical support for their OS too... Which means that care of MS we have to hire more technical support people for this mess in Vista.  This is even with people that are good with computers that already have Vista by various means bitching at us about things that have nothing to do with us (our software even has UAC support in the installer) and we end up fixing them.

JasonOlson wrote:


Are there spots that still need work? Absolutely! But that's not to say it's an improvement over XP (compared to "utter crap" like you seem to think it is).

You're making the typical mistake that most people make when judging the past.  Compare Windows XP to Windows 2000 and Windows ME. Do not compare it to Vista when you're making a comparison about how they improved (or not) the state of society and those that use it. It is what comes before that matters.

Windows XP changed computing. It made everything accessible from Autorun that was intelligent, to Cleartype on laptops, to finally a 32bit OS that truely was essentially bulletproof to crashing (security is another matter).  It revolutionized computing in the PC world and for 5 years made the MAC irrelivent. 

Enter Vista.  Other than a little eye candy and a lot of stuff not complete, there is no reason why the end user would ever need Vista. It doesn't allow you to print pictures any easier, burn DVDS/CDs any easier, run applications any easier (that start menu is more confusing not less in an attempt to tame the 50 million folder in your start menu syndrome that MS created in the first place), it doesn't boot up any better, it isn't faster (it's significantly slower and uses 5 times more memory by default even without superfectch).

Hence in the day to day world, where Windows XP changed the home computing environment for the better in huge ways and even had a few improvements for Business users although that was a much tougher sell over Windows 2000, Vista does none of these things. The only thing that can be said for it is Media Center... and guess what? The XP version is damn near as good, and some like the old interface better than the new.

That's the comparison that needs to be made. What is the effect on the average user before and after? The answer is clear!  XP changed the world, Vista does nothing except allow you to see through the title bars of your applications and thus make it harder for the average 40 year old to see their applications than ever before!

JasonOlson wrote:


I'm sorry, but I think this shows your ignorance towards who our actual average end-users are. If it were up to engineers, we would still be living in the Command-Line World. I for one, am glad these people aren't controlling the look of the UI. And comparing Vista to Windows ME DEFINITELY shows your ignorance and lack of perspective.

That's ironic since my day job is a UI designer and I am hearlded for the consistant, easy to use interfaces that I design for both Windows applications and web sites.  While I leave it for a graphic deigner to make pretty, I make them usable. I stand by my record any day on the subject and have 10+ years of experience under my belt making things make sense and be intuitive for users.

So ignorant? No.  How about you? What's your day job?  I bet you don't come close to my experience level on these matters. (Just a guess, I may be just as wrong as you are)

JasonOlson wrote:


The comment about >2 years of development is a joke as a large portion of the Vista code base is not any more than 2.5 years old. Contrary to popular belief, Vista was NOT in development for 5+ years. Halfway through, the company decided things were going in the wrong direction and did a "reset" of the OS, essentially starting from scratch again.

Yes, and from Beta 1 on, everyone was bitching. Which was approximately 2 years ago. And others like myself were bitching before then because we could see the writting on the wall even before the reset.

JasonOlson wrote:


HOWEVER, with all this said, I must be a little honest and self-critical. There are definitely places in Vista that I wish we would have focused less on the glamour and eye-candy and more on the usability.

At least you recognize that eye-candy (which there isn't much of in Vista BTW) != usability...

JasonOlson wrote:


One of the problems (and main hurldes) for us is backwards compatibility. OSX made (what I think is the correct) decision to break backwards compatibility. But you can bet that if we made an outright break on backwards compability, there would be a HELL STORM of anger from all our users. While it is a hurdle, it is also one of our strengths. The problem with this is that there are many things you can't do because it would break existing applications that already exist for the platform.

This is what .NET was supposed to be. Your chance to break free of Win32. You didn't bother, you kept the same crap that was there and made (bad) wrappers around it.  Yes, Win32 is broken and you have to do stupid security things for it. .NET needn't be that same way, but you broke it too.

Even in WPF you still demonstrate that you don't understand the core issue of security. That is, intentional versus automatic. As per my example above, you still can't differentiate between a mouse click made by the user and one raised in code. You can't differentiate between a keypress made by a user on a real keyboard and one raised in code. 

This simple concept that should have been in .NET 1.0 STILL isn't there.  WPF is just another layer on top of Win32, it isn't direct and thus has all of the issues that Win32 always had.

You've had opertunity after opertunity to maintain a backwards (and less secure by definition) Win32 layer just like you had a POSIX and OS/2 compatibility layer in NT and move forward with a NEW API that can be more secure, from the ground up, by passing all of the legacy stuff and going directly to the kernal that could have treated these applications as first class citizens with different security rules than those of Win32 applications.

You continually do not. You continually hack crap on top of crap and build a house of cards in the name of backwards compatibilty.

