The militant Microsoft

Microsoft suffers from constraining assumptions and semantic rigidity, says Network World columnist Mich Kabbay.

He cites for example that it no longer seems possible to insert multiple signatures in an e-mail without adding steps (like copy/paste). Older versions of Outlook allowed users to store all kinds of text as "signatures," effectively serving as keyboard macros. But no more. In Outlook 2007, signatures get their own place on a ribbon (Message | Include | Signature).

"The Microsoft engineers' errors, in my opinion, were three: they made unwarranted assumptions, they exercised semantic rigidity, and they deprived the user of reasonable control," he writes.

Reader Al Rowly, agrees:

"It is so true. The MS programmers actually make you default to innocuous, incomplete, mono-signatures when you should or could be adding two or three informational contact blocks at the appropriate point in a communication."

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