Re: [LUG] Guardian Offline

[Mark Evans <mpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Simon Waters wrote:
> On Thursday 08 January 2004 3:54 pm, Neil Williams wrote:

> My experience is that free software has better usuability because it is more 
> stable, and development is more responsive to peoples needs.

With proprietary software decisions on how things should work tend to be
made by a small number of people. This is find if they choose something
which works well for you, but not if they choose something which dosn't.

> (Even (bits of) Microsoft recognises that usuability can be more important 
> than user interface consistency, look what they did to media player in the 
> name of usuability - although to be honest I think they messed up big time - 
> fortunately you can switch it off.)

Changing the pause key from space to CTRL-P probably wasn't the smartest 
of changes though.

> Contrast Outlook with Mozilla talking SMTP over SSL.
>
> First to make Outlook XP connect you need to install service pack 2 (which 
> requires the Office CD you installed from and 60MB download). So proprietary

60M just for a service pack, you can get whole office suites smaller 
than that :)

> development didn't do very good regression testing, does a painful CD check 
> that means most people won't have recommended security updates (allegedly not 
> for licence reasons - Microsoft's official explanation is they balls-up the 
> configuration management - although that isn't the terminology they use - 
> personally I believe them for once).
>
> Setting the settings is similar in both products. However if Outlook is in CW 
> mode you can't easily configure it only to query one account per profile so 
> it is started and stopped like a yo-yo. Outlook also caches network 
> parameters and other weird bugs.
>
> Finally we connect to the mail server - but it doesn't have a certficate 
> signed by one of the dubious bunch of companies that sell certificates, but 
> is self certificated.....
>
> Outlook pops up "proceed" "cancel"
> Mozilla pops up "accept this session" "accept forever" "cancel"

You get exactly the same behaviour with POPS and IMAPS.
With Mozilla you also have the option to inspect the certificate, the 
last time I looked at the Microsoft offerings the "proceed"/"cancel" 
appeared associated with a cryptic "error message".

> Seems that although the point of SSL with self signed is to check if the 
> certificate changes Outlook doesn't offer an easy method to accept this 
> certificate or tell if it changes.

Another thing which is far easier with Mozilla is setting up an IMAP(S) 
account where sent messages wind up on the IMAP server and not on the 
local machine.

> So Outlook offers less well thought out, and less secure, options. Although 
> the interface is 100% Microsoft consistent, the product behaves in many 
> unexpected ways - enabling CW mode alters unrelated behaviours in different 
> places. The product breaks basic principals of network programming.

Sounds very much like Microsoft's habit of deliberatly writing 
"sphagetti code".



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