I am frequently annoyed by the behavior of Microsoft application interfaces. Microsoft Office, which I use most, is a principle offender.  It seems that Microsoft has gone out of its way to create a "helpful" interface that is actually anti-helpful; that makes your life worse.

At first, it might appear that they just simply never thought about the interface, yet closer inspection reveals that they did—and then they made every decision that would make the user more miserable and, more important, make the user less productive.

On consideration, I have come up with the name MAG/NET, an acronym for "Most Annoying Guess/Not Ever Thoughtful" to collectively describe the worst behaviors of this type of interface.  I wrote about that in my blog article The Microsoft-MAG/NET Interface. Later, I decided to start recording the worst behaviors into a compendium, which I have started here.

Enjoy...my compendium, not the interface. : )

Copy drag

Why does it copy-drag everything when I only mean to copy-drag one?

Double Click Consumes All

Why is every pair of clicks considered a double-click?

No Matter What You Want to Do: Edit Text

Did you say you wanted to select, move, copy, resize, or format that object? Too bad: Edit text instead.

Help the Idiot

Did you say you weren't an idiot?  Well, sorry, but we don't see it that way. So we're going to offer help every single time you turn around...and if you take us up on it, well, "the joke's on you."

Keep 'em guessing

Ahh...MAG/NET messages. Designed to not inform you, they do their job ever so well