Output Stream of Consciousness

Y’know, given all the time that I’ve used 2000 and XP, I’d never noticed that large, and generally unknown, lake next to the Baltic. Nice catch.

As a follow up, I have to say the owner of the linked-to blog is a supercilious ass. The editorial snark he makes on the follow-up comments doesn’t make him appear knowledgable so much as obnoxious. If you follow the link in one of the comments to a description of the Date/Time picker, he comments on people using it as a lookup calendar ("What day of the week in June 15th” type of thing) and notes that it actually changes the time when you do that instantly. Fair enough. It’s the “in reluctant recognition of the way people had been mis-using the Date/Time control panel” snark a bit later that annoys me; what the frak is the point of an “Apply” button if the change is made instantaneously?

Wow, I saw that further post of his. That’s pretty asinine:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/06/21/431054.aspx

The Date/Time control panel is not a calendar

Although many people use the Date/Time control panel to flip through a calendar, that’s not what it is for. In fact, if you use it that way, you can create all sorts of havoc!

…and a bad analogy to boot…

Unaware of its design, people have been using the Date/Time control panel as if it were a calendar, not realizing that it was doing all sorts of scary things behind the scenes. It’s like using a cash register as an adding machine. Sure, it does a great job of adding numbers together, but you’re also messing up the accounting back at the main office!

Oh, ha ha. Ha. Uh.

I just fixed up a dialog like that in our own software. It wasn’t client-facing, so it didn’t generate external problems, but it directly altered the properties of what it was editing while it was editing it, had no way to cancel, etc. At least it didn’t misleadingly have an Apply button, giving hope somehow that it really wasn’t doing anything live unless you hit OK or Apply.

Having the calendar in the Date/Time settings operate that way, and then having the audacity to snark about it, is a poor excuse for a badly-behaving dialog.

It also is in extremely poor taste in that to this date, Windows still doesn’t have a calendar gadget for your own use. If you complained about it, I’m more than half positive that they’d just tell you to double click the time and just cancel the calendar when you’re done.

Smarmy git. I hope that’s not typical of his postings.