What bugs/features would you fix?

I dunno. I have gotten used to XP now.

I suppose I’d like to see the operating system such that one could remove unused and unwanted features, and also integration of parts of applications (eg just have one spell-checker available for used by all other applications).

mollwollfumble said:

What bugs/features would you fix?

1. Either update VBA and provide it on all platforms (including on-line), or change to another language but provide at least equal functionality (i.e. built-in access to the full object model).

2. Fix the formula editor so you can access the bloody things from VBA (or replacement)

3. Provide built in access to Python

We are just talking about Excel here, aren’t we?

First of all, I’d fix most of the users. Windows has never really given me much grief. Even Windows 10.

Oh, if we are talking Windows I would:

1. Allow access to the indexed search data from Outlook and Acrobat Reader so we could search for text as quickly inside these programs as we can from outside.

2. Provide a two window version of File Explorer to make copying/moving/comparing between different folders easy.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Oh, if we are talking Windows I would:

2. Provide a two window version of File Explorer to make copying/moving/comparing between different folders easy.

Can’t you already do thst by opening two file explorer Windows?

was going to say the same. can’t open two windows of the parent directory though. well i can’t. just go to a sub folder in the first window then open a second for the parent.

AwesomeO said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Oh, if we are talking Windows I would:

2. Provide a two window version of File Explorer to make copying/moving/comparing between different folders easy.

Can’t you already do thst by opening two file explorer Windows?

I expect you can, but you need to open two windows, and arrange them where you want them, and find them both when you want them again.

Much easier with two views in a single window.

The Rev Dodgson said:

2. Provide a two window version of File Explorer to make copying/moving/comparing between different folders easy.

You can. Do you have FIle Explorer in your Task Bar (at the bottom). Just right click, and open it. Then right click and open it again. Two or more windows. That’ll allow you to “drag’n‘drop”.

Much easier with two views in a single window.

can’t you just put them really close together and pretend?

ChrispenEvan said:

Much easier with two views in a single window.

can’t you just put them really close together and pretend?

If there is some way to make File Explorer open this way with a single click, and stay this way no matter how you arrange the views of the other open Windows, please let me know.

Not that it really matters, since I use Total Commander which works the way I want already.

create a search engine not riddled with adverts and that is fast

If I ran MS, I would make random changes to stuff for no real reason, just when everybody had gotten familiar with things.

I call it “business as usual”.

mollwollfumble said:

What bugs/features would you fix?

Modifying the licences to require purchasers to reregister annually, at a cost that’s less than the cost of the new software, seems to be a good start. Making updates available only to those who have renewed their licences would reinforce the need to reregister, ensuring customers did reregister.

Make it harder for customers to switch to other vendors; this is difficult, but a good first step is achieved with the strategy above, since people are less likely to switch after paying more for the software. Provide other software producers with incentives to only make their software available on the Windows platform, so it can’t be used on Apple products or Linux/BSD/other OSs; this will make it harder for people to do useful work on other platforms, further locking customers in to Microsoft products. Do the same with hardware; if no-one can get hardware drivers for other OSs, the hardware can only be used on Microsoft-based machines. There may be a reduction in sales of the hardware; that’s what the incentives are for.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Oh, if we are talking Windows I would:

1. Allow access to the indexed search data from Outlook and Acrobat Reader so we could search for text as quickly inside these programs as we can from outside.

2. Provide a two window version of File Explorer to make copying/moving/comparing between different folders easy.

Good ideas Rev

one way is to

In windows 7 press and hold the shift key then click the windows icon twice, let go of the shift key, then right click on the task bar and select Show windows side by side

you could write a batch file to call two instances of explorer then pin your batch file to the task bar but Im not sure how to resize explorer windows from a batch file

and in searching google for open two explorer windows side side from a batch file

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30296043/launch-two-explorer-windows-side-by-side

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10392620/how-can-a-batch-file-run-a-program-and-set-the-position-and-size-of-the-window

you would have thought that by now Micro soft would have addressed that issue, maybe in windows 20 or 30

or as you say download total commander

http://www.ghisler.com/

CrazyNeutrino said:

or as you say download total commander

http://www.ghisler.com/

The only shareware I have ever paid for :)

CrazyNeutrino said:

or as you say download total commander

Is this a sort of update to XTreeGold?