Even .NET itself is a perfect example. There is no need for .NET 1.1 to be compatible with .NET 1.0 or 2.0 with 1.1 or 1.0!  NONE AT ALL.  That's why we have SxS compilation and allow all of the .NET frameworks to be on the machine at the same time. YOu worked your asses off for this specifically for this promise. Then you go and do the assinine and handcuff .NET 2.0 with crap from .NET 1.0 and Win32 before that! (and putting MSHTML wrapper in the .NET 2.0 framework which is the most bug ridden pile of crap code MS has inside the .NET framework??? Whoever made that decision instead of writting a managed HTML editor or making the RTF editor output/handle HTML should be shot.)

There is no reason why my application needs 3.0 to be backwards compatible with 2.0 because my application installs .NET 2.0 automatically. Even if 3.0 is installed, it will install 2.0 because that's what it requires and it knows it. This was the beauty of .NET and you guys f*cked it up and continue to f*ck it up.  Use your own technology and free yourselves from backwards compatibilty.

There simply is no excuse.

If Steve Jobs would ever realize that all he has to do is port the full .NET framework over to Mac and make it part of the OS natively he would take huge market share because there would be no reason to use a Windows machine anymore as business port their applications to .NET from VB 6. Better UI AND it runs anywhere!  The last reason other than price to use a PC would be gone, all because you guys keep missing the point even though you have the technology already built! (and the really funny part is that every version of .NET has had serious bugs in it that broke the compatibility between versions anyhow found out after the fact so lots and lots of .NET 1.1 apps don't work on 2.0 because of them (text encoding anyone?!?)

JasonOlson wrote:


You definitely hit the nail on the head here. It's one of the reasons that I'm a total iPod lover and haven't even considered buying a Zune. It's also a reason why, if I had the money, I would run out and buy a PowerBook. Not only is Apple good at design, that are good at winning the hearts and minds. It's heart to find a technology company that has more dedicated and serious fans and evangelists than Apple has. And there's a very good reason for that. Apple has "The Cool Factor," which is something Microsoft is missing. Of course, it's also one of the reasons that I'm a HUGE J Allard fan as he has made great progress through the Media Division and XBox in bringing the cool aspect to the company.

Yes, the XBox people have a clue. Look at the interface in the XBox, clean and simple. It's getting over the top in the LIVE stuff but it's still lightyears ahead of Windows.  Mac has the cool factor because it looks good and is simple (try turning off a mac, it's trivial even if you pull the cord out!)

I won't use an IPOD because I will not have my music locked in to any one source. Period. Anyone that tries to force this on me won't get my business. I use WMP because it comes iwth the computer, has until recently done what I needed it to do, and doesn't force me to use WMP for my music because I can uncheck that DRM check box and rip music to my heart's content in whatever format I want to.  Mac loses here because Mac thinks that people will forgive them for telling them how to live their lives.  And while people are for the most part allowing it, it's only because everyone else just copied this evil scheme. If someone would give them an alternative that was easy, simple and worked they would jump at it.

JasonOlson wrote:


And Office 2007 is a vast improvement. What I can say is that Microsoft is definitely making more and more investments into UX (User Experience) and Office 2007 is the first real public showing of this investment. I sincerely hope that Microsoft starts investing these resources into the base OS itself on top of its applications.

I suspect that if you look at the office development team, 99% of all of the UI decisions come from 1 or 2 people, maybe 5 tops. (and even that would be too many)

The Windows team? Your own people have admitted that there are at least 100 people involved in any UI decision and any change requires at least that many if not more people to sign off and at least 5 meetings and at least 1 month before the change actually gets to the trunk build.

As I said. Get a UI/UX Czar and put him in control. Give him absolute authority over the UI, have him have a small team that designs the entire thing and pushes down for implimentation. Never allow anyone else to make UI decisions and make sure that the Czar gets to be the final word on the issue and doesn't have to answer to anyone on the subject. An intelligent Czar would naturally field suggestions and most importantly listen to your users, not the programmers, but at the end of the day it's their decision, no one elses.

This is the success of Steve Jobs and Apple and this is the failure of Microsoft. Until someone at Microsoft steps up and is willing to risk their job on these decisions and take the responsibilty of success or complete failure and work from that position MS will become another IBM and ultimately become irrelivent. (not to Linux, which is irrelivent on the desktop for this same reason, but worse because the engineers are the ones making the decisions)

The problem is that MS has a bunch of cowards running the show and no one to step up. Bill Gates is gone and no one took is place.  You guys need someone with balls to come in and take responsibility and succeed or fail on their own merits and their own responsibility.

Listen to Rand. Statistical averages result in crap. Not average, crap. Individual achievement can lead to crap, mediocrity, and most important greatness.  And yes, there is great risk in the individual, but if you want to produce more than crap, you have to risk the individual because the committee, the group, the average, the staticial norm assures you the worst possible outcomes every time.  Vista is a perfect example, as is WMP 11 as per the original point to this post.

Oh, and then there is the inane IE 7 interface wit hthe refresh and cancel on the right forcing you to move your mouse all of the way across the screen and aim at two little icons instead of having them right where your mouse is in IE 6 at the worst and at the very top of the screen on the left where they should be so that the user can keep moving all of the way up and not have to aim so carefully. (and this just gets worse as people get wide screen monitors with higher and higher resolution...)

