Moving Forward

How your software starts, ends, and even dies has a huge impact on its usability. Remember that I refuse to use a certain web browser because I don’t like the way it starts up.

Give careful thought to the issue of how your software handles errors and whether it dies a sudden death. Remember the users. And fair is fair; I know a lot of people who refuse to use the other main browser because of the way it handles errors: It opens a message box asking if it can notify the manufacturer. That irritates more people than the manufacturer probably realizes. (Hint: If that bothers you, you can disable the feature by removing a certain file. Search groups.google.com and you’ll see how to do this. I don’t care to say it here, however, because I don’t want to be responsible for your removing system files!)

In the next chapter, I take on the topic of libraries and modularity. That’s a topic that rarely occurs in a book on usability. Yet think how many times software has dumped DLLs all throughout your hard drive, making a mess of your system. I’d say that qualifies as poor usability. Read on.