millennium | ten

I've posted on this topic before, but today I was thinking about the Start Menu again and am just constantly reminded of what a sewer it is. Granted it has improved a great deal with Windows XP and even more with Vista in some areas, but it still is guilty of high crimes of UI design. Specifically:

• Navigating cascading menus is hard. On Windows XP the Start menu is implemented as a one. Cascading menus are notoriously hard for users to navigate without a lot of hand-eye coordination with the mouse. Microsoft seems to have learned this lesson and remedied this in Vista by embedding a tree view inline.
• Every app and their cousin build ridiculously complex folder hierarchies, sometimes for no reason other than pure vanity. Having to burrow through hierarchies like this: Start->Programs->TurdSoft->TurdSoft Crapr 1.0->TurdSoft Crapr are not uncommon. How often do you really want all this junk in there? Also many Open Source tools and command line utilities that have no real front end install shortcuts to documentation here. Ick!
• Because of the crappiness of Windows' Uninstall UI ("Add/Remove Programs"), every app feels compelled to also litter the menu with Uninstall shortcuts, causing each program to require a subfolder just for itself - its launcher and its uninstall shortcut.
• On Windows XP, the menu takes an unbelievably long time to generate. I have no idea why it's so hard to display a list of items. For my system, the dropshadow of the menu draws then some time later the menu pops in. It can take over 2-3 minutes for the menu to actually appear.
• On Windows XP, applications starting can steal focus from the start menu and close it up. This happens at system startup if you have a bunch of apps configured to start automatically - their windows appearing cause the Start Menu to disappear, which is frustrating if you've just waited 3-4 minutes for it to populate!

Microsoft seems to have largely given up on "All Programs", and have improved the usability of this menu a great deal in Windows XP with the most often used programs section. But the ghetto within is a sorry reminder of good intentions gone wrong, abuse of privilege by application developers and the shortcomings of other aspects of Windows.

The HRC campaign comes out with some new and progressively slimier way to win by distorting to rules. It'd really be hard to top this one, though. Nice to know all the primaries and caucuses are just a charade, and that everyone who participated has just been wasting their time, though I guess the HRC campaign would argue that's what was happening in Florida and Michigan, so why not apply it nationally! Seriously though, this is the stuff of banana republics.

At what point does the Clinton family's lust for coronation become so great that it causes them to destroy the very things that they are supposedly fighting for? No politician is perfect, but this is just gross.

There's a song by the Kaiser Chiefs called "I Predict A Riot", and it seems applicable now.

It isn't a victory if you're the only name on the ballot...

If the Democratic party leadership is unable to exercise control of its members through the use of whips (as is customary in many other governments), then why all the blustering about impeachment being off the table?

Last time I wrote, "It seems the DNC would trade the disenfranchisement of an entire country with that of voters in a couple of states." The cynics would say this sort of thing is nothing new in American politics - see the Florida debacle of 2000. But among all camps, I had hoped the Democrats would try and distance themselves from this sort of practice.

The problem facing Howard Dean now is as follows. Obama has been able to rally a huge turnout to support him, including a large number of young and first time voters. These voters have been electrified by his message. My theory is that these voters may not turn out to support Clinton as the nominee, especially if her campaign ends up stealing the nomination via back room deals. At that point, the despair will be tangible, and I don't expect this generation of voters will forgive or forget easily. Nor will many of them fall into line behind Clinton, because so many of them are responding to specific elements of his message. While I don't know what they'll vote for McCain, I think it's definitely likely that many would just abstain completely. If the race remains close, as it looks to be, Dean should tread carefully, because a generation of Democratic voters could be in the balance.

Disclosure: I favour Obama, but I can't vote, so I just sit on the sidelines and throw peanuts. The specific area of his policy I like the most are his positions on network neutrality and government transparency. Transparency is key to successful, healthy open source projects, and I my hope is that it would help heal the fractured relationship between the government and the people, too.

Now there's talk that the DNC may allow Michigan and Florida's delegates to count - that after several campaigns withdrew their names from the ballot in Michigan, and all candidates avoided campaigning in both states.

Words fail me really, but it seems the DNC would trade the disenfranchisement of an entire country with that of voters in a couple of states. If they do this, and it swings the nomination one way or another, I sincerely hope it causes the party to break apart and ultimately destroy itself.