posted on Sunday, November 13, 2005 8:59 PM
by
thomasswilliams
Lowest Common Denominator Applets
Jeff Atwood posts about applets that ship with the Windows OS, and suggests:
...isn't the fit and finish of little applets like these-- Notepad, Calculator, Character Map, Paint, Disk Cleanup,
Compressed Folders, and dozens of others-- indicative of the care and design that goes into the entire operating system? If Microsoft can't
be bothered to bundle a version of Notepad that has basic amenities like a toolbar, what hope does the rest of the operating system have?
Hear hear. Jeff makes a fair point here. Why do I have to replace Notepad on every Windows system I have, not because I'm super-picky but because Notepad is basically the lowest common denominator of text editing? And then why do I have to understand Notepad anyway, because everyone else uses it?
Microsoft can't just go and buy better versions of applets, I know, but getting a reasonable image editor, video player and text editor (word processor lite, or whatever) bundled with the OS can't be asking too much, right?