Will Microsoft ever realize that popping up a dialog while I’m working is a bad idea? I’m tying away when a dialog popus up, and the next key stroke has a random effect on it. The number of installations I’ve screwed up by accidentally responding to dialogs may be part of the reason my Windows always becomes unstable.
The Apple user interface has an irritating bouncy icon that lets you know when another program requires your attention. Which is fine; it is as obvious as the Windows-style modal dialog, but it doesn’t start stealing your keystrokes and acting on them.
This morning I wiped out Firefox and Adobe Reader because some ugliness between them makes Firefox go into a loop of loading / attempting to render that it never gets out of. I had to cancel and restart re-installing Adobe because of a stupid popup dialog that I dismissed without seeing what it was while I was typing a message. Even afterwards, Firefox and Adobe have the same problem – but in a virtual machine Firefox and Adobe co-exist perfectly well. So something in another Windows component is breaking it.
Maybe it’s another application that’s only partly installed. Or maybe it’s Skype, which apparently has hooked into Firefox, redirecting it to the Skype website even after a full, clean install. Which is another one of the ridiculous program practises that we’ve come to accept – no way in hell would I have allowed Skype to do that, if I’d been prompted, but with no application security, the installer can do what it likes.