Month: December 2006

Let me know if you’re a rock-solid programmer and would be interested in working with me on a fun, email-related project in C#.  Could turn into something great; it all depends on you.  I won’t post more details here, inquire if interested.

The Windows Live team just posted the top searches on Live.com for 2006.

Yahoo posted it’s top 2006 searches last week.

Google has yet to weigh in, but here are last year’s top searches.

Interestingly, Microsoft’s top search was for Ronaldinho, while Yahoo’s top search was for Britney Spears.  Ronaldinho doesn’t even rank on the Yahoo top-10, and Spears ranks #4 on Live.  Likewise, #10 on Live is Rebelde – apparently a popular Mexican television show.

I’m guessing these rankings are not very scientific.

Opt-in UIs are all the rage in software these days.  With prices dropping, software vendors need you to opt-in to the stuff they know you don’t want so that they can stay in business.  It may be an opt-in for the company’s XYZ service, or it may be an opt-in for the company’s XYZ mailer, or it may be an opt-in to having your kidney donated to monkeys.  How do you get users to opt-in when you know they don’t want to?

Today I ran across a sneaky UI which does this very well!  It is a simple matter of mixing metaphors between checkboxes and radio buttons.  What happens if you display checkboxes to the user, but make them behave like radio buttons?

In typical user interfaces, when you offer a user a choice of something, you’ll use a “radio button”.  The user can select one item from the list, and the user knows that when they select one choice, it will automatically unselect the other choices.  It’s like the old multiple choice tests in school. For example:

Would you like your burger:
With Cheese
Without Cheese

Similarly, checkboxes are used when you offer a user multiple choices, and the user can independently check off zero, one or many of the items they want. For example:

What condiments would you like on your burger:
Ketchup
Mustard
Mayonaise

What this tricky site did was to use checkboxes when it really needed a radio button.  This completely fools the user.  I saw the checkbox, clicked it, expecting it to uncheck, and then thought I must have miss-clicked when it didn’t uncheck.  Only by checking the second item in their list did the first uncheck!  Strange!

This is pure-genius!  It is so easy for the user to click the checkbox, expecting it to uncheck, and then proceed. The company providing the site not only gets you opted in when you didn’t want to be, but it also has a plausible deniability if ever questioned on the matter!  (Oh, we thought this was a good UI.  The user can opt-out, see, just check that box…)

Since a few of my colleagues have thought I’m too pessimistic on Microsoft, I thought I’d share with you my thoughts on Vista.  This weekend, I had to reinstall the OS, and I was somewhat lamenting that I don’t yet have a copy of Vista to install.  I don’t know if I’ll go right out and buy a copy (I’m just too cheap).  But here are some things I look forward to:

1) Starting your PC quickly.  Turning the PC on and off should be lightning fast.  The Vista team agrees, and they’ve been working on it.  Jim claims that a PC left on 24×7 will save about $50 per year in electricity.  Well, we already discussed that I’m a cheap bastard, so you know I’m excited about that.  There is also an interesting technology called ReadyBoost/SuperFetch which claims to more predictably know which applications you need loaded into memory before you need them.  It’s hard to know if it works, but it sounds like a good step.

2) Security.  As a developer, security tends to get in my way, so I don’t care for it much.  But there is no doubt in my mind that Vista’s addition of integrity checking is going to help.  The truth is that most hackers comprimise systems by using the same types of tricks over and over.  Eventually these exploits become known and tools are created so that ‘script kiddies’ can use them on their own.  Vista conquers several of these, and comprimising one area of the system is less likely to give you a ticket to other areas of the system.  I particularly like the fact that you can’t run anything which needs elevated privileges into the startup sequence (which hackers previously used to reinstall their malware on every reboot so it would never go away). 

Unfortunately, the basic problem of human error (“Wow, someone sent me an email with Free, Live, Hot, Naked Women!  Let me run this application!!”), remains unsolved.  The elevation prompt keeps the lawyers happy though.

3) Windows Movie Editing.  Like most everyone with a PC, I have tried the Pinnacle Movie Maker software that came in various bundle deals over the past 10 years.  But, like everyone else, each time I tried I discovered it was horrible and basically didn’t work.  I don’t know why video editing has remained elusive on the PC, but it has been broken for so long, I’m still a bit skeptical about Vista.  Sheepishly I admit, however, that I’m looking forward to trying this out.  Somewhat related, here is an article which says that Vista’s graphics/media upgrades will create $12 in economic growth for every $1 of vista earnings.  In other words, because it will be easier to create content, users will do more of it, and that will drive tech growth in other businesses, for peripherals, cameras, etc.  I hope he’s right – everyone is a winner!

(BTW – what do you think this gadget does after the countdown reaches zero?)

Every time I debug with someone else at their machine, they are surprised by this little trick.  So I will post it here.

In Windows programming, you often have Win32 calls which return an error, and you then need to call GetLastError() in order to find the real error number.  If you are in the debugger, you don’t need to modify your code to call GetLastError at that point. 

Instead, just add “@err” or “@err,hr” to your debug watch window.  Now it’s more like looking at errno.