Microsoft

Design failure by design

• Posted by Rob (#1) on March 2, 2007 12:19 CET

Earlier this week I was a happy man. I've been working on a new web site and everything worked as expected. The Javascript/AJAX form updates worked wonderfully. The CSS stylesheet rendered exactly the same in every major browser I could get my hands on (Firefox, IE6, IE7, Safari, Konqueror). Life was good.

So what happens the very first time I show the page to a random friend? Yes, indeed, you guessed right. The design looks like crap.

I seriously wish I could just tell potential users of the site to get a recent, decent browser.. but the site targets a large audience so marketshare cannot be ignored. So it's back to the drawing board and back to endless testing to ensure even older Microsoft products render the site a-okay.

• PermaLink: Design failure by design
• Tags: CSS, Microsoft, Internet Explorer
• Post comment

Windows Vista Voice Recognition

• Posted by Rob (#1) on July 29, 2006 23:43 CEST

Microsoft is funny:

Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.

Good thing Captain Kirk has Uhura to punch in the numbers.

• PermaLink: Windows Vista Voice Recognition
• Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, voice recognition, Star Trek
• Post comment

Microsoft embraces ODF

• Posted by Rob (#1) on July 6, 2006 16:17 CEST

For the past decade Linux users like me often had to go through all sorts of tricks in order to get Microsoft's proprietary documents working. Import and export filters have improved a lot during the years, but maybe in the future not even those will still be necessary. After all, Microsoft is working on support for the Open Document format:

The initiative covers the Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs from the Office software suite.

The prototype of the first tool to translate between formats will be made available as a free download on 6 July.

Seems like hell just froze over.

(By the way, can anyone explain to me the remaining purpose of KWord now that OpenOffice.org integrates quite nicely with KDE?)

• PermaLink: Microsoft embraces ODF (3 comments)
• Tags: KDE, Microsoft, OpenOffice.org, ODF, KWord
• Post comment

Rip This! Repealed

• Posted by Rob (#1) on December 7, 2004 11:59 CET

Nevermind, KDE has put me in bitch mode again due to a KMail error, erm, success, erm... puzzled look.

Encrypted message (decryption not possible)
Reason: Crypto plug-in "openpgp" could not decrypt the data.

Error: Success

Not just Microsoft then.

• PermaLink: Rip This! Repealed
• Tags: KDE, Microsoft, error messages, OpenPGP
• Post comment