Oh and then there is the down arrow beside the forward button in IE 7 that actually has a list of the last sites you visited, not the next sites you are going to visit! You couldn't even put the stupid down arrow on the left side beside the back button that it's related too!!!

And you call these design guidelines for new applications!!!!

And then there is the collossal screw up in Office 2007. The Start button... yes we already have a start button so when you say "start button" people go Hunh??? and try and click the start button their used to. We've taken to calling it on tech support "the little globy thing" in the top left.  Worse when I tell people to click it, most of them didn't even know that it did anything!

I actually had two programmers(!) even go and customize their top toolbar thingy beside it to add the save as function on their computers. When asked why, they said "because I can't find it and it's the only thing I could customize". I then showed them the drop down list on the "globy thing" and the string of explitatives was funny as h*ll.  My experience with non-technical users is even funnier.

And then there are the people that double click by accident on the tabs and end up with their toolbar hidden and don't have a clue how to get it to come back...

So while Office 2007 is a huge step forward, the most basic of functions (closing the application and saving your work) are still harder now than they were before. At least "File" ment something and when they clicked it relative to their file, they got a menu that had "Save and Save As" on it and oh, look at that! There's also an exit command on there for some reason!!!  It was discoverable. The globy thing isn't discoverable unless you accidently click on it (which ironically until Beta 2 Refresh didn't even work if you just slammed your mouse into the top left corner of your screen, just like the other start button didn't work doing the same until XP... now there is a cutting edge improvement to an OS that only took MS 7 years to figure out!!! And then Vista makes it really obvious that it shouldn't work by putting that stupid globy thing way away from the corner, thus making people that havne't experimented want to aim at it again instead of just jamming the mouse down there... UI 101 people!)

And then there is your stupid power grab over the Office 2007 UI, which is NOT new, even VS.net uses tabs and buttons on tabs all over the place, Borland developer tools have done that for years, as has Adobe, so you know you can't patent it, so instead you try and give yourselves precidence by sucking idiots into signing a contract with you for nothing. Slimy stupid antics that you should be ashamed of. Yes, you did good stuff with Office 2007, but trying to patent that which you know you can't patent with an end run and the implied threat of lawsuit? That's just slimy, discusting behaviour that you should want to throw up over.

John Galt wrote:

And then there is your stupid power grab over the Office 2007 UI, which is NOT new, even VS.net uses tabs and buttons on tabs all over the place, Borland developer tools have done that for years, as has Adobe, so you know you can't patent it, so instead you try and give yourselves precidence by sucking idiots into signing a contract with you for nothing. Slimy stupid antics that you should be ashamed of. Yes, you did good stuff with Office 2007, but trying to patent that which you know you can't patent with an end run and the implied threat of lawsuit? That's just slimy, discusting behaviour that you should want to throw up over.

So you actually have no idea what the purpose of the contract for the Office 2007 Guidelines is about I take it? The Guidelines define the behavior an application wanting to look and have ui that acts like office 2007 should implement (so the experience is the same in applications that look like Office 2007 as it is in Office 2007). The only thing the guidelines contract prohibits you from doing is creating an application that competes with an office 2007 application AND uses its UI guidelines.

When i say guidelines i am talking about the 119 pages that explain how a tab should react to resizing and how elements should be drawn on the screen in certain situations etc.

Now that that is cleared up I have tons of problems with Vista the least of which is that I have spent many years teaching my parents how to do a great many tasks on their own. Many of which I will get the <sarcasm>gret pleasure of teaching them again</sarcasm>.

sorry JasonOlson I've seen too many professionals and novices get stumped with Vista UX.

Here's a test for you.... take a seasoned computer user who has never seen/Used IE7 before (but knows all about IE6) and ask them to open the "internet options"... then watch them fumble around. This gets worse when you apply this to a novice who happens to know that "internet options" is in the tools menu (which they learned from many tech support calls).

Matter of fact. New idea. Vista developers should be required to spend a day doing tech support for users getting to use Vista for the first time. except tech support over the phone and without the luxury of having a live vista desktop in front of them.  So they get to be one of the thousands of ISP techs come feb 1st.

I love Vista too... don't get me wrong.. but i still don't think its ready.

littleguru wrote:

Start playing a song from the libary and move to the next after having finished the song? Currently if you play a song in the library that song is replayed over and over again... WMP creates a playlist for one song...

Under Library, right click Songs, then click Play

That will play all music. However it would be nice to just click a song and it keep playing from that point in the library

Indeed, MS needs "Global UI/UX Department". One single department for EVERYTHING related to UI. Not a crowd of different sorts of "managers". Currently we (as users) have amazing UI in one software (Office 2007) and absolute crap (WMP11) in another. Annoying... Who is designed this stupid "menu" in WMP11?!? I don't want to be a sniper to aim on small bottom region to access "button menu"!

