OT: Is it me?

I'm an IT professional. Worked in the game all my working life (almost, and
discounting various jobs done as a student, teacher training, and in out of
the way places on the planet where they didn't have electricity, let alone
computers...), 40 years. Without being immodest,  I consider myself
competent, and over the years, people have paid considerable sums of money
to get my opinion on things IT, and help them solve problems.

So, when I noticed that one thread in this forum was getting pretty long and
it was becoming tedious to have to scroll down it to find unread messages, I
decided: "No problem, I can deal with this..." (I'm sure many of you have
thought exactly the same words, about two milliseconds before the house of
cards came falling down.... :-))

I decided a good way would be to get Outlook to simply delete all messages
more than one month old. (You can see I gave a great deal of thought to
this...). What if I need to reference an older message? No problem; GOOGLE
Groups archives all the dribble we write here, and it is enshrined for
future generations (I'd love to know what they make of it in say, 500
years... :-)) OK, safe to put a rule based filter into Outlook Newsgroups.
Looked up the Help... did it.(About 30 minutes all up... I don't rush, and
consider each step carefully when going into "unexplored territory" (i.e.
stuff I haven't done before)).

Took another look at the thread. Sure enough, all the messages older than 30
days were removed. But there were so many posts, it STILL got pretty tiring
on the eyes scrolling down it and looking for the ones in bold print...

Now, I have learned (and I remember trivia like this), that if I press
control/T while in a topic, it marks all messages in that thread as read.
(This is useful when I read a message in a thread and decide I REALLY don't
want to participate...). Surely there has to be a Ctrl key combination that
will simply move to the next UNREAD message in the thread...? Searched
Help... Nope. Can't see one. Tried Help from a different angle and Hey!
Presto!

There is an option on the View menu that lets you see ONLY unread
messages... Took all of 2 seconds to implement. :-) I can flick it on and
off as necessary, so if I want to read "context" message which I have
previously read, again, no problem.

I am posting this here because there are a number of interesting conclusions
to be drawn:

1. Nothing is ever easy. (If it is, as in this case, a highly paid
consultant will make it difficult...:-))
2. Even simple, user friendly, GUI based software like Outlook, has so many
options you can't know them all. [I guess, if I had ever been on an Outlook
course - has anybody? - they would have gone through ALL the options on ALL
the menus. Unfortunately, the thought of paying good money to have that kind
of tedium inflicted on me, makes me decide to do it myself...In retrospect,
this might not always be a good decision. I'll be looking at MS Project in a
new light on Monday and may allocate 10 minutes a day (that's about all I
can stand at any one time) to explore specific menus and options that I
don't use.]
3. Even smart people sometimes do stupid things. There is no monopoly on
foolishness, or being excluded from it.
4. When designing simple, user friendly, GUI based software, make sure the
Help file is fully indexed and useful. (I have actually spent more time
writing Help for some components, than I spent in actually developing them.)

Experience may be the best teacher, but her fees can be very high...

Pete.

On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 14:31:38 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@enternet.co.nz> enlightened us:

