Category Archives: Rant

AutoCAD 2009 – Tooltips are bad for my sanity

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In the general scheme of things, this is a relatively trivial issue, but it’s sometimes the little things that get under my skin. Winner of this year’s prize for most annoying new feature just has to be the new tooltips. They are really not good for my mental health. If I have tooltips turned on, I find it hard to use AutoCAD 2009 for more than a few minutes without wanting to smash my fist through the screen.

I would like to leave tooltips on just a little bit so they will let me get used to AutoCAD’s modified button appearance and location. All I want is a little one-word tooltip if I hover over a button, but I can’t have that. There is some control over tooltips to be had in the Options dialogue box:

Controlling tooltips in Options

Oh, sorry, you can’t see the options I’m trying to describe because there is a stupid great big tooltip in the way. What I’m trying to show is that if you turn off all but one of the toggles, you can at least avoid the embarrassing spectacle of AutoCAD covering up most of the screen with information about how to draw a line when you hover over the Line button. But you can’t persuade AutoCAD to just show you what the commands are, you have to have several lines of information, one of which is exactly the same for every single tooltip.

The least intrusive tooltip available

That’s not too bad I suppose, but try using a dialogue box. Nasty huge tooltips keep throwing themselves at you in a mad rush to obscure what you’re trying to see. You can move your cursor right out of the way to stop the tooltips from appearing, and then move it back again when you want to actually pick something, but what a waste of time, mental energy and wrist effort.

You didn't want to see what's under here

OK, so you’ve had enough of them? Want them all banished? Fine, back into Options, turn that last toggle off, pick OK (assuming it’s not obscured by a tooltip so you can see it) and you’re done. Or are you? Back into Options, pick the Files tab and do a bit of hovering.

Even when they are off they are on

Aaaagh! The stupid tooltip isn’t even accurate. It doesn’t describe what you’re hovering over, it describes the files category that’s selected, which could be off the screen. If nothing is selected, it describes the first category rather than what you’re hovering over. Duh.

OK, Autodesk people, own up. Who thought this was a good idea? Really, what on earth were you thinking?

AutoCAD 2009 – Action Recorder needs action

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One of the banes of AutoCAD over the past few years is the phenomenon of the half-baked feature. A new feature is added to the product with serious design deficiencies and/or bugs and other shortcomings that make it much less useful than it should have been. I’m sure you have your own favourite examples of this. I may expand on this theme in future, but for now let’s concentrate on one brand new and particularly undercooked feature, the Action Recorder.

The ability to record and play back macros is undoubtedly something that many users want, and has featured prominently in some wishlists. Autodesk has now provided the Action Recorder. Wish granted, right? A shining example of Autodesk listening to its customers and providing what they want and need? Not exactly. In fact, this wish has only been granted at the most superficial level.

Here is the wish as seen on the 2003 AUGI Top Ten AutoCAD Wish List (it’s number 6): “Provide a VBA Macro recorder.” Here it is as it appeared in the February 2006 AUGI Wishlist (it’s number 1): “The ability to record the process of a certain task and assign a quick key to it – similar to Microsoft’s macro recorder for office products.”

People were asking for something similar to what they had in Microsoft products. That is, something that not only allows actions to be recorded and played back, but to also create some kind of editable programming language code. Why would people want that? Because recorded macros can be easily examined, modified, combined, changed from one-off to repeating sequences, used as the basis for slightly different routines without requiring re-recording, incorporated into full-blown routines, and so on. The need for editable code is blindingly obvious, really.

So, how does Action Recorder store its macros? As VBA code? No, but that’s not surprising because Microsoft has dictated that VBA is doomed. LISP code, then? No, LISP is unfashionable at Autodesk. Script files? Nope. XML? Try again. It’s a new and proprietary format. It’s binary, not text. It’s undocumented. There is no known access to the code via AutoCAD’s other programming interfaces. In summary, it’s a closed format.

