the worst piece of software

[vorsprung]

The problem with this thread is that all software is a terrible

I should warn you that I work for "Oracle Cloud Infrastructure"

[quixoticgeek]

The problem with this thread is that all software is a terrible

I should warn you that I work for "Oracle Cloud Infrastructure"

ssh is quite nice.

vi is quite nice.

J

[drossall]

I grew up designing for 35mm slide projector with Harvard Graphics 3 for DOS.

I introduced the use of Harvard Graphics. Previously we'd sat with scalpels, cutting out pieces of coloured plastic to stick on OHP slides to liven them up a bit. Which was a challenge, considering the rather monochrome topic Before that, it had been 35mm slides.

I find PowerPoint OK. You can (or could, haven't checked lately) embed fonts, I think. But fonts are a whole area of challenge in lots of programs. If I had £1 for every time I've explained to a confused colleague that, in most contexts including HTML, setting a font is an instruction to use it, which can't be obeyed if the recipient machine doesn't have (access to) that font, I could retire. But PowerPoint is confusing and incoherent around animations and transitions. And ribbons should be consigned to the dustbin of history anyway, as they remove any possibility of coherent, hierarchical menu organisation.

Access is a strange beast. It always seemed to me that the point at which you start to need coding is all wrong. I'm no coder, nor a DB specialist, so I build layer upon layer of queries, trying to get the answer I want. It's sort of a point-and-click system where there isn't enough to point at. Great if you are a specialist, but it's sold as part of packages aimed at the rest of us. So I always need it to get things done, and yet it so often leaves me a bit frustrated. And it lacks string-manipulation options such as were in Monarch, if anyone's come across that.

I always reckon you can still tell that MS bought and adapted packages to make Office, from different companies. They never quite got consistent what's on which menu, or the details of how things worked. Maybe the ribbons were to resolve that!

[fruitcake]

Off topic. I was blown away when someone told me that any PDF viewer could be set to 'full screen' and used to present slides, as long as the slides in question were saved as the pages of a PDF file. You can use any program to create the slides, just print to PDF.

[hubner]

Itunes, used to back up an Apple phone to Windows. Completely unusable, probably intentional.

The problem with this thread is that all software is a terrible

I should warn you that I work for "Oracle Cloud Infrastructure"

And yet software writers are paid vast amounts of money. Well the IT industry is multi-billion dollar business. A piece of software that becomes an industry "standard" is a licence to print money.

[FifeingEejit]

The problem with this thread is that all software is a terrible

I should warn you that I work for "Oracle Cloud Infrastructure"

ssh is quite nice.

vi is quite nice.

J

:q

[FifeingEejit]

The problem with this thread is that all software is a terrible

I should warn you that I work for "Oracle Cloud Infrastructure"

I've heard the average employment period at Oracle is 2 years, after which very little has been achieved and former staff members run away as fast as they can.

Source: MS SQL Server Fansites admittedly.

[Legs]

MS Paint 3D.  Only useful for doing 2D rotations that you can't do in Paint.

I had the misfortune to have to use WordImperfect about 20 years ago...

[mrcharly-YHT]

Framemaker

Once upon a time, it was usable to deliver standardised layouts. They ditched the templating system and made a pile of poo.

PDF and acrobat reader. Please, let this bloatware just go away and die. The only good thing that can be said about reader is that it renders the PDFs well, maintaining resolution and clarity when zooming in (I had endless crap from a developer who insisted on using Foxit reader, and complained that the diagrams were missing words and lines. Only when viewed in Foxit.)

[perpetual dan]

Framemaker

Once upon a time, it was usable to deliver standardised layouts. They ditched the templating system and made a pile of poo.

That must have been after I swapped to LaTeX, as Framemaker in the mid-90s was really quite good once you figured it out.

[Afasoas]

<snip>

I'll nominate Chrome. And every piece of software built on top of it.

Multiple reasons for this:

1. It is a still reasource hungry, althougn not as bad as it used to be
2. A browser developed by a company responsible for raising most of its revenue through advertising is not a small conflict of interest
3. Continuing on the same theme, sheer dominance of Alphabet/Google and Chrome puts is not a good thing for web standards - see Google's recent attempts to replace Cookies
4. Sheer market dominance - nearly every other browser is based on it, as well as applications ranging from the slack desktop app to visual studio code
5. Security around browser extensions is still very lax and the market place is poorly policed
6. It breaks in lots of mysterious and wonderful ways - oftimes I've deleted user profiles to get it working again

So that's every modern web browser except for Mozilla Firefox then... (wait I said modern...)
<snip>

Exactly my point.

[Kim]

Off topic. I was blown away when someone told me that any PDF viewer could be set to 'full screen' and used to present slides, as long as the slides in question were saved as the pages of a PDF file. You can use any program to create the slides, just print to PDF.

I had a similar experience when I witnessed someone doing the same thing with postscript fies.  (This was back in the days when printing to PDF was a niche feature and PDF viewing meant Acrobat Reader on Windows/Mac only.)

[ian]

Off topic. I was blown away when someone told me that any PDF viewer could be set to 'full screen' and used to present slides, as long as the slides in question were saved as the pages of a PDF file. You can use any program to create the slides, just print to PDF.

