Things are never perfect. We always want things to be the way we want it to be. We are never satisfied and I guess that’s the nature of man. There are many things that I wish were different than what they are right now. But, I have chosen the top 5 which are soon becoming my pet peeves and this post is not meant to bring down anyone or anybody’s work but to bring to light what is needed.
Without much delay, I will start listing my top five pet peeves regarding computers and web.
1. Restart Firefox to install extension
I am a strict firefox user which means no room for IE. I usually have six to seven tabs open in firefox throughout the day and maybe weeks as well. When I find interesting extensions, I would want to install them on my firefox. But, to do so, I will need to restart my firefox which ticks me off. Restarting firefox would make me log into the websites that I browse throughout the day.
We are in the age where anything is possible. We have web pages updating without refreshing the webpage as a whole (Ajax) and technology that could detect my presence to turn off certain things when I am not around. It would make a web designers life a whole lot simpler if the developers at Mozilla could build firefox which could install extensions without restarting and hence making firefox more dynamic.
2. Open Link in a New Tab (HTML)
I wonder how often HTML is updated. I previously mentioned how extensively I use firefox. Another pet peeve of mine is when some of the links open up in a new window as opposed to a new tab. New Window is old school and I am certain many people would like to see things opening in a new tab.
I am sure that most of us know that target=”_blank” opens the link in a new window. It’s time to add a new similar syntax (target=”_tab”) to open the link in a new tab. It should be easier to incorporate this feature in HTML as the new IE is featuring tabs as well. I know that Javascript can open a link in a new tab but there is nothing better than HTML implementing it.
3. Restart Computer after Installation
“Thank you installing our program. Please restart computer to start using our product”. This is one of the common messages that one may receive if Windows is the Operating System.
Being a PC user, Windows makes you restart your computer after certain installations. This means all my favorite programs that I am running should be terminated. Sometimes we are expected to reboot after uninstallations as well. Since I have my automatic updates turned on, it makes me restart at least 4 times a week. This is seriously annoying. I hope somebody from Microsoft is reading this piece.
4. Registration at every website
This might technically sound impossible on the web but it is something that could be given a good thought. Suppose I want support for some XYZ product, I am required to register at their website and I will need to register at each and every support forum if I need to use it. This means multiple usernames and passwords and great confusion.
Would it not be really cool if we had to just register at one place and use the same registration at all websites and especially forums. If this could be implemented somehow, we could have one online identity which could be recognized anywhere online.
Gravatar comes very close to this concept. It gives users a superficial identity which could be used on different websites to comment. It doesn’t do anything with registration but attaches an identity based off of your email address. If this concept could be extended to registration, things will be superiorly simple online.
5. Cross IMing
AIM, MSN, GTalk, Yahoo, Jabber and the list goes on and on. Once again multiple registrations and multiple softwares to install.
I don’t have a problem with multiple registrations for the IMs but I would like to see interoperability between different IMs. For Ex : If I have Gtalk and somebody else has Yahoo, my Gtalk server should be able to talk to the Yahoo server without any additional tweaking.
I know that there are softwares like trillian and gaim that can install multiple IMs on the same piece of software but you cannot talk from yahoo to AIM or any other cross IM. The feature of cross IMing would once again give us a single identity on IM that could be used anywhere and for everything.
I could go on for ever listing but I will keep that for my blog. If you would like to share some of your thoughts, we can maybe make a list of pet peeves of the people who think alike.
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June 9th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Microsoft Passport was created for the purpose of #4. It works (worked) great, but b/c it was Microsoft and involved privacy, it is dying on the vine.
Hal
June 9th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Pet peeve #6: People that complain, and then don’t do anything. You have made great points, now figure out how to make things work. If you are going to expect everyone else to do the work…wait a minute is this my boss? Mark? Is it you?
June 9th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Firefox has a preference setting that will deal with #2. Read, learn, evolve.
June 9th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
when i talked about the firefox new tab, i was talking about html doing it directly rather than firefox modifying the actual code….
June 10th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Use the session manager extension to deal with 1). It will allow you to save your browsing session and pick up where you where after restarting firefox. Just another reason to use a real browser
June 16th, 2006 at 11:30 am
People have beaten me to most of these, but still:
#2 - Mark has it right. It’s not a matter of Firefox modifying the HTML of the page - it just treats a “New Window” request as a “New Tab” request. This solves your problem. Why complain about web designers, if you’ll never see the problem again?
#3 - Kindly explain, when you’re writing a program that requires a major registry change, and therefore alterations to the ACTIVE KERNEL, how you’re expected to handle it without a restart? This is not unique to Windows. You can’t change active code unless you want to risk a segmentation fault and permanent (ie. system restore-requiring) damange. Saying “We can do anything nowadays” is very much like saying “We can put a man on the moon, so why can’t we make a perpetual motion machine?” If you want a light-weight OS that allows that, write it yourself. I dare you.
Similarly, with #4, why don’t you start up a company like Verisign? It’d only take a billion or so dollars in capital, and.. oh, yes, the NSA would only need to secure one bit of information to know EVERY SITE YOU’RE REGISTERED WITH ON THE WEB. Hmm.. This seems inherently broken, for the sake of convenience.
Your pet peeves are at most minor inconveniences which can be circumvented with a bit of code, or alternately, essential components of the system in which they work, by virtue of being the best technique for the job. Quit your whining.
June 19th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Perhaps a solution to your 3) item would be a persistant restart?
I generally just bookmark all my tabs (at once), restart, then reopen all my tabs (at once) from the single bookmark and continue on. I guess it would be nice if Firefox just did that automatically on the restart, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
John (Dunlop) - I was actually unaware that plug-ins require a major registry change and alterations to the active kernal - that would quickly become a pet peeve of my own! :-) Shouldn’t a plug in simply implement a given interface (which I think it is) and then be instantiated late?
September 28th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Here is one, and I am surprised that other people don’t complain about it:
You can create a document in Word, you can modify a document in Word, but you can’t delete a document in Word. This has been my pet peeve since my first days of computers. I used to do training and went through the steps of using Word. I would always get the question, “ok, how do I delete it?”. Oh, go to a different program (explorer/my computer), trudge through the directory structure, find the file you just created, and delete - oh by the way, it cannot be deleted because you still have it open… Argh
I know it is a whine, but I don’t get it?
October 18th, 2006 at 12:36 am
RE: Not being able to delete documents in word… of course you can!
Simply close the document using the indivdual document’s close button, not the program’s, then go to either save as or open and find the document, select, press delete.
You really dont need to go to explorer to do this.