Re: VS2005 and VS 6.0

From:

"Tom Serface" <tserface@msn.com>

Newsgroups:

microsoft.public.vc.mfc

Date:

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 09:14:36 -0700

Message-ID:

<#eQULbJkGHA.896@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl>

Hi Joe,

To be fair, I've attended several MVP Summits where MSFT did just that in
focus groups for all kinds of products with the people they consider to be
the experts. They may not have used everyone's ideas (that would be
impossible), but I don't think we can fault them for not trying to collect
information from users.

You're right that you can't please everyone with any feature or format.

Tom

"Joseph M. Newcomer" <newcomer@flounder.com> wrote in message
news:i63192dn6dpaq9719m5mcb8aopa6ho8kl2@4ax.com...

Yes, but when I design user interfaces, I go to the customer and say "What
will make your
users more productive?" and I try to create interfaces that work WITH the
user's
paradigms, not AGAINST them.

The classic case was my Validating Edit Control (the original was designed
to parse a
highly stylized part number on an input form). Three people complained
bitterly that the
color changes were annoying. So the customer asked me to remove the
feature. Being lazy,
and font of the feature, I left it in, but simply disabled the ability to
change the color
with an #if 0/#endif. Within a few hours of the new release, over 20
people complained
that the feature had been removed (this was all in-house data entry folks,
too). So the
obvious solution was applied: a dialog box that enabled/disabled the
option and stored the
state in the Registry. Note that the problem was fixed within HOURS of
the reported
problem, both times (most of the time being spent in waiting for me to
read my email!)
while the problems in VS.NET have been with us now for YEARS. Perhaps it
is because I
*listen* to my customers, because I can't force my product down their
throats and say
"This is for your own good".
joe