Of course, it's perfectly possible to make an application closable (with an "OK" button), but this is Forbidden if we are to be all standards-compliant.
Since as far as I know Pocket PC does not support execution in place (can anyone get me the definitive story on this?), this is is crazy.
What would help even with the existing situation would be if Microsoft provided good, clear goodlines for handling activate/deactivate situations. This is particularly lacking for the Compact Framework.
I've never heard a good explaination on why the X button minimizes the applications instead of closing them. I mean why wasn't there simply a minimize button and a close button? Too confusing?
This was a perfect example of how reasonable thinking can lead to an unreasonable result:
Most users get confused between close and minimize, even in the desktop world. What they really want is one, simple, "Go Away" button. Since people are already visually familiar with the X button, let's use that as the Go Away button.
Most users expect their software to remember what they were doing just before they told it to Go Away most recently. The easiest and fastest way to do this is to keep the program running.
Most users expect their software to act like the telephone: call someone, discuss, hang up; call someone else, discuss, hang up. They don't multitask, or even know what the word means.
Most users find the notion of something running "in the background" to be confusing, somewhat scary, and more than a bit suspicious (after all, what's it doing back there?). So don't let on to the fact that the software is still running: make them "relaunch" it to get back into it, and don't offer a task switcher.
Despite our claims to the Palm camp, 240 pixels wide ain't much space. The less buttons, the better.
The memory manager is smart enough to stop programs when it needs to, and programs are supposed to save session information when closed by the OS, so we can just leave things running until we need the space.
This all sounded quite reasonable back before enough people were using the devices to illustrate the cognitive gaps. But by that time it had become "The Microsoft Way" and was to be defended at any cost to the user.
Quote:
Originally Posted by karlth
Another massively stupid design decision by Microsoft is the lack of a generic "Cancel" button in their dialogs. Again I have never heard a good explaination for that "feature" either.
This one was always a bit more glaringly wrong-headed to me, but the justification went something like this:
Most users expect software to act like pen on paper. That is, they expect any changes they make to persist, without having to explicitly apply them. So all we need is the Go Away button.
Most users think programs are like people, and can intuit what their intent was. Having to select between OK or Cancel (or, worse yet, OK and Close), will just confuse them, because the software should know to just do What They Want (aka the Right Thing).
Most users don't understand the difference between a dialog and a main window (in fact, many developers don't, either :roll. So make them look as uniform as possible.
Since we already have a spot for the Go Away button, why not use that same location for the OK button?
Programs should be coded to realize when nothing on the form has changed. Since nothing has changed, it obviously doesn't require an apply, which obviates the need for separate OK and Cancel buttons.
Programs should be coded to discard or fix bogus input, as that is most likely What They Want.
Item 5, in particular, always struck me as obviously flawed. What about when I start to modify a form, and then decide not to apply it? Or I accidentally trigger a modification when I didn't want to? Or what about those Microsoft dialogs which require valid input before they'll Go Away (violating their own design guides, but details)? It's fairly easy to get into a dialog in WM where the only way out is to reset.
Now, the above may make the "target user" seem like an idiot, but I've seen plenty of non-idiots who treat their computers exactly this way. Power users, which most of us here almost certainly qualify as, often have trouble understanding just how mystical and confusing computers are to the average user.
Microsoft really was trying to simplify the UI. They failed miserably, but they had good intentions. FWIW, I've not seen it done any better on any other device. The old UNIX Apply/Close/Reset scheme was marginally better, but is largely forgotten in modern systems.
The minimize issue has always seemed to me to be one of an internal concept that ended up being defended at all costs. It sounds very good that the platform is designed for all your running apps to be instantly available when you want them and if memory gets scarce the OS intelligently releases less used apps and frees up for your new desired app.
But, there's been enough time now that users have harangued MS about this that it's obvious that MOST users want it changed. The fact that is hasn't changed is probably due to defending it internally, coupled with the size of the task for MS to change it. Personally, I don't see why it isn't user configurable so everybody would be happy.
Of course, we're never REALLY happy, are we?
__________________
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So, without changing their paradigm, Microsoft could add the "tap-n-hold X button opens a menu that lets you either minimize or close" to the existing "tap X button and it minimizes". They'd not be admitting failure, we'd get the functionality we want. It's still simple for the non-power users...
With all the smart people I know working at Microsoft, why are they coming up with these pig-headed decisions? Practically anything they named "Smart (insert anything here)" is not smart.
iMate 2 - I don't think there's anything in ROM as a task killer/switcher.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sven
If nothing else I'm sure you still have enough pull to comp her a copy of PocketPlus
Due to concerns about alarm triggering issues, I don't want to reccomend that solution. I don't have Pocket Plus installed on my Pocket PCs any longer.
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I've never heard a good explaination on why the X button minimizes the applications instead of closing them. I mean why wasn't there simply a minimize button and a close button? Too confusing?
Microsoft was trying to be as fast as Palm units, and with 1st generation Pocket PCs the only way to do that is to have the apps already running in the background to shave off the 1-2 seconds the app would take to start. They were short-sighted and committed to a design paradigm that is completely unnecessary today with the powerful Pocket PCs that we have.
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. So make them look as uniform as possible.
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