That happened before some of the readers of this thread were born. A summary for those people, from the fog of distant memories: MS had an Internet Explorer that was not integrated in Windows, it was like any other browser. Then they decided to build it inside Windows. I remember that the Windows desktop got web views like widgets (web view as a name probably did not exist yet) and they called it Active Desktop. I think that it as COM/OLE objects too and the web view was probably one of them. File Explorer itself got an Internet Explorer like skin, probably with single click to navigate directories and open files, as if they were links. Then they claimed that it was impossible to disentangle IE from Windows. That eventually paved the way to the ruling against MS.
When I hear a giant company say that modifying some of its software is impossible I always think about that IE and laugh.
I planned to install Debian in 2009 and in 2014 but the installer was too hard to use, the desktop in 2009 was ugly (maybe in 2014 too), I could not get a running system that I could use to work. Fast forward to Debian 10, same laptop from 2014, and I got a desktop identical to Ubuntu GNOME.
Yes, they are. The first generations of HP ZBooks had both the ThinkPad stick and the touchpad, so they had two rows of buttons, one below the space bar to be used with the stick and one below the touchpad to be used with the touchpad. ThinkPads usually have both the stick and the touchpad but only the buttons for the stick.
By this line of thought building nice and usable UIs is not productive too, because users can learn cli tools (they did, DOS) and it costs less to develop them. And all the work in TLS/HTTPS has been wasted because HTTP is enough. And ssh vs telnet.
It becomes productive only once your business stops for days because somebody brought it to a halt by breaking into the servers and deleting them.
If one thinks that "Security work is not productive."
By the way, I think that even without safety concerns seat belts are productive because they anchor the driver more firmly, so we can brake harder and turn faster (a lot of roundabouts here) and get to our destination in a shorter time. Of course this is against general road safety.
Let's say that traffic (anything: ssh, sftp, http) enters a VPS in OVH in France from a laptop in Italy (Italian ISP) and some bot in the USA (eg googlebot) or some real person download something from that VPS (US ISP). Who's paying what? There are sent and received bytes for all parties.
If the author of the post is reading this, what is the setup for the work on nouveau? I expect it to cause a number of issues with the display driver so it could be hard running the AI agent on the same computer. Hence my curiosity.
I've been using Thunderbird since I don't even remember when and I never noticed that it's got a bad interface, unless when they broke manually sorting folders and fixed it years later. It's got the UI that a mail client has to have. GMail does have a bad UI. Sometimes I don't understand where a message ends and where a message starts. Luckily I don't have to use it.
They are basically throwing away the existing UI asking with its decades of refinement in favor of something that looks like what you'd get if apple mail and outlook had a disfugured child.
Oh the horror. However Thunderbird 115 was from 2023 (or 2024?) I am on version 159 now and I am still using the old UI. Either the new one is opt in or I opted out of it and forgot about the issue.
> and I never noticed that it's got a bad interface
That's because you are just accustomed to it [0]. If you would have a fresh look on it, especially on a small screen - it would find it atrocious.
There is still a separate SMTP configuration and it's a separate separate SMTP configuration for the each account.
There is absolutely useless left vertical bar which... does nothing what can't be shoved unto the useless, empty top bar. There is useless empty top bar which holds a search box and a hamburger menu.
For the unknown reason[1] this top bar is twice the tall of the regular menu. Oh. There is TWO search boxes[2]. Enabling Quick Filter adds another toolbar instead of using the bar where the button 'Quick Filter' resides.
And if you have multiple accounts and for some reason you can't auth for a moment (eg server problem, not with a connection) you would be spammed with the auth boxes and even if you successfully auth in one - you would still need to cancel or auth in all other what was spammed on you.
There is a lot, a lot of things where TB sucks. You just familiar with it.
[0] and probably configured it years ago and never touched the config too.
[1] actually it to be tall enough to hold hamburger button - because there is an option to add buttons to it. But you can't move buttons from the left useless vertical bar to the top bar. So you can have 'Mail', 'Calendar' etc duplicated on the top bar... for what?
NB yes you can hide the left vertical bar. Hide, not remove. Still it was thought on, implemented and shoved on our asses for absolutely no reason..
Why? My SO has a Windows laptop with touchscreen, touchpad, keyboard and mouse. She uses the mouse but sometimes pushing a button by touching the screen saves time. If you think about it, by the time you reached for the mouse and started aiming for the button you already pressed it with your finger. The touchpad reduces the travel of the hand but not the time to aim. Hitting something with a finger is always faster. She is missing that on her work laptop.
