Why is there HTML in the title bar?

I wanted to edit this blog's template so the title could be a link back to the home page. I learned with this blog post that I could add HTML tags to the description field, maybe that would work for the title field also.

I tried and it worked, great! Now you can click the title to get back to the main blog page, just like most every web site. But wait, why is there HTML in the title bar now?

Great job Blogger.com! I know how I can fix this, so don't bother telling me how, but I think I'll leave it as an example of dumb UI.

Firefox is for experts only

Here is a great way to indicate your app is dumb, display this when starting:

Translation: What the hell, I don't know what's going on, I'm pretty sure Firefox is already running but it won't respond to me, I don't know what to do. You're an expert computer user since you're using Firefox, right? See if you can figure out how to end the process. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just reboot, that should fix things up.

You know which browser I'm using.

Every request a browser makes to a web server includes information about the browser itself: name, version, etc. This information is sent in the "User-Agent" header and can look something like this (for Internet Explorer): "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)". In fact there's a ton of documented User-Agent strings out there describing pretty much everybody and their mother.

But guess what? For human-viewable web pages, the entire User-Agent database can be reasonably reduced to a subset of, oh I don't know, five?

So for the love of all that is good, please tailor your website to the major browsers. When I'm visiting your site to download an application and I'm using Firefox, show me the steps to install using Firefox. It's not that hard, and it makes a big difference in the usability of your site.

Don't just show me this image regardless of my browser, because you know which browser I'm using.

The size of my family doesn't change very often

I spent a little bit of time on Expedia this evening pricing out cruises. I would have spent more time had Expedia not annoyed the piss out of me and forget how many kids I have (and their ages, which is required information) every time I picked a new cruise to checkout.

Maybe you could remember that bit of info Expedia? The size of my family doesn't change that often, there is absolutely no harm in assuming I still have two kids, ages 1 and 4, since the last time you asked me three minutes ago. On the off chance I do birth another kid since the last time you asked, that would typically be a very big event for me, and I'll remember to update the count.

After about five times, I started looking for a new place to shop. Great job Expedia!

Garmin says don't mix business and pleasure

Earlier this week my boss had a team cookout at his house. On my way there I fired up Garmin Mobile XT on my Windows Mobile phone for directions. Garmin software is typically very well regarded. My wife has a Nuvi in her car and we love it, that is why I got it for my phone even though there are free map application from Google and Microsoft.

One of the nice things about the Garmin app is you can browse your contacts and get a map to their address automatically. (what I used to think) I selected Contacts, found my boss, and got a dialog with his Work address (where I was already) and a giant GO button. Ok, but I want his home address...look around a bit...there is no way to select a Home address! What the hell?!? I guess Garmin doesn't want me to mix business and pleasure, I must not be allowed to socialize with business contacts outside of work. I guess that may be wise for some of them, but I should be allowed to decide that.

After a lot of cursing, I notice a really small unlabeled button in the corner of the screen. (Small buttons are perfect for mobile application that are used while driving!) I push it and get the full contact details, this must be where I select the home address. Yeah, right, his home address is listed, but no way to select it, just to edit it. This screen has a context menu, I display that and see a Show on Map option. Seems promising so I select it, Windows Live Maps launches and lets me pick Home or Work. Great job Garmin! Way to send me to your competitors product.

So now that I'm at home, sitting in a comfy chair, I try the app again and see if I was missing something, nope, doesn't appear so. I close Garmin and go to the standard Windows Mobile Contacts application, look at contact and discover on the Context menu a option to view in Garmin Maps that does let me select Home or Business. Genius! Why doesn't the contacts list within the Garmin app have that feature?!?

Use Quick Find in Firefox for less powerful searching

Firefox has two ways to search for text. The one you probably know about is by hitting Ctrl+F which pops a bar at the bottom to enter the search text. Along with the search field there are Next and Previous buttons to search up and down the page as well as a Highlight all and Match case checkboxes. All very useful options.

The second way to search in Firefox is for when you can't be bothered to hit two keys on the keyboard and require less powerful searching because you know what you're looking for only exists once on the page. Hitting the / or ' keys invokes the Quick Find bar which looks a lot like the other Find bar but has none of those crazy advanced options to get in the way.

The only reason to use Quick Find that I can fathom is that the dialog closes automatically so you don't have to hunt and search for that hidden Esc key or be confused by that X icon or any of those advanced options. If you are a unfrozen caveman, this is probably the way you want to search.

(I might have to address the Done text in those screen shots in a future post)

The Folly of Mozy

Ok, so it should be pretty apparent right now that I'm backing up to Mozy. What's not apparent is how long I have left in my backup. "Unknown"? WTF? Why even show it at all other than to just piss me off?

Then there's the Faster Computer vs Quicker Backups thing. Had I known that "Faster Computer" actually meant "Faster Internet" I could have shaved a nice day off of my upload time. I mean come on, every one and their grandma refers to their network connectivity as "My Internet": "My Internet is slow", "My Internet is down", "My Internet isn't working". Are you intentionally making this difficult?

And then the "Show this box after every successful backup" gem. So by "this box" you mean this dialog, right? Why do I need to see this box after a backup? To know that it's done? How about just a "Backup completed" box? And why do I only get to see this box after a successful backup? Do I not see any box after a failed backup? Or rather than seeing this box after a failed backup, will I instead see a box of kittens? I truly do not know...

Stupid Blogger Blog Editor

First real post comes courtesy of Blogger.com who hosts this site. I tried to edit the description to add some funny ironic code to really drive home the point of this site and got this error:

What the hell Blogger? Why would I expect that field was meant to hold HTML? It doesn't say anything about HTML. How about giving me a way to accept that description as static text, no, that would be too freaking hard for your developers.

About this blog

I'm always coming across dumb user interfaces in the world and wanted a place to bitch about it. After years of complaining to my wife who doesn't care in the slightest I finally created this blog so I can feel like someone might care. I also gave a few friends posting privileges.

I intend to complain about not just software and websites, but also about real products like cars and baby strollers. Like most critics, I'll point out the dumb a lot, but never offer any suggestions for improvements.

Hopefully it turns out I'm missing something completely and commenter's will point out what I'm doing wrong. However, their UI is still dumb.

Like with everything in life, whoever made the mistake I'm complaining about probably had some good reason or had to make some compromise. I don't care. The point is whatever they did is dumb and deserves to be mocked.