I mostly prefer to present with a PDF these days rather than face random versions of Powerpoint that might rearrange your presentation on the fly.

[Ham]

For the last 20+ years (!!) I've been using Notes at work. Notes may be shite at much of what it attempts to do, and it may have a slightly ....idiosynchratic?... interface and multiple rabbit holes it can descend for obscure breakage purposes, so I was quite looking forward to the change to Outlook.

But, I'm here to tell you that for Mail, Outlook stinks by comparison. Now it may be that I need to learn more about it and how to fine tune to the way I would like it and there are one or two points that are better, but overall usability appears massively retrograde. Here's some of what I mean, in no particular order of significance.

- Don't seem to be able to get mail to list on a single line per mail, insisting on a content line below the name, something I may get used to, but currently inefficient
- Fast location against subject, name is impossible. Notes allowed you to type multiple characters with progressive search, Outlook just jumps to first character which is bloody useless. Search may be better, but long winded
- Directory lookup seems to be shite in Outlook. Type a name in the mail create - nothing. You have to open the directory box to get the address and click on the identified listing for it to work
- So many things need multiple keystrokes - eg, load pictures, accept a calendar invite
- Attachment location is much better, but launching directly can be shite, ending in a mangled viewer because it's MICROSOFT
- The calendar stinks big time, open an invite with a meeting link in it, and whaddya know? it is not clickable. Copy and paste.
- You can't see who else has been invited from the calendar entry, just the original invite.
- I really miss right click anywhere in a window to close, or esc

It amazes me that over the years I've heard that Outlook is so much better than Notes, it just isn't even if it is less clunky and a shallower learning curve.

[Ham]

Off topic. I was blown away when someone told me that any PDF viewer could be set to 'full screen' and used to present slides, as long as the slides in question were saved as the pages of a PDF file. You can use any program to create the slides, just print to PDF.

I mostly prefer to present with a PDF these days rather than face random versions of Powerpoint that might rearrange your presentation on the fly.

But but but but.....

How can you get your slide to fly in from the side? Or bounce in like a bunny on speed? You are boring.

[HTFB]

vi is quite nice.

Them's fightin words.

[ian]

Off topic. I was blown away when someone told me that any PDF viewer could be set to 'full screen' and used to present slides, as long as the slides in question were saved as the pages of a PDF file. You can use any program to create the slides, just print to PDF.

I mostly prefer to present with a PDF these days rather than face random versions of Powerpoint that might rearrange your presentation on the fly.

But but but but.....

How can you get your slide to fly in from the side? Or bounce in like a bunny on speed? You are boring.

That is indeed a considerable side benefit.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Framemaker

Once upon a time, it was usable to deliver standardised layouts. They ditched the templating system and made a pile of poo.

That must have been after I swapped to LaTeX, as Framemaker in the mid-90s was really quite good once you figured it out.

That is my point. It used to be quite good.

Later versions are shite.


Outlook?  It seems to be semi-decent as a meeting planner.

Has no concept of threaded conversations. That was a function available in other email 30 years ago.

[quixoticgeek]

vi is quite nice.

Them's fightin words.

You're not one of *those* people who's going to try and tell me that vim is better are you?

J

[ian]

Framemaker

Once upon a time, it was usable to deliver standardised layouts. They ditched the templating system and made a pile of poo.

That must have been after I swapped to LaTeX, as Framemaker in the mid-90s was really quite good once you figured it out.

That is my point. It used to be quite good.

Later versions are shite.


Outlook?  It seems to be semi-decent as a meeting planner.

Has no concept of threaded conversations. That was a function available in other email 30 years ago.

I cut my teeth on Framemaker + SGML years ago (early 2000s). It was an interesting approach to documents but actually once you got your head around how it worked, it did actually work. I'm surprised it still exists.

As far as I can tell, no two versions are Outlook are the same, even though they are the same versions. And settings and options, even by MS standards, have dispersed throughout the application. You want to set up a signature? It's like fucking Indiana Jones. They've probably booby-trapped it to be thorough.

[Kim]

Outlook?  It seems to be semi-decent as a meeting planner.

Has no concept of threaded conversations. That was a function available in other email 30 years ago.

It's also (if you include Outlook Express) almost singlehandedly responsible for people forgetting how to quote properly.

[Beardy]

Outlook’s replies above rather than replies below so reading an email string to get up to speed on something you’ve been asked to resolve is a torturous process of scrolling up and down. It gets especially irksome when the replies are long technical explanations of actions taken to date…

[FifeingEejit]

Having to read all the way through an email to read the response as outmoded text ui era netiquette requires is in itself a ballache compared to top Posting which requires scrolly reference.



Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

[TheLurker]

And yet software writers are paid vast amounts of money.

Falls to the floor laughing hysterically.

[Kim]

Having to read all the way through an email to read the response as outmoded text ui era netiquette requires is in itself a ballache compared to top Posting which requires scrolly reference.

Bottom posting is only marginally better than top posting in this respect.

Proper nettiquette would have people replying point by point, editing out the intervening guff (and preferably using a client that threads properly, to preserve the wider context).  Which requires consideration and - crucially - reading the whole message that you're replying to, so was probably doomed as soon as the suits started using it.