wheresrhys

It can’t be for real, surely. Not even Microsoft is this naff.

On the bright side though, it does mean my wait to get a new laptop is nearly over; no way was i gonna get one with Vista installed.
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Not content with making the download of their latest browser a maze in a labyrinth in a rabbit warren, Once you’ve downloaded it and want to report something wrong with it they once again fail (though in a more minor way).

For added security many sites ask you for the answer to a pertinent question only you will know the answer to. CPP mess this up in a big way, and so do Microsoft. The choices of question are as follows:

• Mother’s birthplace
  Why not go for maiden name. In most cases that is 100% known by the child, but birthplace…? I’m fairly sure I know what mine is, but then there are all sorts of permutations – would you enter the name of the town, or the hospital name, or the town and country if they were born overseas. How are you supposed to remember which permutation you used?
• Best childhood friend
  Let’s see, it was definitely Scott… although we did fall out for a bit, so maybe James. But then again I only knew him from when I was 11, so maybe Gareth…
• Name of first pet
  The only question in the list that cuts the mustard.
• Favourite teacher
  Similar to best childhood friend. In general having an opinion question as a security question is borderline idiotic (though I do see how it prevents people from working out your answer based on factual research), as opinions change. Asking your opinion on something way back in the past has the advantage of being more likely to be immune to day to day fluctuations, but could nevertheless be prone to drifting as your rose-tinted glasses warp slowly with time.
• Favourite historical person
  On the face of it seems to be immune to day to day fluctuations, but could be changed by as simple an act as reading a magazine article.
• Grandfather’s occupation
  Do they not realise that everybody has two grandfathers?

I suppose you could argue that for each person only one option has to be a plausible candidate, but my point is that unless you assume the person has very unshakable opinions about the past, only two of the above are reliable. Honestly!

Below is a list of links to the browser download pages for each of the major web browsers:

• Firefox
• Safari
• Internet Explorer (ie)
• Chrome
• Opera

Each design is essentially the same – a little bit of text, some images (normally of the browser) and a massive link to download the latest version. All, that is, except for ie. (It also bears mentioning that the firefox page commits the usability cardinal sin of not actually mentioning it’s a web browser).

Here is a screenshot of ie’s page. It’s difficult to see on this small image (but click it for bigger), but I thin kit must be one of the most ill-thought out, though supremely important, pages I’ve ever seen:

• Despite ie7 still being the officially stable and sanctioned browser, the most prominent text and download link is for ie8.
• You will already have clicked “get it now” once from the ie home page, but the top part of the home page and the download page are exactly the same, so it looks like “get it now” is just a download link that doesn’t work.
• Once you figure out it’s not the download link you have to scroll down the page to actually download the software. Scrolling down to get to the most important bit of the page?! In the words of Kyle from South Park, “Really??!!”
• You have to choose your operating system in order to download an installer which then downloads components appropriate for your OS. Given that it ends up downloading additional files anyway, why not just make it a generic download that detects your OS and then downloads all the relevant components. Or even detect the OS with javascript, with the select box as a fallback.

It beggars belief that usability mistakes like this can be allowed through.

Having said that, I bet most users never see the page as ie updates automatically… but still!

On two not unrelated notes:

• I wish open source projects, in particular maybe the core design of sourceforge, would make use of prominent download buttons for the latest stable version, instead of the maze of  download links for every version under the sun. It woudl surely increase the use of what can be very useful tools.
• I downloaded ie7 finally as I needed it to install IETester , a great tool for installing ie5.5, ie6. ie7 and ie8 simultaneously on either windows vista or xp.