One of the biggest misteries for me in WMP - why there is no video aspect ratio change?!?!? WMP is a last dynosour mediaplayer without such simple feature (exactly like C9 forum without e-mail notifications! )

PS: I'm not using WMP too much, only to play WMV streams and files. And I'm going to buy... yep, iPod to listen music! And later, after I'll become rich - to buy some Mac (I like "sunflower" design, but unfortunately it's not manufacturing anymore...).

littleguru wrote:



Cyonix wrote:  littleguru wrote: Start playing a song from the libary and move to the next after having finished the song? Currently if you play a song in the library that song is replayed over and over again... WMP creates a playlist for one song... Under Library, right click Songs, then click Play That will play all music. However it would be nice to just click a song and it keep playing from that point in the library

I want the second thing: start at one song and play from that point on. Like Winamp does, or Foobar or whatever else you take.

I'm not seeing this. If I use the Library/Songs view, and double-click a song it will start playing with all music as the playlist, continuing from the song I selected. If I search first, it will use the search results as the playlist. If I use one of the other views (Album, Artist, etc.) it'll use the selected album or artist or whatever as the playlist.

In general, whatever's in the right-hand side of the window whenever I start playing a song ends up as the "now playing" list.

This is WMP11 on XP, but I'm 100% certain Vista also behaves this way.

Ang3lFir3 wrote:



So you actually have no idea what the purpose of the contract for the Office 2007 Guidelines is about I take it? The Guidelines define the behavior an application wanting to look and have ui that acts like office 2007 should implement (so the experience is the same in applications that look like Office 2007 as it is in Office 2007). The only thing the guidelines contract prohibits you from doing is creating an application that competes with an office 2007 application AND uses its UI guidelines.

(Yes, I've read the entire thing and even took it to my laywer along with previous art, who then immediately told me that I'd be insane to sign it.)

Note your comment that if it competes with MS in any way, you're toast. That's call patent by default.  If they wanted to ensure that it was used in the same way, then that would have been fine, although a legal document wouldn't be the way to do it, a design guide and a standardized control included that all developers could use that was standard would have accomplished that far better than what MS has done. They ensured a million different variations of the theme that are slightly different so that you don't have to sign this stupid paperwork.

The purpose of this paperwork is simply to patent by default and it's thinly veiled as something else only to make it look good to the unthinking masses that don't look too deep... (see article by Mike Gurnderloy (sorry for the spelling mike!) on the subject)

Ang3lFir3 wrote:


When i say guidelines i am talking about the 119 pages that explain how a tab should react to resizing and how elements should be drawn on the screen in certain situations etc.

Great, make guidelines, more to the point, make a control that automatically follows these guidelines, release it for free for .NET or better yet, add it to the .NET framework and you've got everyone doing what you want. You don't need legal involved in this BS.

Ang3lFir3 wrote:


Here's a test for you.... take a seasoned computer user who has never seen/Used IE7 before (but knows all about IE6) and ask them to open the "internet options"... then watch them fumble around. This gets worse when you apply this to a novice who happens to know that "internet options" is in the tools menu (which they learned from many tech support calls).

Change isn't inheritently bad if it makes it easier. I'd live with reteaching if there was a purpose to the change. But there is none, and the result is HARDER, not easier....

Ang3lFir3 wrote:


Matter of fact. New idea. Vista developers should be required to spend a day doing tech support for users getting to use Vista for the first time. except tech support over the phone and without the luxury of having a live vista desktop in front of them.  So they get to be one of the thousands of ISP techs come feb 1st.

I love Vista too... don't get me wrong.. but i still don't think its ready.

I actually suggested that the developers of XP do exactly that and do tech support for their betas themselves so that they can hear what real people are struggling with and fix it (and have the bugs filtered out before they get to them of course)

That's why in my team, the programmers all have to spend time on support for the stuff that they have released to our UI test customers before it gets released and have to sit down and go through all of the complaints and see if there is any way they can fix it. 

JasonOlson wrote:

OH, and I was going to add something. Perhaps we should compile a list of all these bugs that exist in all the different applications (or Vista itself) so that we (as Niners) can start submitting them to the proper channels at Microsoft for fixing?

First, yes that would be great if someone at MS was listening and would recognize that the people in Channel 9 are exactly the people that should be the ones that are top of the usability and functionality food chain responding. They're highly trained, educated people that do tech support directly or indirectly all of the time and have to hear about the stuff that MS never does.

Second, we shouldn't have to jump through all of the stupid hoops to report these. The team leaders for each product should be in here answering questions and getting feedback, even begging for it and asking for it every single day.  It is the job of the producer to come to the customer, not the other way around.

Cyonix wrote:



littleguru wrote: Start playing a song from the libary and move to the next after having finished the song? Currently if you play a song in the library that song is replayed over and over again... WMP creates a playlist for one song...

