.Net Jonesie - Over Protection Confusion

Monday, February 13, 2006

I understand that there is a lot of nasty stuff around on the web that may get onto my work machine and cause all sorts of problems, but really, sometimes I find Windows too protective. For example, I downloaded an updated Compiled Help File for my TFS upgrade. When I open the file I get this:

Well, ok, someone forgot to sign the file so this is reasonable and I can untick the option to hide this next time I open it. However, when I click open I see this:

After a lot of head scratching, a colleague pointed me to this in the file properties:

Once Unblocked, the help contents display correctly.

I spend all day working with various versions of Windows and I can't figure this stuff out. How the frack is an ordinary occasional PC user supposed to understand this BS? This is a really good example of unintelligent design. Maybe it's a consequence of the Windows UI that limits the amount of useful information that can be displayed to a user. To me, it would be much more sensible to display the file differently so I can immediately see that there is a problem with it. Eg. Instead of displaying the short-cut thus:

it could look something like this:

I look forward to having a play with Vista very soon to see if it's any better.

Monday, February 13, 2006 11:43:15 AM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

Comments [1] General |

Monday, February 13, 2006 1:43:55 PM (New Zealand Daylight Time, UTC+13:00)

Peter wrote "I look forward to having a play with Vista very soon to see if it's any better"...
All I can say is Vista is all about running windows with Least-Privileges... http://blogs.msdn.com/uac

Nigel Parker

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