>I'm an IT professional. Worked in the game all my working life (almost, and
>discounting various jobs done as a student, teacher training, and in out of
>the way places on the planet where they didn't have electricity, let alone
>computers...), 40 years. Without being immodest,  I consider myself
>competent, and over the years, people have paid considerable sums of money
>to get my opinion on things IT, and help them solve problems.
>
>So, when I noticed that one thread in this forum was getting pretty long an
d
>it was becoming tedious to have to scroll down it to find unread messages, 
I
>decided: "No problem, I can deal with this..." (I'm sure many of you have
>thought exactly the same words, about two milliseconds before the house of
>cards came falling down.... :-))
>
>I decided a good way would be to get Outlook to simply delete all messages
>more than one month old. (You can see I gave a great deal of thought to
>this...). What if I need to reference an older message? No problem; GOOGLE
>Groups archives all the dribble we write here, and it is enshrined for
>future generations (I'd love to know what they make of it in say, 500
>years... :-)) OK, safe to put a rule based filter into Outlook Newsgroups.
>Looked up the Help... did it.(About 30 minutes all up... I don't rush, and
>consider each step carefully when going into "unexplored territory" (i.e.
>stuff I haven't done before)).
>
>Took another look at the thread. Sure enough, all the messages older than 3
0
>days were removed. But there were so many posts, it STILL got pretty tiring
>on the eyes scrolling down it and looking for the ones in bold print...
>
>Now, I have learned (and I remember trivia like this), that if I press
>control/T while in a topic, it marks all messages in that thread as read.
>(This is useful when I read a message in a thread and decide I REALLY don't
>want to participate...). Surely there has to be a Ctrl key combination that
>will simply move to the next UNREAD message in the thread...? Searched
>Help... Nope. Can't see one. Tried Help from a different angle and Hey!
>Presto!
>
>There is an option on the View menu that lets you see ONLY unread
>messages... Took all of 2 seconds to implement. :-) I can flick it on and
>off as necessary, so if I want to read "context" message which I have
>previously read, again, no problem.
>
>I am posting this here because there are a number of interesting conclusion
s
>to be drawn:
>
>1. Nothing is ever easy. (If it is, as in this case, a highly paid
>consultant will make it difficult...:-))
>2. Even simple, user friendly, GUI based software like Outlook, has so many
>options you can't know them all. [I guess, if I had ever been on an Outlook
>course - has anybody? - they would have gone through ALL the options on ALL
>the menus. Unfortunately, the thought of paying good money to have that kin
d
>of tedium inflicted on me, makes me decide to do it myself...In retrospect,
>this might not always be a good decision. I'll be looking at MS Project in 
a
>new light on Monday and may allocate 10 minutes a day (that's about all I
>can stand at any one time) to explore specific menus and options that I
>don't use.]
>3. Even smart people sometimes do stupid things. There is no monopoly on
>foolishness, or being excluded from it.
>4. When designing simple, user friendly, GUI based software, make sure the
>Help file is fully indexed and useful. (I have actually spent more time
>writing Help for some components, than I spent in actually developing them.
)
>
>Experience may be the best teacher, but her fees can be very high...
>
>Pete.
>
>

Unfortunately my employer insists that we use MS-Outlook for our
email.  I hate it.  Most of my colleagues hate it.  None of us have it
on our personal computers.  We call it MS-Lookout (cause you're never
really sure what it is going to do).  Others call it MS-Outhouse.  As
much as I dislike it for email, I can't imagine trying to use it for
usenet.  It is, as I think Pete discovered, not intuitive in its use
nor logical nor user friendly.  And let's not even get into security
features/safeguards.

I guess I'd say if you have a choice, choose something else.

Regards,
////
(o o)
-oOO--(_)--OOo-


"Start every day with a smile and get it over with."
-- W.C. Fields
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remove nospam to email me.

Steve

It wasn't my intention to start a Browser war, Steve :-)

I feel the problem I had was entirely my own and no real fault of the
software. I've also used Netscape and it has just as many options.

The problem was in my mental approach to the problem... I didn't think it
through because I decided it was pretty trivial. If I had thought about it I
should have realised that the first place to look would be the View menu...

I like Outlook because I'm used to it and it works fine for me. If I got
used to Netscape I'd probably like that just as much.

I have also experimented with Mozilla Firefox and I really like that, (it
does seem to be very stable and is more user friendly in the messages it
gives you), but there is a degree of inertia that I would have to overcome
touse one Browser at work, and a different one at home.

It is simpler for me to use one Browser. I guess I'm just not passionately
anti-MS.

Pete.


"SkippyPB" <swiegand@neo.rr.NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
 news:6ocis1ts0uq7ojp15tmj8kpjnrahiij8l0@
4ax.com...
> On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 14:31:38 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
> <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> enlightened us:
> 
>
> Unfortunately my employer insists that we use MS-Outlook for our
> email.  I hate it.  Most of my colleagues hate it.  None of us have it
> on our personal computers.  We call it MS-Lookout (cause you're never
> really sure what it is going to do).  Others call it MS-Outhouse.  As
> much as I dislike it for email, I can't imagine trying to use it for
> usenet.  It is, as I think Pete discovered, not intuitive in its use
> nor logical nor user friendly.  And let's not even get into security
> features/safeguards.
>
> I guess I'd say if you have a choice, choose something else.
>
> Regards,
>          ////
>         (o o)
> -oOO--(_)--OOo-
>
>
> "Start every day with a smile and get it over with."
> -- W.C. Fields
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Remove nospam to email me.
>
> Steve
>