Under Library, right click Songs, then click Play

That will play all music. However it would be nice to just click a song and it keep playing from that point in the library

That's what I said you had to do in the first place Which of course shouldn't be required. I should be able to do it on the library too (they actually had to TAKE IT OFF! cause it was there in WMP 10!) and from that stupid down arrow on the Library button (which should be about 5x higher).

JasonOlson wrote:

Awesome . I see I prodded a very passionate person. That's great!Okay, now some rebuttals (or agreements)

Oh, MS has been getting me riled up for a long time about this stuff... DLL Hell Part 2 care of Windows Installer which needs to be fixed before anything else comes out of MS is just the first of my huge issues (try redistributing SQL Express with an application, or requiring XML SDK and then look at your Add/Remote Programs list and you'll see what I mean... I also bitched about it in here when the WI team was bragging about automatic updates while installs still don't work right)...

JasonOlson wrote:

Yes, this annoys me as well. I've wondered but never did the research. Have we (Microsoft) actually flat out said that this was a security feature. For some reason, I thought for a while that it was a software patent issue and that some other company held a patent on automatic access to the clipboard or something ridiculous like that. Pardon my ignorance .

It's a security "feature" because you can turn it off in the IE security settings... problem is that it doesn't STAY OFF and comes back on inconsistantly.The "feature" wouldn't be required or even if it was, wouldn't be anoying if Windows would know the difference between a programatically raised event and one that is prestine from the user. There is no reason why this couldn't be done easily, especially in .NET (which IE needs to be re-written in to save it from itself with security issues) with additional parameters on the EventArgs.

JasonOlson wrote:

Okay, on this argument, I'm evidently more ignorant as you as you have dealt with many more people that I have. Of course, if this is really the case, it does make me wonder what we are doing in our usability labs. Perhaps the problem is the designers don't give enough credit to our usability labs? I'm just grasping at straws here .

I live by "There is no such thing as a contradiction, if you encounter one check your premises."  Thus from that position there are only two possible explaintions for the horrible UX for Vista, IE 7, and the other things that I mentioned:1. Programmers thinking that they know better and implimenting their own way and digging in their heels and because of all of the committees it gets ignored too long and then the product has to ship and you have a mess left where someone should have come into the room of the programmer and said "do it this way, or you're fired.".or 2. Assuming that there are UX groups actually thinking about this stuff in MS, they're not being listened to again because of the committees where everything becomes a black hole and gets left. (Your own people refer to this when defending the mess that is the shutdown functionality in Vista.)

JasonOlson wrote:

I don't believe I'm the one making the mistake, I believe you are. By your same logic, Leopard from Apple is a total turd as well because it's not NEARLY as revolutionary as the first OSX was. This is just silly. Not every release can or should be revolutionary. Sometimes an evolutionary change is needed.

Evolutionary change is a point release.  Ironically XP was a point release (5.1) when it was major release for sure (turned out to be more of a major release with SP2 but that's another story....)The key is that Leopard is a total turd compared to the original release of OSX if you compare them on the same ground.  The key is, is that if Vista is just a minor release, then it's just a minor release and you have to be honest about that. If it's major, then it should rightly get compared to the effect that previous MAJOR releases had.  I will kick the crap out of Steve Jobs all day long for making every release of OSX a major one and charging money for them when they're point releases at best so it applies equally.Yes, take things for what they're claimed to be, and compare them to other things claimed to be the same thing and judge their effect on how they change their target audience. If Vista is a major release (it is by the version number) then it has to go against Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 95 and OSX (the original) and stand on it's merits against those OSes. If it's a point release, then we should rightly compare it to Windows 98SE which was a pointless release that no one really needed unless they wanted easy USB support.You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either it's an entirely optional release that is a stop gap that the vast majority of the world doesn't need and should skip for the next version after Vista that might get all of this stuff right and might fullfill promises, or it's a MAJOR release and should be judged that way. You're not, you're asking for it to be judged as one thing while you say it's another. That's a contradiction and there is no such thing as a contradiction, dispite the marketing department's best efforts to the contrary.

JasonOlson wrote:

If you revolutionize every OS release, it also means your customers are going to have to learn a new OS every 3-5 years. I know people that get upset enough when the interface they rely on changes a little bit, let alone in a revolutionary way. Users would not stand for that drastic of change every release. However, I think I may be putting words in your mouth. Revolutionary doesn't necessarily have to mean "everything changes", so I concede that point.

See above.  And on your comment about changing things, people will embrace change it if improves their lives. That's why people go out and buy HDTVs and fight with stupid cables and cable boxes that don't work, because they think that they'll improve their lives. Companies buy new software because they think that it will improve their business and make them more productive.  They will change, and will do so happily if you give them reason to do so. Office 2007 will succeed in the market because there is a REASON for it. It is vastly better, even given the issues I've raised than the previous version and makes you vastly more productive and does so without anyone having to know what CSS is but gets the benefits of them instantly. (that more than the interface is the breakthrough in word btw)When interfaces change just to change, and the change doesn't improve, then I have a problem and that's the issue with Vista and IE 7. They don't improve, they make everything harder, longer and slower to do than the previous versions. The opposite of the litmus test.