Does that matter if you can edit it using Autodesk’s tools? Yes it does, but in any case you can’t edit it in any meaningful sense. The only editing mechanism provided by Autodesk is the Action Tree, and it’s woeful. Pretty much the only things you can do with it are to delete whole commands and to change certain recorded actions to prompt for user input instead. You want to change a macro to set up certain layers before you start? Sorry. You want to add a command to the end of a macro? Nope. You’ve picked 3 times during a command and you want to change it to 2 or 4 times instead? Too bad. You want to use one macro as the basis for a whole series of macros, just changing a couple of things from macro to macro? No can do.

This lack of a useful editor isn’t just a problem for CAD Managers and power users. If anything, it’s even more of a hindrance for the novice users it’s obviously aimed at. Who is more likely to get an extended command sequence wrong? A power user with years of experience writing menu macros, or a new user? So who is most likely to need to fix up their macros after recording?

There are various other things wrong with the Action Recorder that go to make it a very frustrating tool. The way in which points with object snaps are recorded is unusable. The way in which zooms occur is bound to cause lots of surprises. The inability to record dialogue box operations is going to confuse and frustrate many users. The habit of the Action Tree in always pinning itself in place is annoying. Its inability to resize outside a very limited range is restrictive. The plethora of in-your-face warnings will have you groaning more than Vista’s User Access Control, and don’t think of turning them off in advance, that’s not allowed. Finally, if you’re not a Ribbon user, forget it. While the command line interface allows for recording and playing back macros, there is no way of editing them. So unless you want to do exactly the same thing in exactly the same location in all your drawings, you’re out of luck.

Don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself. Try to make a macro that does something simple but useful like rotating a piece of text about its insertion point, or inserting a block on a line and then trimming the line within the block. By the time you’ve worked out that it can’t be done, you could have learned about menu macros from scratch and written something that actually works, several times over. A word of warning; please make sure you lock up any pets or children before starting this experiment.

The Action Recorder is a “brochure feature” only; it serves as a marketing tool for Autodesk rather than a genuinely useful productivity tool for its customers. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was an isolated case, but it isn’t. Unfortunately, half-baked new features are now the rule rather than the exception.

Why is this so? Is Autodesk cynically trying to fool its customers in an evil revenue grab? Does the AutoCAD development team spend its time trying to come up with deliberately half-baked features? No. The developers don’t want to make these weak and useless things; they are human beings with the same urge as the rest of us to do well and be proud of their work. The problem is that there is simply not enough time to do a good job with a major feature and finish it off. It all comes down to the 12-month release cycle; it just isn’t working.

Advertising, ethics and editorial freedom

In a recent blog post, Roopinder Tara included this throw-away comment:

Pure bloggers don’t do advertising, so no worry about advertising pressure — the secret and unstated fear of us all in the trade press.

I respect Roopinder, but this kind of “pure blogger” label irritates me. I have an ad on my blog for geeky T-shirts, so I’m an impure blogger? Somebody please explain the reasoning behind that distinction, because I don’t understand it. Even if I accepted (say) Autodesk advertising, the idea that it would have any influence on what I choose to write is ridiculous. Yet I see even more extreme viewpoints presented by some bloggers as the absolute truth. For example, how about this from Matt Lombard?

Advertising a product means that you are beholden to that company for cash or other rewards – you have in essence sold your right of free expression about that product. This is why most ‘professional’ journalists that work for ads don’t have much of value to say, they are whores to corporations.

So, if you accept advertising, or you write for somebody who does, you can’t possibly write impartially? Rubbish! Not just rubbish, but downright insulting rubbish. Maybe Matt would find it hard to remain impartial for fear of losing some pocket money, but I don’t. When I’m writing, advertising never even enters my head. Matt, please stop projecting, it’s not a good look.

Back to Roopinder Tara’s comments about advertising pressure in the trade press. As a writer, all I can say is, what pressure? For a dozen years, I’ve been writing a Cadalyst column that has been known to contain uncomplimentary comments about Autodesk (a major advertiser) and its products. I have never been asked to remove or even slightly tone down any such comments. Not once. I’ve somehow survived for about a hundred and fifty articles while writing this stuff under multiple Publishers, multiple Editors-In-Chief and multiple Managing Editors. In all that time I’ve not heard a single peep from anybody. No columns have been pulled, no comments have been censored, no requests have been made for me to state something in a milder way, nothing. Maybe I’m just lucky?

