DAMN YOU IE! You pile of crap, this is the last time you ruin a perfectly good blog by switching pages by opening a link in the wrong window, or going back when you weren't supposed to, or going to a page that another app opens. I can think of like 5 or 6 times when IE has done this to me, only once was it my fault when I hit backspace by accident when the cursor wasn't in the edit box. I'm just sick of it. I thought this thing was supposed to not lose my data in design or HTML view.
While on the topic of IE...
- I'm sick of having to clear my cache when JPG's start to only have the BMP option available when I do Save Picture As.
- I'm sick of having IE stop responding while clearing the cache.
- I'm sick of corrupt ZIP files.
- I'm sick of view source not working when it's supposed to.
- I'm sick of not having a download manager.
- I'm sick of not having a cookie manager.
- I'm sick of hyperlinks not opening right because there's a hidden process running then killing that process only to get every single link that I clicked previously pop up instantly once that hidden process dies.
- I'm just plain sick but would rather not go on about IE.
So not directly IE related...
- I'm sick of Flash movies with their ridiculously loud sounds or music or dialog during Flash ads on various sites. Give me an f'ing volume control and mute and remember those damned settings permanently.
Oh and what the hell, MSN Messenger.
- I'm sick of failed file transfers one minute then working transfers the next. Fixed the damned protocols the next time you decide to kill our service in the process of upgrading them yet again!
- I'm sick of voice not working so often or only working after an hour of trying various fixes. Even with 3 MVP's and the god of Messenger helping voice still refuses to connect 90% of the time. The only thing that saves it is that when it finally does connect the quality is amazing and will usually continue to work fine for hours (max time on voice for me is 2 days and some hours).
- I'm sick of the scroll bug (fixed for sure in 7?).
- I'm sick of the fact that I need to install Messenger Plus! to get decent logging that doesn't randomly decide to miss messages.
I'm sick of getting messages about not being able to add contacts to my list because it's full. And NO, I will never pay for more contacts so don't even think about it.
- I'm just plain sick of the dodgy service that is behind Messenger. Forget trying to provide fancy little emoticons and games and all the other crap that doesn't matter, get the Instant Messaging working right first!
Now for the pathetic part. Think of the two most popular and used Microsoft applications, two applications that I'm sure nearly every Microsoft employee uses on a daily basis. Yet these two applications are some of the worst they have. IE is just a pile of crap and it's not moving anywhere. Wow, popup blocker and ActiveX prompting provided by Service Pack 2. Get real. Just because you've got the #1 browser doesn't mean you can just sit back and decide that you'll release a minor update in a Service Pack then another in two years time in Longhorn. I hate having to install Firefox; I don't want to install another app for something that should be working excellently in the OS. Start that wonderful innovation engine and give us some regular updates besides security fixes.
MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger... Well I'm not even sure who direct this to since I can't remember the state of the product teams at the moment. I loved the recent weekend outage, which was just brilliant. If it wasn't for the fact that I've got a plugin that tells me when people open and close conversation windows I would've never known that people were even trying to contact me, messages appeared to the sender as if they went through fine since the non deliverable message would come 5 minutes later by which time the sender probably already closed the window. Why does it seem like the MVP for this product knows more about what's going on with the product as a whole than some of the internal people do? Doesn't anyone that actually does work on this product use it on a regular basis and notice their own bugs? Here's a suggestion for every MSN Messenger team member. Quit using Outlook and email for a week. Use nothing but your product for communication and file sharing. Have every meeting with every member in the conversation window (oh and make sure it's logged on every machine for comparison later). Then go back and fix every damned bug that you'll surely come across. This product is probably the most used product MS has on a daily basis yet it seems like there is little to no attention given to making it the best it can be by fixing the bugs and ensuring the service stays up all the time.
Anyway, enough for this rant, I was going to do my laundry after writing a mildly amusing blog but then IE pissed me off and ruined my otherwise pleasant day.