JasonOlson wrote:

But saying that every OS release should change the world just as much as the previous one is ridiculous. By that standard, Windows XP absolutely sucked because it didn't change the world nearly as much as Windows 95/98 did. So, using your logic, the only OSes that are really worth anything for changing the world are Apple ][, Windows 95, and perhaps Mac OSX. I just don't buy that as Windows XP, XP SP2 were great releases themselves that didn't change the world nearly as much as their predecessors. However, Windows ME was utter horse turd, I'll give you that much. And like I said, comparing Vista to Windows ME is not a constructive viewpoint as it is wrong on many levels.

See above. Cakes and eating them too...

JasonOlson wrote:

OH CRAP! LOL. Okay, I concede that point to you. LOL, I'm a programmer . Uh, I have an office roomate that's a designer, uh, yeah, I got nothing .Yup, I think calling me wrong on this point is probably the wise thing to do and move on.

  Just an asside, because I do UI and I do turn things on their head a lot because the current standard doesn't do things well, I do have to fight this constantly because I do push the envelope.  But the difference is that my users all agree that my way is better once they get used to it than what they were previously used to. (or I go and change it and make it that way)  Vista, WMP, IE7 all don't share that result. Everyone that I have put in front of it, after a week are asking to go back to Windows XP.  (Yes, I'm not kidding, only one person that I put it on originally hasn't asked probably because I made it clear it wasn't an option from the very beginning so they're living with it...)

JasonOlson wrote:

I'm sorry, not "everyone" was bitching. Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft _does_ listen to its customers. If every single customer on the face of this planet that tried Vista were screaming bloody murder over a specific feature or bug, I'm sure it would be changed (minus any of that DRM utter crap that MS has to implement by law).

Serveral really wrong points here:1. MS does it's level best to make sure that people can't communicate their issues unless one of two things are true:  You're a big company paying MS millions of $s a year for the privilage, or you're a developer/beta tester and can get 500 people to notice your complaint and agree with you.  Lots of people complained about the shutdown functionality, the people that wrote the functionality agree that it's a disaster, and yet nothing was done and Vista was released with the mess.2. Every single review I saw (most notably Thurrott, but many others too) complained heavily about the illogic of Beta 1, 2, RC0, RC1, and RC2.  I have yet to see a positive review that actually told people to go out and buy Vista. Every single one (including the bribed sites) says "you don't need it unless you really need a new computer and it happens to come with it. That's a brutal review. Especially when you were paying for a possitive review in the first place.3. MS doesn't have to include DRM at all. There is no law saying that they do, only one that says that if they do, you can't hack their stupid DRM. MS has chosen to do this. They didn't have to. In fact they and Apple are in the position where they can say to both the MPAA and the RIAA that either you do it our way, or we let you rot and rot they will. Without MS and Apple both of them are about to go bankrupt because of their previous short sighted views on copy protection (HDMI being a copy protection scheme because it uses lots of bandwidth anyone?)

JasonOlson wrote:

I'm just curious, how many bugs did you personally file? How did you submit this feedback to Microsoft? Please don't interpret this as condescending, as I'm honestly curious what feedback loops you used and why they didn't do their job.

In Vista? I gave up after Beta 2.  In VS.net I have reported over the years over 100 bugs and gone through the hoop jumping to get private fixes, not only for download but actually built for me repeatedly (the latest is the horrible slowness of the code editor that still is broken with word wrap on and I was told that it wouldn't be fixed until the next major release)  In previous windows releases the answer would be "several hundred" bugs. I was the guy that fought the MDAC merge module in the SQL Team that was going ot error out your install if MDAC was already installed on the machine and was already the right version instead of see that as a success state and continuing (which once you finally got it right, you killed off the merge module...)I was the guy that (I need to watch my language) and moaned about the SQL Server 2005 installer and the illogic of it and got one thing changed so that you actually had a clue that there were coding samples and sample databases, but failed horribly in getting the mess in the Add/Remove programs fixed (because the Windows Installer team is really good at not listening) and still can't install SQL Express deterministically in my application's installer so I had to write a special wrapper on first run of our application to do it right, again because of the Windows Installer team that should all be taken out and shot.I was the guy that first brought up the stupid DateTimePicker in .NET 1.0 and i'm the guy that brings it up in every .NET release and it still doesn't get fixed even though hundreds of people vote that it's busted and needs to be fixed.Need more?The key point here that MS used to understand is that a good idea is a good idea. It doesn't matter if 50 people agree or only one points it out.  The current system of dealing with bugs and feature changes/requests is rediculous (but is very much a sign of the times). Popularity has nothing to do with greatness, be it software or anything else. It isn't a measure of acceptance, need or thoughfullness either. In fact, most of the time it's the exact opposite.  Each suggestion, problem, request needs to be judged on MERIT, not on popularity.  The problem is that MS would have to put way more effort into things and change the way they develop software to do so, so it won't happen any time soon.

