File: W95_WOE.TXT Guy Dunphy 25th May, 1997 Some comments on Windows 95, by an unbeliever --------------------------------------------- (continued, part 2) Windows Woes and the Microsoft Mindset -------------------------------------- Now that I've been using Windows 95 for a short while, I'd like to make some comments on the underlying mindset revealed in the features of Win 95. At first it was hard to put a finger on the nature of the unease I felt when using Win 95. Sure, new tools always feel uncomfortable, at least for a while, and I'm not silly enough to blame a tool for my own unfamiliarity with it. But this was something different - something much more fundamental and unpleasant. I thought Win 3.1 was bad, but Win 95 is downright awful! The nature of this awfulness is quite subtle, and I only gradually became able to identify the cause of my distaste for Windows 95. It lies not so much in any one of its many annoying features, or the arbitrary and irregular nature of the interface, or the forced chummyness of the names and messages, or the patronising tenor of the (so called) 'plug 'n play' (which has become known as 'plug 'n pray'). Somehow these things and more, give an intimation of a manevolent intent behind the curtain, as well as of Microsoft's glacial contempt for their customers' intelligence. The root of the matter is, this software leaves me feeling deeply insulted, and fearful for my ability to retain control of tools important to me. A computer operating system has become an essential aspect of modern life - something that many of our activities absolutely cannot proceed without. When we choose an OS, we are committing ourselves to a very great dependence on it, and an implied high level of trust that it will be able to do (and actually do) what we want it to. We expect the OS to perform as an agent that acts wholly in our personal interests. We trust it with a great deal of personal and confidential information, and rely on it to maintain all of the information that we generate and accumulate in the course of our (computer) work and leisure activities. In some respects, our computers and their contents become extensions of our own minds, an enhancement of our ability to deal with information. And the OS is a major component of this extension. Yet when I try to find a single word that best describes the Windows 95 operating system, the one which comes to mind is 'furtive'. Or any of its synonyms: deceitfull, dishonest, misleading, underhanded. The Windows GUI seems to have been designed more with an intent to produce an identifyable 'MS Windows way of doing things', than with any intent to produce a clean, efficient and obvious method for you to control your computer and your data. Worse, the 'MS way' reeks of an attitude that - We (MS) own the computer and OS, not you (the user). We will decide how its organised, and what it will be used for. In order to do this without interference from you, we will do our best to hide the inner workings of the system from you. This will prevent you from understanding whats really going on, and hence make it difficult or impossible for you to maintain any real control over your machine or the data in it. The "My Computer" icon is a sort of Orwellian double-speak. MS wants you to _think_ its still your computer. But actually, they're close to controling it completely. Mine is now renamed to "Computer", per Star Trek. Can you imagine Scottie saying "My Computer"? Or take the "MS Explorer" - where MS pretends that 'your' real file system on 'your' PC is but a part of the greater MS whole. And which you have to reconfigure from default to even see all the files and their true file names. That is, 'My Computer' (the file system) is one part of 'the desktop', and you must click 'View:Options:View:Show all files' and disable 'Hide MSDOS file extensions..' to even see reality. And the name: 'MS Explorer'. What, I need to put on my 'expedition' hat to go look in my own filing cabinet? This agenda of MS's (to keep users as far away from the reality of the underlying file system as possible) is a common thread that runs through many parts of their software. Crappy though DOS is, one gets the feeling that MS wants to take what little power and flexibility DOS had, away from users. Hence: - The increasing proportion of OS and general files that are 'hidden', the COPY and XCOPY commands that now won't copy hidden or system files, and the DIR command that won't simultaneously list _all_ files (only) and show their attributes. Also, ATTRIB won't touch attributes on 'rsh' files unless all three are reset at once. What exactly is the point of 'hiding' a file or directory, when anyone who knows how can still see it with the standard tools? All this does is to keep the ignorant from getting any wiser - by obstructing the novice user's ability to identify and manipulate system/hidden files. It also adds one more element of unnesessary complexity to the system. - The method of implementation of long file names, which makes MS file systems containing LFNs incompatible with earlier file manipulation tools. Such tools will either fall down when they find LFNs, or damage the LFN structures if any attempt to alter the