Skeuomorphic is (thankfully) gone and will stay gone, except for novelty UIs. It's a broken metaphor; I have nieces who have grown up with touch UIs, who have no problem conceptualising The Cloud, and for whom a floppy disk is quite literally something they have never even seen. So why would it be the "save" icon?

We'll see. ;-)

Why should we need a "save" function anyway? If I'm working in the real world, stuff doesn't suddenly disappear if I don't "save" it. It disappears when I throw it away.

Because you'll make it very dark grey on black, and then you'll complain that you can't read anything any more. Providing unlimited choice means you get to support unlimited choices, and users are incredibly innovative when it comes to breaking things.

Easy solution - "Revert to Original" and/or "Revert to Previous". The functionality is there in the code (there are a few user choices already, after all) - let users use it.

[Modal dialogs are evil.] No, they're not. They should be used sparingly - but they have their place. More annoying and wrong is stealing focus from the user. You should never do that, unless the computer will catch fire if I don't click your oh-so-important button RIGHT NOW.

Ok, you expressed it better. But there's too much modal stuff out there that exists because the software isn't smart enough. Quit using so much CPU power for "fancy" animation of progress bars and fix your code so that I don't have to wait while you do something that should be done in the background or should be done a different way so that it doesn't get in my way.

Dude. This is a feature, not a bug. If you can install software, then so can anything masquerading as you.

If I have proven to the machine that I'm me via logging in, then why do I need to prove to the machine again that I'm me to install something? It's a broken model. Use the power of the CPU to find a better way to do it.

Anything that writes to memory could be a virus. Me signing in a different way doesn't mean that possibility is gone.

Uh, Windows and OS X have [sudo-like functionality]. Not really sure what your gripe is, here.

Our machines at work are being moved to a Winders Domain (yes, we're moving into the 1990s!) and lots of stuff is being locked down and managed remotely via ManageEngine. It's a huge annoyance to me (though I realize it's a blessing compared to what others have to put up with). "Run as Admin" doesn't seem available anymore, so I have to do the login shuffle. (And even before then, Run as Admin didn't seem to work reliably for me - not like sudo on Linux. ) If there's a way around that, it would be helpful.

My $0.02.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.

1. Computers are smart enough now that they should work the way people work, not the way they have always done things with PCs. If you want to create a new version, do so. It doesn't have to be called "save" and it doesn't have to have a floppy disk icon. Versioning can be handled by things like TimeMachine that already exist.

We had an earlier thread talking about how cheap storage is. Even back in the DEC VMS terminal days, people didn't have to worry about storage very much, and it kept track of versions automagically.

Just because PCs have always worked this way doesn't mean that they shouldn't change.

2. Meh. :-) I don't think that MS and Apple know best in all things that I look at. There's a lot of science out there on color perception and so forth. Office 2007 has all of 3 color schemes. Changing that to 12 wouldn't break them. MS could easily make it so that people couldn't choose black text on a black background, or whatever. These are easily solvable problems. They don't want to solve them because they don't want to, not because of the cost or difficulty.

If they don't want to solve the problem, they could at least not lock the OS and apps down so that third parties couldn't address that for people who want that ability.

3. There's modal, and then there's modal. Yes, most of the modal dialogs don't completely lock you out of the system. But if I'm doing a 300 GB copy of files, there's no need for the OS to throw up a modal dialog if it encounters an issue with one file. Be smart and work around it - copy the rest, give me a summary of the issues at the end. Stuff like that.

4. If my initial login was good enough to gain access to the machine, then that same type of login should, in general, be good enough to install software. If you're worried that I don't know what I'm doing, then add a checkbox to the install dialog. Having me Run as Admin or Login as Admin isn't any more secure - it just means I have to keep track of another password and that I have to waste my time. (Of course, there are situations where people shouldn't admin their machines. But the trend is that "nobody should login as admin" and that sudo is a pain or locked up. That's broken and needs to be fixed. (Yes, I know I'm yelling at clouds here.))

Amazon doesn't have me use one login to browse and another to purchase or change my payment information.

5. I don't know why we're not using Win AD. But we're not. :-/

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.

It's just another password to remember.

In real life, once we have the authorization to do something, we aren't asked again and again whether we really want to do that...

Johnny has a driver's license. Johnny has a key to the car. The car doesn't ask for another key if Johnny wants to stop and get gas. "But he might put diesel in the tank and ruin the engine!!11"

Verification checks can be done differently. Make users enter a simple PIN or something, but don't make them logout and login or other mumbo jumbo in the name of "increased security". "But a PIN is just another password!" Kinda, but kinda not. We're being forced to go to complex 15 character passwords... :-/

I understand the arguments on the other side, and servers and airplanes and rockets are different. Granny's PC doesn't need the same kind of security as a nuclear missile.

I know that my annoyances aren't going to be addressed anytime soon. But things can change.

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.