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:19:22 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@enternet.co.nz> enlightened us:

>
>It wasn't my intention to start a Browser war, Steve :-)
>
>I feel the problem I had was entirely my own and no real fault of the
>software. I've also used Netscape and it has just as many options.
>
>The problem was in my mental approach to the problem... I didn't think it
>through because I decided it was pretty trivial. If I had thought about it 
I
>should have realised that the first place to look would be the View menu...
>
>I like Outlook because I'm used to it and it works fine for me. If I got
>used to Netscape I'd probably like that just as much.
>
>I have also experimented with Mozilla Firefox and I really like that, (it
>does seem to be very stable and is more user friendly in the messages it
>gives you), but there is a degree of inertia that I would have to overcome
>touse one Browser at work, and a different one at home.
>

I've been using MS-Outlook for over 15 years and still don't like it!
On my personal computer I use Agent for Usenet and Eudora Pro for
Email.  I used to use Netscape almost exclusively for browsing but the
last few releases left me unsatisfied.  So I've switched to FireFox
and like it a lot.  Of course, because I have Windows on my computer,
I have to have Internet Explorer as well, but I never use it unless I
run across a page that just doesn't work with Firefox.  On my work
computer once again we have no choice and have to use IE.

I guess my point is familiarity doesn't always lead to affection :)


>It is simpler for me to use one Browser. I guess I'm just not passionately
>anti-MS.
>

Well I'm not sure I'm passionately anti-MS but I was very happy with
DOS :)


>Pete.
>
>
>"SkippyPB" <swiegand@neo.rr.NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
> news:6ocis1ts0uq7ojp15tmj8kpjnrahiij8l0@
4ax.com... 

Regards,
////
(o o)
-oOO--(_)--OOo-


"Start every day with a smile and get it over with."
-- W.C. Fields
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remove nospam to email me.

Steve

In article <42r2jvF1irl5pU1@individual.net>, "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> writ
es:
>
> Now, I have learned (and I remember trivia like this), that if I press
> control/T while in a topic, it marks all messages in that thread as read.
> (This is useful when I read a message in a thread and decide I REALLY don'
t
> want to participate...). Surely there has to be a Ctrl key combination tha
t
> will simply move to the next UNREAD message in the thread...?

In the beginning there was readnews, and it was primitive - basically
it scrolled through available messages one at a time.  That was fine,
when there were only two Usenet hosts ("duke" and "unc").  Then vnews
came along, which displayed messages using terminal controls for
character positioning - it was "full screen".  And Usenet users looked
upon it and saw that it was Slightly Better, but not really very Good.

So Larry Wall, who later blessed or afflicted (jury's still out) us
with Perl, created rn, the first "improved" Usenet user agent, in
1984. And rn included amazing new features like "mark this whole
thread read", and more importantly it introduced the world to
killfiles, which let us mark as read messages we never even saw,
based on such judge-by-its- cover features as the subject line and
author.  That made every Usenet user tyrant of his own little
kingdom, and it was Damn Good.

Then came trn (the first newsreader with "threading", that is sorting
messages by their References headers), and slrn, and nn, and xrn
(which is what I still use), all of which added new features to rn.
And they all followed Wall's Principle of Software Design, which was
clear in rn, and that is: Put in the features that I want, and make
them immediately accessible, and hang any sort of user-interface
consistency.

Thus rn-derived user agents have immediately-accesssible (usually a
single keystroke, with no modifiers) commands to do the things that
Wall and the like-minded want to do frequently: go to the next unread
message, kill a thread, compose a followup, and so forth.  And they
feature commands designed for the way Wall liked to read news, like
"skip forward in this message until you find a line that starts with
a different character than the one this one starts with".  Why would
you want a single-key command like that?  Because if people follow
the One True Quoting Style, then that command skips over the current
chunk of quoted text to the new text below it.  (Indeed, this
behavior is explicitly recommended in Henry Spencer's Son of 1036,
which is the closest thing to a Usenet usage guide we're likely to
ever get.)