Woodie said:

First of all, I’d fix most of the users. Windows has never really given me much grief. Even Windows 10.

this

pffft it’s the monsatan of software.

someone has to be.

> I dunno. I have gotten used to XP now.

XP was a good operating system, the first stable operating system and better than most if not all operating systems since. Does XP have the Pinball Game? They removed it from Windows 95, that’s what I miss most about XP, though I also miss features that Office back then used to have.

> Modifying the licences to require purchasers to reregister annually, at a cost that’s less than the cost of the new software, seems to be a good start. Making updates available only to those who have renewed their licences would reinforce the need to reregister, ensuring customers did reregister.

Oh, I love it!

You know that it would backfire completely, don’t you?

I would be willing to pay up to $200 annually to NOT receive any updates.

There have been (admittedly rare) days when I’ve been tempted to break into Microsoft offices and kill all the staff involved in producing updates. That way I’d get a life sentence and a big award for services to humanity.

never change the user screen or change any of the functions so that you don’t need to continually relearn where the same thing is – moving things around and making things harder is not progress

mollwollfumble said:

What bugs/features would you fix?

I’d progressively fix old bugs in the latest OS while providing new problems to ensure a consistent upgrading scheme into the future.

poikilotherm said:

mollwollfumble said:

What bugs/features would you fix?

I’d progressively fix old bugs in the latest OS while providing new problems to ensure a consistent upgrading scheme into the future.

I can’t help but think you are selling your undoubted skills to the wrong people.

And I have just remembered the thing that really does need fixing:

Fix the networking so that it stays connected to Wi-Fi at least as well as a phone or a pad.

The Rev Dodgson said:

And I have just remembered the thing that really does need fixing:

Fix the networking so that it stays connected to Wi-Fi at least as well as a phone or a pad.

ah, you’ve had that issue too, thought it was my motherboard/wifi card.

I started this thread only because I was bored and having a b&*^% of a time trying to port as document from Word to Excel. Word was acting as a trap, automatically changing tabs into indents in an irreversible way. Easiest way out (after struggling with vbscript) was to copy from Word to Notepad, which failed to reverse the problem, and then manually change every line of text. Even then, the copy from Notepad to Excel failed because Excel refused to accept paired blanks as a data separation character. Grrrr.

Anyway, despite starting thread because bored, quickly filled five pages with handwritten notes about what I dislike about Microsoft.

To start, first find some Computer Users – ideally a large number at random – and find out what changes they want. Every good piece of software must have:
1) Stability – the program does what the User wants, doesn’t crash.
2) Scope – the program can do what the User wants, isn’t missing features.
3) Defaults – the program automatically does what the user wants, minimises time to get results.
There’s no need to add the category “usability” because that’s contained in the above.

Let’s follow that by what Microsoft means to me. To me, Microsoft means DOS, Desktop, Windows, Office including Sketching and Equation Editor, Notepad/Wordpad, Calculator, Paint, Browser, Visual Studio, Movie Maker, Media Player, Registry, Safe Mode, Outlook/Outlook Express, Task manager, Defragmenter, Games, Control Panel, Display Control.

If I ruled Microsoft, I’d look into every one of those to see what needed doing, and I’d also look for useful Extras to add.

Useful Extras that I’d add would included.
1) LaTeX
2) GNU (including GIMP and GNU Compiler Collection for starters).
3) Just as Notepad & Wordpad are greatly reduced versions of Word, I’d add greatly reduced versions of Excel and Powerpoint that operate outside Office.
4) A picture viewer and editor (like Irfanview + Paint together in one program)
5) A sound recorder and editor (like Audacity)
6) A simple CAD package.
7) etc.

So many problems with current Microsoft software that I hardly know where to begin. Start with operating system.
A) Need an operating system that never crashes, never auto-reboots, and never needs a reboot following an update. The cursor should never freeze. The time delay between clicking on an icon and the action starting must be kept to a minimum.
B) An operating system that needs no updates with 6 months of release, and after that never more than one a month. It’s called “right first time” engineering.
C) Never lose icon arrangement on desktop – ever. Especially don’t reduce screen resolution when entering Safe Mode.

