The Challenges of Application Compatibility | Rory

JoshRoss
A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent.

I would think that innovation would start at the following website... http://www.innovateonwindowsvista.com However, It could use a little snazzing-up before I would call it innovative. Start by putting up a wall-of-shame for software. I would like to nominate HP printer driver installers.

evildictaitor
if( !succeed( try() ) ) { while(true) try(); }

JoshRoss wrote:
I would think that innovation would start at the following website... http://www.innovateonwindowsvista.com However, It could use a little snazzing-up before I would call it innovative. Start by putting up a wall-of-shame for software. I would like to nominate HP printer driver installers.

A wall of shame ye say? I think NVidia would fit in just right there. I know lots of very mild mannered people who say some very nasty things about their video drivers for vista. Curse them!

JoshRoss
A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent.

While we're cursing installers; SoundMax and ATI, this one goes out to you! PLEASE stop using low-res 8-bit images to fill the background of your crappy, hand-rolled, installers. Without getting too negative, I would like to issue a praise for every curse. THANK YOU windows update team for providing feature complete, minimally intrusive, drivers. The whole process from acquisition, installation, and finally use, works wonderfully!

kettch

JoshRoss wrote:
While we're cursing installers; SoundMax and ATI, this one goes out to you! PLEASE stop using low-res 8-bit images to fill the background of your crappy, hand-rolled, installers. Without getting too negative, I would like to issue a praise for every curse. THANK YOU windows update team for providing feature complete, minimally intrusive, drivers. The whole process from acquisition, installation, and finally use, works wonderfully!

But ATI installers aren't all hand rolled. There are parts from Nullsoft, and parts from Installshield, etc. The home-grown stuff is just used as shims between the disparate components. It's actually a very good example of WTFery at it's finest.

liridon shala

Innovated video.

JoshRoss
A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent.

Geek A knows what they are talking about. How often does a version of windows drop? How often does a new version of visual studio drop? How much more productivity does each new version of visual studio bring? Writing apps for windows is a breeze. If company C follows the best practices, of the time the apps were produced, then fixing breaking changes should be trivial. And for the changes that are not trivial, there is a huge amount of lead time between when the breaking change is announced and when the product, in this case windows, makes its way out of a series of betas, CTPS, and RCs.

kettch

swax wrote:
This just isn't true, first you're asking companies to continually update their software for the latest windows APIs. This just isn't practical for many companies that are 'done' with whatever component, and don't see the need for re-compiling it every x number of years.

The same is true on the receiving end, a new version of windows shouldn't break all the components developed or bought by a company.

And on the customer end imagine if vista really did break all software, do you understand the sheer scale of the situation? Geek A needs to get a job, and see what the real world is like. Many many many companies are still writing their production software in VC6 and VB6.

How about customer demand? What if the customers don't want to still be running windows 95 just because the developers are too lazy/incompetent to change a few API calls?

You do make a good point though. The next time I go buy a car, I'm going to yell at the salesman until he finds me one that has harnesses for a team of horses attached to the front.

AndyC

JoshRoss wrote:
I would like to nominate HP printer driver installers.

Seconded.

To anyone from HP who may be reading, installing a printer should NOT give me an error if:

1) I'm using RunAs
2) I'm using Remote Desktop
3) I don't have 32 bit colour depth selected. I mean WTF is that all about? How can an installer be that broken?

swax

JoshRoss wrote:
If company C follows the best practices, of the time the apps were produced, then fixing breaking changes should be trivial

This just isn't true, first you're asking companies to continually update their software for the latest windows APIs. This just isn't practical for many companies that are 'done' with whatever component, and don't see the need for re-compiling it every x number of years.

The same is true on the receiving end, a new version of windows shouldn't break all the components developed or bought by a company.

And on the customer end imagine if vista really did break all software, do you understand the sheer scale of the situation? Geek A needs to get a job, and see what the real world is like. Many many many companies are still writing their production software in VC6 and VB6.