directories is made. I expect this choice of method was deliberate, since causing old tools to fail means more upgrade $ for MS, and hinders the work of non-MS systems programmers. It would have been possible to implement LFNs using only the existing standard file structure, for instance by creating one plain text file in each directory, called say W95_LFN.LUT. This text file could contain 8.3 name to long file name lookups. The syntax could also have allowed future extensions, so later OS versions could add new file attributes, comments, file interlinks, etc. For example (one line from W95_LFN.LUT):- SOMEFILE.EXE; lfn=Find some file; diz=Utility to find some file or other; This way, all files remain compatible with old tools, plus LFNs and new attributes get copied along with 8.3 file names when using old tools. But no, transparency, user convenience, backwards compatibility and comprehensibility are things that MS does not like. No profit for them. - Still no scripting language. That was dropped in the transition from DOS (which at least had the pathetic 'batch' commands) to Windows 3.1. Now here we are given a version of Windows that has many cosmetic changes, but still lacks that most basic capability of a decent OS. Personally, I find it indescribably astounding that anyone could even suggest producing a supposed operating system that does not have a decent scripting language. In this, MS have committed a crime against humanity. - Non-orthogonality of the Windows 'desktop' paradigm, and the increasing distance between it and the heirarchical DOS file system that it really represents. In Win 95, directories are not even called that, they are 'folders'. There seems to be a 'look and feel' style policy to obscure where work, data and utility files get put. Especially to avoid asking the user where they wish to put things. The concept of default working directories, project paths, etc, seems to have been considered too difficult for the average user. By abstracting away from the underlying file system, and reducing user opportunities to control _where_ data is kept in their system, MS erodes people's ability to remain in charge of their data organisation. - The 'Start Menu' tree. This creates an entirely new and independent set of relationships between things that already exist (or could exist) as executable items in the file system (and therefore as standard icons.) The undesirability of such redundancy will be covered later, but for now, consider the assumptions and motives that might underly this addition. There are two possible motives imaginable:- 1. A desire to include something in Windows that was sufficiently distinct from the obvious and accepted GUI methods, to allow a good case for 'look and feel' legal protection. In other words, do something awkwardly to please the lawyers, and damm the users. This sort of attitude, while despicable, is a consequence of the nature of our economic system. It will take nothing less than a social revolution to eliminate it. 2. If MS believes that users are too dumb to initially choose a correct avenue of approach to their desired activity, when presented with an 'uncontrolled' (ie not by MS) array of folder/item icons. Then MS might conclude that the way to help the poor, confused user is to funnel them through one starting decision point for every task they may have. 'Just press START, and we'll remind you every time of everything you might need!' The conceptual and practical flaws in this reasoning are many. Conceptually, it is a rather fascist idea. Ultimately, most actions a user will initiate (sans scripting language) come down to clicking on an item - whether that be an item in a menu or a discrete icon. Now, it would be possible for every option present in the 'Start' menu tree to exist instead as an ordinary icon. Then the user would be able to place them at any desired position or depth in the desktop-folder heirachy. And then, without any 'Start' menu, there would be no dichotomy of method. No need for 'shortcuts'. Yet complete freedom of method of accessibility. The 'Start' tree substitutes a rigid straightjacket of a method. Practically, there is a serious problem with the 'Start' menu tree method. It works more or less when there are not many entries in the first few levels of the tree - ie in a virgin Win 95 installation. But after many tools have also been installed, the whole thing becomes extremely unwieldy. There are simply too many entries in each box of the menu, and the entries are randomly sorted. By introducing a new 'method of access to things', a need is also introduced for a whole new set of 'tidying tools' to deal with accumulated clutter in the new method. This shows a failure on MS's part to observe the golden rule of software: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Perhaps the 'Start' button decision tree might be a good idea if this OS was used exclusively by idiots, who rarely touched their computers. However, the rest of us find it annoying and insulting. We do not need or want a mental cattle chute. It makes Windows 95 look like an OS for the lowest common denominator. More on the 'Start menu' later. Then there is the matter of redundancy. Some things we use