David Louis Edelman David Louis Edelman

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Posts Tagged 'Microsoft'

  1. Building the Perfect User Interface (Part 3)  •  February 10, 2008
    We've got the two extremes of User Interface Hell: the world of the benevolent dictator, where your control over your environment is deceptively limited; and the world of ultimate freedom, where you've got so much control that your ability to get anything accomplish is equally limited. Both of those extremes are equally unlivable; and you'll notice that what those futures share in common is a lack of common-sense user interface.
  2. Building the Perfect User Interface (Part 2)  •  January 31, 2008
    (Read Building the Perfect User Interface, Part 1.) In my first ramble about user interface, I used the toaster as an example of something that is erroneously thought to have a perfect user interface. Perhaps a more apropos example for most techies is the Internet search engine. Think of any piece of information you’d like to know. [...]
  3. Windows Vista Frustrations  •  February 23, 2007
    I've got a new part-time job, and along with that job came a brand-new Dell PC that came with Windows Vista Ultimate preinstalled. Here are my first impressions about the good and the bad.
  4. Windows Vista and Easy Security  •  February 1, 2007
    I’ve owned and continuously operated Microsoft PCs since that clunky 8086 behemoth running MS-DOS 3.3 that I took to college with me in 1989. It ran at a sizzling 6 MHz, unless you pressed the big white button labeled “Turbo” on the front, and then — look out! — 12 MHz. (Why you would ever [...]
  5. Look Ma… No Program Menus!  •  July 31, 2006
    It’s pretty much official at this point: Microsoft is ditching program menus. By program menus, I mean that narrow bar at the top of every program in MS Windows which usually starts with “File” and ends with “Help.” These menus have been a part of day-to-day computing experience since the first Macs in the ’80s, and [...]
  6. Douglas Coupland’s “Microserfs”  •  June 26, 1995
    This book review was originally published in the Baltimore Evening Sun on June 26, 1995. Disregard that old phrase about how you can’t judge a book by its cover when you read Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs. The 33-year-old Canadian’s novels are so accurately conveyed by their packaging that sometimes I wonder whether Coupland’s just hacking out text [...]