re: Office Labs Releases Speed Launch

northerngeek — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:34:43 GMT

I mean no disrespect to the guys working on this but surely we could do better- I am thinking of the Blue Monster here when I say this isn't world changing. The trick is- it doesn't have to be.

Win+C etc all seems a little long winded, a simpler solution exists already in browsers like Firefox, Opera and (IIRC) Safari- you can set an "alias" to a webpage- why not do the same built right into Windows and IE- you right click a bookmark, a favicon or a program and select "Add new alias", dialogue box appears and you enter the word- this should then work in the IE address bar, the start menu and the explorer address bar.

It's nothing Earth shattering but I can never see why MS doesn't pay attention to these little things when thinking about usability- you don't need innovation you just need a finger on the pulse to see what others want- freeware exists to do things like this, or improve programs (e.g. notepad++) and perpetually users have to install them when a new OS releases rather than the features making their way into Windows itself!

Simple improvements make an overall better experience- something MS used to be all about but in recent years this seems to have not disappeared but at least shifted in it's importance.

Having said all that I will still be downloading this as there seems to be no other solution better sadly- good work to the developers behind it.

re: Office Labs Releases Speed Launch

Quinn (MSFT) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:25:44 GMT

Hi,

Quinn here one of the folks who worked on Speed Launch. I really liked northerngeeks suggestion, quoted: "you right click a bookmark, a favicon or a program and select "Add new alias", dialogue box appears and you enter the word- this should then work in the IE address bar, the start menu and the explorer address bar". I think it would be really interesting direction for someone to take this general idea and it could probably be done with shell extension and an IE add-in. Any takers??? The Speed Launch team certainly doesn't suppose that our ux model is best, but we'd love to stimulate others thinking in this area and see where it can go. Thanks for the honest commentary and great suggestion.

Quinn