JasonOlson wrote:

No matter what you may think of Microsoft or their employees as a whole, I'm more than willing to recognize our mistakes when constructively pointed out (as any Niners here can attest to (as they probably have witnessed many of my rants).

Note that I think very highly of most of the people that work for Microsoft. In fact I've never met a Microsoft programmer or even person essentially in charge of the division (SQL guys for example) that I didn't like.  The problems with MS are two fold:1. Indian tech support that have no direct contact with the developers and don't speak english worth crap.2. the VPs and other middle management that get in the way. The reason why MS was previously so successful is because there was BILL and there was the head of the department and the designers/programmers that worked for that head of department and no one else. If there was a disagreement, the grunt programmer could write Bill an email and it was dealt with in a positive manner. No matter who it was that wrote the email.  That doesn't exist now, and that's the death of Microsoft. I'm sure that you've realized that I wouldn't be writting these emails if I didn't believe in Microsoft which means by definition that I believe in the real people at MS that really want to get something done and who are despirately beating their heads against a wall screaming at the top of their lungs and no one is listening because they're waiting for popular opinion to save them from having to take a stand.

JasonOlson wrote:

That's interesting. WHERE did we ever say that .NET was supposed to be our way to break free of Win32? What we did say that I remember is that: .NET is the way _going forward_ to avoid DLL hell by allowing side by side assemblies. I don't recall ever hearing that .NET was supposed to be the answer to backwards compatibility.

Bill Gate's speech both on COOL and later on the release of .NET said specifically that .NET was an entirely new API that would break MS free from the antiquated programming APIs of the past and revolutionize the way programming happens.  Further his statements directly addressed versioning and bragged about SxS installations and how your software got your version of .NET and it didn't matter how many other versions were installed, your application would work exactly the same way it did the day you wrote it no matter what.  This is all from the horse's mouth so to speak, although I can't prove it to you becasue that stuff is long gone from msdn.NET... yes, it does revolutionize programming, but it doesn't break you free from Win32 and it certainly hasn't broken free of backwards compatibility. (and only fixes DLL hell because it uses the lowest common demoninator of every DLL in windows. That means that the Rich Text editor doesn't have table, or image support because of limitations in the LCD of the richedt32.dll that they have to support so that they don't end up upgrading the .dll and breaking other applications when .NET is installed.And because of Windows Installer, DLL Hell 2 is here now. Just look at all of the crap installed by SQL Server 2005 in your Add/Remove programs for proof of this mess even while SQL Server is going more and more .NET.

JasonOlson wrote:

Wrong. WPF is built directly on the DirectX engine, _not_ Win32 (essentially giving you as direct access to the hardware as you can get). It doesn't even have the typical Win32 Message Pump that Windows Forms have. More Proof: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms750441.aspx

Yes, I over simplified and wasn't specific... sorry....And directX is just a 3d version of Win32 with a direct path to the graphics engine. DirectX has all of the same issues (and more) that Win32 has and was built under Windows 95 using the same techniques. WPF is just an addon to 11 year old technology built shortly after win32 was finalized. (and you can't just do DirectX you always have to talk win32 too because of all of the stuff that DirectX doesn't do as anyone trying to create an options window in a game will attest)WPF should go directly to the kernal and should be written from the ground up without any dependancies other than the kernal and even that should be losely coupled.  They made the same mistake with WPF as they did with .NET in the first place and didn't learn from their mistakes (DateTimePicker anyone???)

JasonOlson wrote:

None at all? Think of all the investments companies make to develop software. If they want to take advantage of a new feature in the latest runtime, is it feasible to expect them (nay, demand them) to re-invest that money in order to upgrade their software and account for all the breaking changes we made? I say not. There is a good reason that a lot of the language platforms out there are so serious about backwards compatibilty from one release to the next. Are you saying that almost every modern language is wrong?

Yes I am. If you want to use the new functionality, go ahead, use it. It doesn't require you to upgrade everything else. In fact a properly written program can have sections that run on .NET 1.1 and others that run on .NET 2.0. That's the whole point. Heck you can write in VB.NET in some places and C# in others and C++ still in others (our application has large sections in C++ for interop and C# for the rest).This is just good programming. Upgrade what you need, leave the rest alone. If you want to make a better ComboBox, you don't leave the old one there, you make a better combobox and you write a converter to conver the old code to the new one if someone wants to switch.To put it another way, if you're designing VB.NET, you don't change AND and OR to do what VB6 did simply because that's the way VB 6 did it. You make it the way it should be NOW and worry about conversion instead of keep broken stupid stuff around for expediency (the text rendering, the theme rendering, etc. that is in .NET 2.0 is a perfect example). You don't polute a framework and increase the barrier to entry for backwards compatibility. You do it right, with one version that does everything needed and you drop the old broken stuff entirely and let people that want to stick with that stick with it and upgrade only part of what they need if they wrote it right.  Backwards compatibility is almost always a reason used to protect idiots that don't know how to program from themselves (i.e. Symantec Antivirus)  If they wrote sh*t , then break their sh*t and then shame them by outlining in public what they did that they shouldn't have done.