Desktop.
A) Include an option to automatically display all useful user-available operating system utilities on desktop.
B) Include a desktop organisor, with separate tiled boxes containing icons for: work, multimedia (split three ways), games, utilities, home, internet, folders, temporary documents, apps.

Notepad.
A) Add a “recent documents” list.
B) Give the option of document display (default font Times New Roman 12) and program display (default font Courier New). Program display is for writing software, which needs a non-proportional font.

Wordpad = Write
This happens to be a full-featured word processing package. I can even insert a Picture, Sketch in paint, or Microsoft Equation 3.0 in it if I wish. It’s better than Word in several important ways (see complaints about Word, below).
A) Main problem is defaults, change defaults from paragraph spacing 1.15 to 1.0, from 10 point space after paragraph to 0, from Calibri 11 to Times new Roman 12, from 100% to 120% zoom.

Equation Editor in Office.
The old Microsoft Office Equation 3.0 was good, it’s problem was that editing left ghosts behind because the automatic eraser didn’t work properly. The newer Microsoft Equation Editor is vomit-worthy.
A) Equation editor is written in Polish Notation. That’s even worse than Reverse Polish. At present if I want to type X with subscript b, with most equation editors it would be X_b or at worst X\sub b. In Equation editor it’s “Subscript leftarrow leftarrow X rightarrow b rightarrow”. Abysmal. Completely replace Polish Notation with what is called “Infix notation” similar to that used in either Equation 3.0, or LaTeX, or Open Office Equation, or Wikipedia Equations. Anything but what it is.
B) Never ever change x/y to x\over y. This stupid “correction” is never correct. In any other equation editor what would be “x/y+” is in Equation editor “+ leftarrow divideby leftarrow leftarrow x rightarrow y rightarrow”.
C) Can’t easily do sin^2(x) either, same problem as above.
D) The button menus in Microsoft Office Equation 3.0 were superb. Those in Equation Editor are very much worse, revert to the old buttons.

Scientific calculator in Windows 10.
A) Add back functions arccos, arcsin, arctan, arccosh, arcsinh, arctanh that disappeared between Windows 7 and Windows 10.
B) Add extra useful finctions including, but not limited to, pdfs and cumulative functions and their inverses for Normal, Poisson, Binomial, Exponential, t and Chi square distributions.
C) Add random number generator.
D) Get rid of “grads” for angles. Nobody uses it these days.

And I haven’t even started on the problems with programs in Office and connectivity yet.

Keep in mind that Microsoft own hundreds of other companies and partly own hundreds of companies etc like nokia

I would bring out a cheap zippy tablet for school children with easy to use programming languages suited to the age of the child K1 upwards

programming languages designed for kindergarten and preps etc which would evolve upwards through k1 and upwards

easy to clean flat touch keyboards waterproof dust proof etc

Create a similar ideology for the operating system and basic applications to also follow through K1 and upwards so that the OS and Apps evolves with the learner

so that features are added on the fly as the child learns a program,

the tablet would be modular and allows different OS’s to run multi boot etc

I would make Windows free and open source, there would be a focus on security and regular hacker competitions with prizes

As someone else said above allow features to be added or discarded to reduce clutter, menu items, ribbon items etc this could be modular like as well

allow MS products to interact with others easily, but develop friendly strategies to keep up a good user base

people do not need to be hampered be compatibility issues, its unfriendly to productivity

allow developers to create addons for all MS programs like firefox addons but do so in a easy way

> Keep in mind that Microsoft own hundreds of other companies and partly own hundreds of companies etc like nokia

Had forgotten that. The Nokia GPS map of Bowral is a disaster, includes at least a dozen streets that don’t exist and never have existed.

mollwoll – for working with Formulas in Excel you might like a look at:

http://www.formuladesk.com/

It’s still under development, but he’s currently working on features that automatically convert excel formulas into either a text or graphic based display of the formula, optionally replacing cell addresses with the text in the adjacent cell, and other useful shortcuts.