And then came Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wild Web and AOL and
Eternal September, and suddenly there was a market for - horrors! -
GUI newsreaders, and (in some eyes worse) GUI kitchen-sink apps that
combined newsreaders with mail user agents and web browsers and all
manner of nonsense.  (Many feel Emacs is really to blame for this
trend, so we can't lay it all at the feet of the GUInators.)

And the authors of the GUI newsreaders felt compelled to design user
interfaces that adhered to guidelines, and that had UIs that were
roughly orthogonal and at least internally self-consistent, even if
at times that meant burying commonly-used functions under odd
"accellerator" key combinations.

It is often observed in the world of UI design that GUIs tend to
beat CUIs for novice ease of use, but the reverse is often true for
experts.  And it does seem in the case of newsreaders that one thing
sacrificed in the baroque GUI embellishment of the news user agent
with assorted bells and whistles is the list of a half-dozen quick-
and-easy commands - a single keystroke away - that the user would
learn before running the application the first time, to make reading
news a relatively painless process.

See [1] for more Usenet software history.


1. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/software/part1/

--
Michael Wojcik                  michael.wojcik@microfocus.com

Pocket #16: A Ventriloquist's "Helper" -- Recordings for Divers Occasions,
especially cries to put in the mouths of enemies -- "God Bless Captain
Vere!"  "Les jeux sont faits!"  &c.  -- Joe Green

Thanks, Michael, I found that really interesting and amusing.

I am now entertained AND better informed... :-)

Pete.

TOP POST only.

"Michael Wojcik" <mwojcik@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:dqduto019an@news1.newsguy.com...
>
> In article <42r2jvF1irl5pU1@individual.net>, "Pete Dashwood"
> <dashwood@enternet.co.nz> writes: 
>
> In the beginning there was readnews, and it was primitive - basically
> it scrolled through available messages one at a time.  That was fine,
> when there were only two Usenet hosts ("duke" and "unc").  Then vnews
> came along, which displayed messages using terminal controls for
> character positioning - it was "full screen".  And Usenet users looked
> upon it and saw that it was Slightly Better, but not really very Good.
>
> So Larry Wall, who later blessed or afflicted (jury's still out) us
> with Perl, created rn, the first "improved" Usenet user agent, in
> 1984. And rn included amazing new features like "mark this whole
> thread read", and more importantly it introduced the world to
> killfiles, which let us mark as read messages we never even saw,
> based on such judge-by-its- cover features as the subject line and
> author.  That made every Usenet user tyrant of his own little
> kingdom, and it was Damn Good.
>
> Then came trn (the first newsreader with "threading", that is sorting
> messages by their References headers), and slrn, and nn, and xrn
> (which is what I still use), all of which added new features to rn.
> And they all followed Wall's Principle of Software Design, which was
> clear in rn, and that is: Put in the features that I want, and make
> them immediately accessible, and hang any sort of user-interface
> consistency.
>
> Thus rn-derived user agents have immediately-accesssible (usually a
> single keystroke, with no modifiers) commands to do the things that
> Wall and the like-minded want to do frequently: go to the next unread
> message, kill a thread, compose a followup, and so forth.  And they
> feature commands designed for the way Wall liked to read news, like
> "skip forward in this message until you find a line that starts with
> a different character than the one this one starts with".  Why would
> you want a single-key command like that?  Because if people follow
> the One True Quoting Style, then that command skips over the current
> chunk of quoted text to the new text below it.  (Indeed, this
> behavior is explicitly recommended in Henry Spencer's Son of 1036,
> which is the closest thing to a Usenet usage guide we're likely to
> ever get.)
>
> And then came Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wild Web and AOL and
> Eternal September, and suddenly there was a market for - horrors! -
> GUI newsreaders, and (in some eyes worse) GUI kitchen-sink apps that
> combined newsreaders with mail user agents and web browsers and all
> manner of nonsense.  (Many feel Emacs is really to blame for this
> trend, so we can't lay it all at the feet of the GUInators.)
>
> And the authors of the GUI newsreaders felt compelled to design user
> interfaces that adhered to guidelines, and that had UIs that were
> roughly orthogonal and at least internally self-consistent, even if
> at times that meant burying commonly-used functions under odd
> "accellerator" key combinations.
>
> It is often observed in the world of UI design that GUIs tend to
> beat CUIs for novice ease of use, but the reverse is often true for
> experts.  And it does seem in the case of newsreaders that one thing
> sacrificed in the baroque GUI embellishment of the news user agent
> with assorted bells and whistles is the list of a half-dozen quick-
> and-easy commands - a single keystroke away - that the user would
> learn before running the application the first time, to make reading
> news a relatively painless process.
>
> See [1] for more Usenet software history.
>
>
> 1. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/software/part1/
>
> --
> Michael Wojcik                  michael.wojcik@microfocus.com
>
> Pocket #16: A Ventriloquist's "Helper" -- Recordings for Divers Occasions,
> especially cries to put in the mouths of enemies -- "God Bless Captain
> Vere!"  "Les jeux sont faits!"  &c.  -- Joe Green