every day, such as language, contain a great deal of redundancy of information and/or method. In many instances this redundancy is a benefit, or a source of richness. However, in an operating system, the presence of multiple methods for achieving the same end is undesirable. Such 'method redundancy' tends to create a confused and irregular interface. Also, its presence suggests that the system was constructed in a patchwork, as components were added without much consideration of how they fitted in the overall set of operational capabilities. Some of the method redundancies present in Win 95 are:- - There are multiple paths to access the file system:- * 'My Computer' * 'MS Explorer' * 'Shortcut' icons * 'Start' menu tree - Utilities can be run via the 'Start' menu tree, shortcut icons, or via their entries in file lists. Shortcuts are so necessary because the 'primary' method (Start) of initiating actions is so very inefficient. Incidentally, what happens once there are impossibly _many_ items in the 'Start:programs' list? Does it sprout scroll bars? How do you find things in a long list? Can the items be manually re-ordered to group similar functions, etc? Having two, different ways of accessing things, creates a multitude of such questions - that really are a waste of time. Thanks to this redundancy, program icons (now called 'shortcuts' have had to grow little arrows, to show that they are actually shortcuts to a thing, not a representation of the thing itself. - Control Panel accessible either via 'My Computer' or Start:Settings:ControlPanel There are also many inconsistancies of method. Some examples:- - Icons for files (or shortcuts) can be changed easily, unlike icons for 'folders' (ie directories). Why shouldn't folders be allowed alterable icons? (Answer: because they are MS 'look & feel' sacred.) - 'Properties' of a program item icon shows where the items are in the true file system, as a full path. But the Properties of folders are much less informative. Right clicking on a folder on the desktop will tell you that it is "Location: Desktop". But where is that, really? The answer is that its in :\WIN\DESKTOP, and that the Properties for a folder only ever show the first parent directory name as its location. So a folder C:\UTIL\HW\DIAG shows Properties:Location as "HW". This suggests that MS would prefer us to only ever create 'folders' in the 'Desktop', and stay out of the rest of the filesystem. At least now folders can be nested, but why attempt to herd users into basing the root of their folder heirarchy in :\WIN\DESKTOP? - The 'Desktop' directory is itself a special case'. In Explorer it seems to open and display as a folder and contents normally. But in 'My Computer', it opens to the taskbar first, and you must maximise it to see the contents. Can't see it as a small window. Presumably because to allow two views (as desktop and files window) simultaneously would have led to difficult synchronisation problems. None the less, its an irregularity of method. - Can't have shortcuts to folders. Folders can be created anywhere in the file system, not just the desktop (as you'd expect, since they are just directories really). So why are shortcut icons to folders not allowed, the same as to executable items? - Icons like 'My Computer', 'Recycle Bin' and 'Inbox' cannot be manipulated in the same way as shortcuts, folder icons, and the 'Briefcase'. They seem to be considered 'MS features', that are too special to allow users to hide them in folders if they wish. They must remain on show on the desktop. Another case of 'look and feel' sacred cows. It used to be (in Win 3.1) that icons represented a file object of some kind, and folders represented directories. But the correspondence was not perfect, because folders could not be nested - unlike directories. This restriction was no doubt the result of a management/marketing directive, since it is so stupid. In Win 95, MS has greatly eroded the correspondence between the GUI and the underlying data organisation. Such abstraction away from the basic truth is very bad - it reduces people's awareness of and control over what is really happening in their machines, with their data. The icon types now are: * Shortcut - Represent executable utilities, etc. ie general file objects. Can put them in nested directories (ie folders.) Can change icons. Cannot represent folders. * Folder - Represent directories. Now can be nested, but cannot alter their icons. * 'W95 feature' - eg 'My Computer', 'InBox', 'Recycle Bin', Program Bar, etc. These cannot be put in folders. They're on the desktop, or nowhere. Their 'properties' behaviours are unique to each one. Can create a 'shortcut' icon to (some of) them, and put the shortcut in a folder. But deleting the original icon deletes the function/files, so then the shortcut is broken. Can't delete just the 'feature' icon. Hence there is no way to clear these things off the desktop while still keeping a way to use them. Obviously, the MS marketing dept have dictated that these are a part of the W95 look and feel. So people will damm well _look_ at the things, and _feel_ the power of MS. Whether they like it or not. The same goes for non-alterable 'folder' icons. Why the 