JasonOlson wrote:

The problem isn't with side-by-side versioning, that works just fine with .NET. The problem is with an unreasonable upgrade path if you break/change functionality with every release.I can BET you that the crap would hit the fan if we made breaking changes between every release of the Framework.

... you do anyhow. I have yet to see any complex application that didn't need major changes between 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0Minor versions? Yes, they should be a compatible as possible. They by defintion shouldn't have major new functionality, they should be bug fixes and minor logic fixes, nothing else. But .NET 2.0 is NEW and should require new techniques. (System.collections.generics is a perfect example of what should be just System.Collections and replace the old stuff)

JasonOlson wrote:

You're right, there is no reason. This is exactly how .NET works today. If my application uses .NET 1.0 and installed it when it was installed (assuming it's still there), it can use that just fine. It doesn't matter if I have .NET 3.0 installed (which is just the .NET 2.0 runtime anyways). My application will keep on using .NET 1.0 just fine if it is configured to do so. The problem is that developers don't bind their assemblies to specific runtimes (as they probably shouldn't). I can actually force an assembly/app written in .NET to use a specific runtime by using binding redirects just fine.

They shouldn't have to, and VS.net should by default bind to the specific version of .NET and when you upgrade to .NET 2.0 it should update those bindings. It should be absolutely required and the application shouldn't run if the correct version of the .NET framework isn't installed. It should NEVER run on the .NET 2.0 framework when it was written for .NET 1.0 and the programmer didn't bother to think ahead, it should require that the 1.0 framework be installed.  By running it on .NET 2.0 you get unintended behaviours (i.e. text encoding!) that will cause that application to work in unexpected ways. This was the whole point to .NET SxS in the first place: Eliminate having to make new dlls run old programs that were written for old versions of the same DLL.  But MS has missed their own memos on this one.

JasonOlson wrote:

This is HUGELY generalizing the problem. And it's not that simple. You completely ignore the recognization of how the PC industry is built with OEMs and Vendors. You think people are upset enough about vendor lock-in with their software? Imagine if the ONLY hardware vendor you could buy from was Apple: no Dell, no HP, no Acer, no Toshiba, etc. Programming frameworks are only a single piece of a much larger puzzle when it comes to the build of the PC industry.

Distribution is a mechanical process, suppliers are increasingly irrelivent as you can buy the same motherboard from 50 different suppliers now even though it's their own brand (i.e. Nvidia graphics and motherboards rebranded and sold as something new). Apple is on Intel chips now. The internet means that HP, Dell Apple are basically irrelivent. IT doens't matter how it comes from, only that it works and works the best possible. If the logo on the front happens to be Apple who cares? It's the best that my money could buy at the time.By taking the OS out of the equation of the purchase Apple would be able to distinguish itself on other far more important concerns where Dell, HP, Toshiba do not. (i.e. half of their laptops are all just rebrands with slightly different plastic from the other guy anymore, there are only 4 laptop manufacturers left)The future is .NET. It is kicking the sh*t out of java and rightfully so on the desktop. The web browser is great and all but the applications in a web browser are slow (especially with AJAX, just try out salesforce.com) and horrible to use. Auto-deployed (read: Clickonce) provides the best of all worlds and allows remote data stores and distributed computing without DLL hell overheads which equals serious savings for companies if done right. That's what my company has built with great success. Smart clients in the truest sense of the word. Use the internet in everything, but don't depend on the internet being there. Use the internet for data exchange, but don't make your experience about the internet, and recognize that a browser is a horrible place to spend your life entering data.Apple could make itself a first class citizen in the world of business if they supported .NET with Wine integrated into the OS so that any interop that might be required is taken care of. (Mono has made a big mistake there btw)  That's my point and definately I'm not oversimplying things.The end point is that branding is irrelivent today. People don't care that it's google or you tube. They care that what they want to get at is there and it's free or cheap for them to get at. Computers are the same. IF it works really well AND is free or cheap then so much the better. I was just reading an article about Flash Video being horrible to look at, but at least it works and that's why You Tube and others all use it. It just works... this is my point, it doesn't matter that it's flash, or Quicktime or WMV, it only matters that it works, it's free and users can get at the content that they want quickly.

ok, editing took out my freakin formatting again ... grrr...

sorry for the blobs of text, they really were paragraphs!

littleguru wrote:



Cyonix wrote:  littleguru wrote: Start playing a song from the libary and move to the next after having finished the song? Currently if you play a song in the library that song is replayed over and over again... WMP creates a playlist for one song... Under Library, right click Songs, then click Play That will play all music. However it would be nice to just click a song and it keep playing from that point in the library

I want the second thing: start at one song and play from that point on. Like Winamp does, or Foobar or whatever else you take.

Then make that an optional feature. 100% of the time, if I want to hear one song, then I want to hear one song. I find it in the library and I play it. That's fine, if the behavior for playlists is that it will automatically continue, but not for the library.