On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 14:31:38 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote:


>I decided a good way would be to get Outlook to simply delete all messages
>more than one month old.

I didn't know that comp.lang.cobol was available as a listserver.   I
subscribe to bit.listserv.ibm-main that way - but read it with a news
reader.    That way, I don't keep getting Outlook telling me I have
new mail which isn't really for me.

There are lots of newsreader programs available.   Most of these are
also e-mail programs.    Most people say that Outlook Express is the
most dangerous of these.   I use Outlook for my work e-mail and
Thunderbird for my home e-mail (accessed at work) - but neither for my
news.   I like to keep them separate - and I like to have a design
that works best with news readers - the way I access news.

There is a newsgroup which just discusses news readers.
news.software.readers.   I have tried several, and paid for a couple
(three, if you count Opera, which used to be shareware - but I didn't
like its newsreader).

Personally, I hate web based news readers.

On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 12:26:38 -0500, SkippyPB
<swiegand@neo.rr.NOSPAM.com> wrote:

>Unfortunately my employer insists that we use MS-Outlook for our
>email.  I hate it.  Most of my colleagues hate it.  None of us have it
>on our personal computers.  We call it MS-Lookout (cause you're never
>really sure what it is going to do).  Others call it MS-Outhouse.  As
>much as I dislike it for email, I can't imagine trying to use it for
>usenet.  It is, as I think Pete discovered, not intuitive in its use
>nor logical nor user friendly.  And let's not even get into security
>features/safeguards.

When you talk about usenet, I wonder if you aren't referring to
Outlook Express.   MS has confusing names (windows explorer and
Internet explorer).   Outlook and Outlook Express are not the same
product.   Outlook is a decent e-mail/calendar program, while Outlook
Express is a poor e-mail/newsgroup program.

>>>> SkippyPB<swiegand@neo.rr.NOSPAM.com> 01/14/06 10:26 AM >>>
>
>Unfortunately my employer insists that we use MS-Outlook for our
>email.  I hate it.  Most of my colleagues hate it.  None of us have it
>on our personal computers.  We call it MS-Lookout (cause you're never
>really sure what it is going to do).  Others call it MS-Outhouse.  As
>much as I dislike it for email, I can't imagine trying to use it for
>usenet.  It is, as I think Pete discovered, not intuitive in its use
>nor logical nor user friendly.  And let's not even get into security
>features/safeguards.
>
>I guess I'd say if you have a choice, choose something else.

I've never used Outlook, but we use Novell Groupwise and it is just terrible
as well (for Newsgroup reading, anyway).  Only supports top-posting (though
someone wrote a little plug-in to sort of accommodate bottom-posting, which
I used in this message) and doesn't have a very obvious key to skip to the
next message (Ctrl-Alt-Dn?  All it did for me was turn my "screen" 180
degrees, which is because my video card S/W caught it before Groupwise could
get it).

Anyway, it's just amazing that these so called "Enterprise" products aren't
half as good as basic open source products.  Ugh...

Frank

---
Frank Swarbrick
Senior Developer/Analyst - Mainframe Applications
FirstBank Data Corporation - Lakewood, CO  USA