'Start Menu' sucks -------------------------- I just installed Borland's C++ Ver5 (which will _only_ install under W95) and the result is annoying enough to prompt some more comments on the W95 interface. In Win3.1 such an installation (eg of BC++V4.5) results in a folder on the desktop, containing an icon for each tool and item of documentation. These can then be arranged in the opened folder's frame to suit personal preference. I like to group commonly used icons in one area, each adjacent to its help/doc icon. Other less important icons go in a bunch off to the side, and in general, related icons are adjacent to each other. The two dimensional plane allows multiple varieties of 'association by juxtaposition', clear seperation of independent groupings, and placement of the most important icons to visually stand out. Win 3.1's interface could be better (eg missing nested folders, no explicitly shown item associations, etc) but it can be lived with. Win 95 does add some good features (eg nested folders, shortcuts) but the 'Start Menu' structure is a _huge_ backwards step. It attempts to supplant the nested folder system with a tree of linear lists. The folder system in Win 95 has these features:- * Almost fully user customisable (except for fixed folder icons, and some 'system' exceptions). Allows:- - Rearrangement of the tree - things can be nested in any way. - The benefits of association by juxtaposition, in 2D planes. * A simple and uniform method of manipulation: Create/delete/copy/move folders and items/shortcuts. Modify icons and names. * Has an obvious and direct relationship to the underlying data structures: directories and files. This is very important. The KISS principle, the need for user comprehension and control of their data, all suggest that introducing any layer of abstraction or induredtion (between the basic GUI and the true data) is highly undesirable. In contrast, the 'Start Menu' system has these characteristics:- * Not fully customisable. - Root ('Start' button) is anchored and hard named. - 1st level contains fixed items - Programs, Documents, Settings, Find, Help, Run and Shutdown. I can't find any way to rename or relocate these. There _may_ be ways, but that they're hidden from typical users menas they may as well not exist. Other items can be added/changed, so this list is non-regular - not all its elements behave the same. The fixed portion is not even alpha sorted. Can add folders, but this ability is in a seperate, 'advanced' menu. More non-regularity. * Until you customise it, the Start Menu 1st level actually contains advertising! It has a window saying "Windows 95' banner down the left. The 'Properties:Show small icons' checkbox that gets rid of this has no hint that this is the one to use to delete the advert. * Whole thing is built on linear lists. If a menu level has 30 items, thats a 30 element list. It can be sorted in alpha, size, etc, but there is _no_ capability to group items by function or preference. This system is just acceptable when the lists are short, but when they become very long, and nested a few levels deep, it is an absurdly cumbersome way of accessing things. It completely eliminates any user ability to arrange items for convenience and intuitive access. Result: user will always create shortcuts for anything they use frequently. So whats the point of 'Start'? Answer: Its purely to provide an illusion of simplicity for novices. A method to depict in advertisements about 'getting into' computers, that non-computer users can easily visualise, remember, and imagine themselves doing. Fortunately it is possible to move sets of entries in the Start Menu into standard folders, but the method is a perfect example of the convolutions and inconsistencies that result when a system contains multiple ways of representing the same thing, and so must include methods for converting between them. For eg, how to move Start Menu items to a folder:- ::Properties:Start Menu Programs: Advanced:::: Or, you can 'Explore' the start menu (right click it), navigate to the start menu group you want, then do a right button drag of the folder to the desktop (or wherever) and select 'Move to here'. One thing _is_ consistant in Win 95 - whatever you want to do in it, always ends up turning into an exercise of trying to uncover what the reality is behind the facade of MS pretense and subterfuge. --------------------- The posting above grew out of some notes I made as I installed Win 95 for the first time. It was never intended to be a deep analysis of the state of public software development or society, where we are going wrong, and what can be done about it all. *That* is in a book I'm currently writing, and hope to release free on the net sometime in 1998. :-) Jan 6th, 1988 Also, the Win 95 was an early version, without all the 'internet-hype' additions of more recent versions. I've since had the 'pleasure' of having to install (twice) the Win 95 version thats 'internet ready'. No thanks to ID Software, for making Quake II only work in Win 95. (Not that it actually works well.) When I recover from that ordeal, it will be worth another commentary on the 'new' Win95, and the fresh nasties MS has included. ---------------------