{"id":1806,"date":"2003-10-03T08:04:13","date_gmt":"2003-10-03T22:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/10\/03\/search-the-web\/"},"modified":"2019-12-06T08:21:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T16:21:15","slug":"search-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/10\/03\/search-the-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Search the web?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Search<\/a><\/p>\n

A question for Windows UI gurus — why in the world is there a “Search the web” button right next to the “Up one level” button in open\/save dialog boxes in Windows XP?<\/p>\n

I never realized that it was there before — or if I’d noticed it, I’d never given it much thought — but a few minutes ago, I was switching directories to open a file, when suddenly Excel switched into the background, my web browser came up, and I was dumped into an MSN search page. Now, I’m no newbie with computers, I’ve been using Macs since System 6, Windows since v3.1, and have experience with CP\/M, MS-DOS, UNIX, etc. Even with many years of computer use behind me, for a few moments I was completely baffled — I didn’t have the faintest clue why I wasn’t in the open\/save dialog box anymore, and was instead staring at a search box on the web.<\/p>\n

Firstly, I’ve yet to come up with a good reason why an open\/save dialog even needs<\/em> a “Search the web” button. Secondly, though, and more importantly, why is that button placed a mere seven pixels away from the navigational “Up one level” button, and smack dab in the middle of a collection of navigational buttons? Any other choice in that menu bar relates to actions you can take on the computer — navigational movement, creating new folders, or switching your list view choice — but then there’s this one button, right in the midst of the rest, that ends up moving you from navigating your file system into a web search.<\/p>\n

I can’t come up with a scenario or thought process in which that might be useful, or make any kind of sense — and while I’m no UI expert, if someone with my level of computer experience can be confused that quickly as to what just happened, it’s almost mind boggling how a new computer user must feel when faced with situations like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A question for Windows UI gurus — why in the world is there a ‘Search the web’ button right next to the ‘Up one level’ button in open\/save dialog boxes in Windows XP?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2038],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}