Dave Beauvais’ Web Site

I recently had to rebuild my XV6700 and while I was at it, decided to check for upgrades for the software I use on it. I remembered that Two Peaks Software’s Personal Vehicle Manager had been taken over by Iambic, so I checked through my e-mail for the upgrade notice that was sent and proceeded to grab the latest version.

I discovered that Iambic’s registration method is rather convoluted. You must first install the software on the device either from the desktop or a CAB installer on the device, get the Device ID from the About box, go to their Web site (on a desktop PC) and enter that ID into a form to generate your registration code. You must then type that code into separate boxes on the device as show here.

I keep all of my software registration codes in another program on my device, so I always have them with me if needed. The annoyance with this registration method is that if I’m installing while not near a desktop PC, I have to switch back and forth between Vehicle Manager and my registration code list. (That’s assuming I already had the code and wasn’t trying to fight with their Web site in IE on the device.) Why? Because I can’t simply copy and paste the entire code due to the separate boxes.

Don’t the developers actually use handheld devices and realize how awkward and inconvenient their registration system is? Sure, it’s a one time process for most people, but it makes the software seem unnecessarily unfriendly.

On Saturday, I installed an updated Intel (wired) network adapter driver on my HP 2710p Tablet PC and eventually discovered that my nice, fast 3-5 seconds to enter sleep mode were now anywhere from 1-2 minutes. I was highly annoyed. Curiously, the event log entries that were showing up as the system went to sleep indicated a problem with the Intel wireless adapter driver, not the wired adapter for which I’d updated the driver. A search for the error turned up nothing but complaints about Intel’s wireless adapter driver.

I experimented with some things and even rolled the driver back to the previous version using Device Manager. Nothing helped and I was still dealing with sleep times of a minute or more. As someone who puts his system to sleep many times a day and shuts down maybe once a week or so, this was not acceptable. So I did something I’ve never done before in Windows Vista (and only twice in Windows XP): I used a System Restore point to revert the system to the way it was prior to the driver update.

To my delight, the problem was resolved and my tablet is now back to entering sleep mode in under five seconds. This was the first time I’d seen a problem like this from a driver update, so I’m definitely going to be a little gun-shy with such updates in the future. It’s nice to see that System Restore worked so well, though I hope to not have a need for it on a regular basis.

Okay, my first post in two months, and it’s going to be another rant. Sorry.

I’m a big user of keyboard shortcuts. More often than not, if I can do something with a keyboard rather than reaching for the mouse, that’s what I’ll do. Every Windows application that I have used since Windows 3.0 — and even some DOS apps before then — has used the keyboard shortcut Alt-F, A to bring up the File menu and select “Save As….” In Adobe Photoshop CS, however, Alt-F, A is “Open As….”

Then we come to Adobe Acrobat 7. In every previous version of Acrobat I could press H or Z to switch to the Hand and Zoom tools, respectively. But not in version 7. No, in Acrobat 7, I must use the mouse to select these tools from a somewhat cluttered and unintuitive toolbar. It’s almost as if another development team took over Acrobat after version 5 and makes it worse with each new release. (Though 6 was by far the worst.)

I’ve become increasingly amazed at Adobe’s arrogance over the years, but this is getting stupid. You don’t just change established GUI conventions; especially not on tools used by thousands of professionals who rely on your software for their livelihood. Don’t force your users to unlearn keystrokes which have become instinctive over years of use. Or if you do, at least give users the ability to edit the menus so they can go back to the standard way of doing things. I’ve been using Photoshop CS for about a year now and I still end up with the “Open As…” dialog almost every single time I use it.