Logan Buesching

I am usually a fan of open source software, but the latest two that I have downloaded are sore on my eyes and a real pain to use!  The first is Media Coder, while the second is JJ MP3 Renamer.  It has been my findings that open source software in general is much more difficult to use than their commercial counterparts.  Maybe someday I will do a comparison of open source to commercial software and the usability between them.

Background

I recently purchased a 120gb Zune player when I used to have an Apple IPod.  I want to transfer all of my IPod stuff over to my Zune player.  I was able to get songs I ripped from CD to work properly, but songs I purchased on ITunes don’t work.  I am currently working on stripping the DRM from those purchased songs to add to my Zune.  I realize this is illegal, but hey, I legally paid for these in the first place, so I don’t feel bad about doing it.

Media Coder

Lets start with the program (that I hope?) can convert the DRM laden files to non-DRM formats.  I haven’t quite used the program yet, but on the first look I immediately said WTF.  This is UI hell.

1.) I’m given a transcode option in the menu bar.  I could pretend like I’m not an idiot, and say that my grandma won’t know what “transcode” means, but in reality I don’t know what it means. I will assume that “Convert” would have been a better choice. (Hell, even Windows Live Writer doesn’t have transcode in its dictionary!)

2.) They have some weird icons to show, one of which being the “Skip” icon which looks like someone is getting ready to soccer kick something.  This reminded me of wanting to physically kick the software, which is what you see my little stick figure doing!

3.) Why is there a “…” and an “Open” button next to the folder? This is confusing.

4.) Why the hell are there so many tabs?

5.) WHY THE HELL ARE THERE SO MANY TABS!!???

6.) Why would I want to refresh rss? Do you really think I keep this application open for long enough for you to post something new? And even if I did, do you think I would want to refresh the rss feed to find out new information?

7.) WHY THE HELL ARE THERE SO MANY TABS?!?!?!

JJ MP3 Renamer

As if the first UI design wasn’t bad enough, here is another gem.  This was used to rename and move around files from my IPod’s crazy directory layout into a more human readable format.  Overall this wasn’t as bad as the last one, but it did take me about 5 minutes to actually figure it out.

1.) The item that has “click” next to it is actually clickable! Wow, who would know that?  There is absolutely no indication that it can be clicked.  In fact, there are no visual indications that anything on the screen can be clicked.

2.) Why do I have to be shown the difference between idv2 and idv3? Is there really any reason why I would still want idv2?

Please note, although I work for a large corporation, these views are entirely my own and do not reflect the views of my employer.  Some of this information may be incorrect, but I have tried to be as thorough as possible with my investigation.  If you find any errors that need correcting, please leave a comment!

While investigating why Adobe Air doesn’t launch my default browser, I noticed that Google Chrome isn’t as aggressive as IE is when it sets the default browser settings.

Make Google Chrome My Default Browser

What happens when you say “Make Google Chrome my default browser”?  Well, from the looks of it, all it does is registers itself as the default program for only the Windows Explorer shell.  In theory, every application that needs launched should go through Windows Explorer (via shellexecute), which will check for the user set defaults and launch the appropriate program.  What Google Chrome does not do though, is set itself up as the default handler in the HKLM\Software\Classes\htmlfile registry key.  This makes it so applications that only check this key completely bypasses Google Chrome as the default browser.

Make Internet Explorer My Default Browser

When you set IE as your default browser, not only does it set itself up as the default browser for the Windows Explorer, but it also makes sure that it is the default handler for HKLM\Software\Classes\htmlfile.  Therefore, for the applications that only look at this key they will see that IE is the default browser and launch it.

Why Do Some Apps Behave Differently

There has been a standard way to launch the default browser in Windows for a long time, and that has always been by passing the URL into ShellExecute.  For .Net applications there is Process.Start which will do the same thing, and just introduced in Java is Desktop.Action.browse.  All of these will go through Windows Explorer, find the default program, and launch it.

Why Adobe Air Not Honor The Default Browser

From looking at where Adobe Air looks to launch a browser, it appears that it uses none of the methods above.  When navigateToUrl looks for the default browser, it just checks the HKCU\Software\Classes\htmlfile* registry key, and loads the default handle that is in this key.  Since Google Chrome does not set this and IE does, IE is launched.

Why Does Firefox Launch if IE is My Default Browser

Firefox goes even one step further! If you see above, I mentioned that IE sets HKLM, but not HKCU!  So when Firefox sets HKCU, and Adobe Air looks there, it says Firefox is the default browser, then launches it.  To set IE as the default browser, you can either set it from the defaults**, or delete the registry key.

* As someone may note, it actually looks for HKCU\Software\Classes\.htm, which by default is htmlfile.  What Firefox does is changes this to FirefoxHTML.

**When you set the default programs for web browsers, what it does is sets the HK*\Software\Classes\[extensions] keys to point to htmlfile.  The reason why if you use set Google Chrome or Firefox as the default browser there and it is not honored is because neither Google Chrome nor Firefox set the htmlfile class.  For Firefox, just go through it’s menu system to make it the default browser and this will be fixed.

I have recently found out that Adobe Air does not honor the default browser.  I am using IE8 as my default browser right now, and AIR products open up Firefox.  Mike Chambers mentions the issue and links to a fix, but I have a simpler one. 

I assume Adobe Air checks the HKCU registry entry first, which may not be set by other programs (which may set only HKLM).  So just delete the entry in: HKCU/Software/Classes/.htm (I also deleted the one in .html).  Bam! Fixes the issue.

Update! (9/3/08): If you are curious why this is, please check out my explanation.