> The touchpad reduces the travel of the hand but not the time to aim.
This is likely true for casual users, but for veterans this is a skill issue. My touchpad accuracy/speed more than matches most folks touchscreen accuracy/speed.
It may also reflect the quality of the touchpad. For a Windows laptop, it's virtually guaranteed to be of lower quality than something offered on an Apple laptop.
> If you think about it, by the time you reached for the mouse and started aiming for the button you already pressed it with your finger. The touchpad reduces the travel of the hand but not the time to aim. Hitting something with a finger is always faster.
Depends on how accurate you need to be. How fast/confident you can be at hitting with a finger can easily drop off a cliff.
Reaching up to touch the screen is slower than reaching down to the trackpad. Also consider trackpoint.
Skilled users can make the reach and the motion one. You don't need to stabilize your palm on the rest to use the trackpad. Same way I don't need to use F and J for the keyboard (and kinda wish I could remove those annoying bumps)
I give you an example on this page of comments, so you can check if my informal results apply to you too.
I am moving my finger on my touchpad to move the pointer to more or less match what I am reading. I am always close to a Reply button or a vote one. There is no point reaching for the screen with my hand and touching those links. Furthermore they are way too small to be pressed with a finger. They are probably too small for a pointer too, but that's another issue.
Hoever, when I open an empty tab, type new in the URL bar and FF completes it to the URL of this site, and I press return, I usually end up with a Login link in the top right. If I reload the page (ctrl-r) I am logged in. For some reason either FF is not sending the session cookie or HN is not doing what it should on a cold session. This is also another issue (sorry) but let's say that I want to login. My pointer is far away from the login link. My fingers are not on the touchpad. Is it faster to move my right hand towards myself, touch the touchpad, slide the pointer to the link or moving that very same index finger to the link and touch it? My laptop does not have a touchscreen but when I used a tablet with a mouse and a keyboard I reached for the screen many times. Of course a mouse is less efficient than a touchpad, except for games, but I also miss the touchscreen sometimes.
And I would use if to press the reply button below this line I am typing. Let's see where the pointer ended up while I was typing... At the top right corner. Moving it to Reply and clicking is slower than touching the screen.
> I am moving my finger on my touchpad to move the pointer to more or less match what I am reading.
I do that too. I tend to "park" my cursor near where I am looking, or near where I anticipate clicking next.
> let's say that I want to login. My pointer is far away from the login link. My fingers are not on the touchpad. Is it faster to move my right hand towards myself, touch the touchpad, slide the pointer to the link or moving that very same index finger to the link and touch it?
Entirely depends on your relative proficiencies and preferences, I suppose.
When I had a touchscreen, I used it with a trackpad and a trackball. All three input devices had utility to me, so why not? These days I sometimes use a laser mouse rather than trackball, but same story (though my MacBook doesn't have touch now). I always prefer trackpad to scroll wheel for scrolling, for hopefully obvious reasons (range of motion and precision are both way better). I do know I got use out of the touchscreen even though I can't think of a hard rule for it. It's probably just nice to have on a case-by-case basis.
I totally agree: having several different input devices is the best scenario.
Personally I would not use the touchscreen very often, but I would use it sometimes to press buttons and maybe even to scroll. Maybe the resize handle in the bottom right corner of the text area I am writing now is a large enough target for a finger. On a laptop: raise a finger, drag and go back to the keys? Probably. With a desktop computer with a keyboard far away from the screen? Well, the mouse is also far away from the hands so who knows.
I never have a real use case for a mouse but sometimes I follow a link from HN to a game in which a mouse would be better than a touchpad: move move move click click move click is great with a mouse and terrible with touchpad of all kinds. My mouse is in a drawer somewhere.
I am a fan of touchpads with physical buttons. I think that only HP is selling them anymore, on very few ZBook models (maybe a 16 Fury?) and Lenovo still has them in laptops with their stick in the middle of the keyboard. However the Lenovo buttons are at the top of the touchpad, where the thumb rests if the index finger operates the stick. The thumb rests below the touchpad when operating the touchpad.
Thinkpad fans will tell me that those buttons are close to the space bar, were thumbs rest all the time and they are right. Their little stick is very conveniently placed but I never manager to operate it as efficiently as a touchpad, which required zero training. My old ZBook has both the stick and the touchpad and two rows of 3 buttons, and I've never learned to move the pointer with the stick, both Windows and Linux.
When I hear a giant company say that modifying some of its software is impossible I always think about that IE and laugh.
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