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This site is no longer maintained.
My current weblog.
Saturday, April 06, 2002What's wrong with the Zaurus user interface?
I had a mini-epiphany. The Zaurus UI stinks because it is just like Windows (or any modern desktop GUI). It has a task bar in the familiar location, with the usual functionality. Applications have title bars and menus in the usual places, with the usual commands. UI widgets have 3D effects by default, wasting precious pixels (switching to the "QPE" style will make them mostly flat). Few UI widgets are well-sized for finger nail poking.
Contrast this to Pocket PC 2002. The familiar elements are all there. The title and task bars are consolodated. Menus are at the bottom and are generally fewer in number. UI widgets are flat, and many are large enough to be easily poked with a finger nail.
Not that the PPC UI is perfect, ask any Palm zealot.
XP's System Restore
Last night my computer was doing some freaky things, WMP and WinTV were very unhappy. So I gave "System Restore" a whirl, backing out to my last reboot (March 25th).
Wow, was that thing thorough! It uninstalled everything that had been installed since then, including Visual Studio .NET and a copy of PuTTY that had simply been unziped into a directory. It changed my WinAmp skin. Restored my Outlook settings, including passwords that had been changed. Removed several icons that had been manually created on the Quicklaunch bar. Restored the "Scheduled Tasks."
Microsoft deserves some kudos. If there is a compelling reason to upgrade from Windows 2000 to XP, this is it (a botched driver upgrade got me to switch in the first place).
Have to remember to manually set a "Restore Point" whenver installing something new. Re-installing Visual Studio .NET hurts...
Is this a sneak-peak at Office .NET? The "Alerts" feature is interesting, as it can send notifications to a cellular phone (and presumably any wireless device with an email address). Nothing to indicate if it will support notifications for imminent calendar items.
My roommate has started another weblog using Movable Type. Interestingly enough, it comes with a default template that is fully CSS with a XHTML doctype (not sure that there is any actual XHTML).
Follow-up: Mozilla doesn't like it.
He is planning to check out other software. Blogger is too unreliable, and the 100k monthly posting limit for Blogger Pro is too restrictive. He tried Radio, but it barfed when he enabled and then disabled FTP upstreaming.