To be fair, there may possibly be advertising pressure being applied and resisted at higher levels that I know nothing about. Maybe that’s the point. If I, the writer, know nothing about any such pressure, then in the written word where it actually matters that pressure simply doesn’t exist.

Customer Service 3 – On Hold

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What’s the longest you’ve waited on hold? I broke my own personal best last week when I rang my bank. I phoned up, went through the menu system, typed in my account number and was advised that there could be “some delays” due to “technical difficulties”. I left the phone on speaker and went about my other business.

I did some actual work, prepared the evening meal ingredients, made sure my kids had showers and music practice, greeted my wife as she returned home, cooked the evening meal, served it, ate it, cleaned up, did some more work, and after all that my phone was still telling me, “We apologise for the continuing delay. We appreciate that your time is important and will ensure that your call is answered as soon as possible.” For the hundredth time.

After two hours, I was ready to give up. I would normally have given up much earlier, but my perverse streak made me want to go for the record. As the phone timer display hit about 2:01:00, my finger was poised over the “Off” button when an actual real human started speaking!

Fortunately, this person spoke in an accent I could understand and was very helpful, so I was able to sort out my business to my satisfaction in a few minutes. Because of that, and because this was a one-off, I will refrain from naming the guilty in this case.

Here’s the phone display immediately after hanging up:

Can you beat that? Anybody who has tried to contact MD Web Hosting in the past three weeks could beat it, I’m sure. (More on that later). What’s your record?

Customer Service 1 – McDonald’s

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I have a few customer service stories to share. Most are about bad service, but one is about very good service indeed. This isn’t that story. It’s a rant, but it’s true, and it is offered here for your amusement.

A couple of years ago I took my eldest daughter L to a school friend’s party at a local fast food outlet. (It’s McDonald’s Melville, actually. I see no need to protect the guilty). As second daughter E would have been left out, I took her too. They could play on the playground together. L was being fed at the party, but I was looking after E myself. I don’t particularly like feeding them that kind of stuff, but once in a while doesn’t hurt too much.

The party was from 11:30 to 1:00. I went to order food for E and myself at about 11:55. There were queues (that’s lines to most of you) and I eventually got to the counter at about 12:05. Bear in mind that I had a four year old girl out of sight in the playground while this was going on, and although there were plenty of school mums I knew out there, it was still uncomfortable not having direct supervision. I wanted to get back out there as soon as I could, preferably with E’s food so she didn’t start getting ratty, as she does when she’s hungry.

I ordered E’s chicken nuggets & chips kid’s meal, and my double beef and bacon value meal, without any trimmings. At the same time, a woman who also had a kid at the party ordered some other stuff, including a McOz burger with extra tomato. A couple of minutes later, my tray had some of E’s stuff and my chips sitting on it. After five minutes, it also had some drinks on it. Another five minutes later, the girl said there was a delay on the burger and that she would bring it out to me, and proceeded to hand me the tray.

I put my hand on the skinny little large-surface-area fat-and-salt-magnet excuse for chips (that’s fries to most of you) that they serve at McDonald’s (“Australia’s Favourite Fries!”), and they were of course stone cold. I said, “Excuse me, do you think I could please have some warm chips?” She said “Oh, OK”, as if the idea of food going cold when left out was some kind of novelty she had never come across before, and proceeded to take away my chips and replace them. I then said, “Do you think I could have these replaced, too?”, pointing at E’s chips. Another surprised , “Oh, OK” and those got replaced too. I don’t know what the training is like at McDonald’s, but “Getting a Clue 101” obviously isn’t one of the subjects. I didn’t bother with replacement nuggets, as I just wanted to get out there to feed and supervise my child. Likewise, I also didn’t ask for my now-partly-flat Coke to be replaced. It always comes out of the tap partly flat anyway, so what’s the difference?

So, I informed the girl that I’d be outside in the playground area and took my tray out there. E and I ate our lunches (at least as far as I could), and when we were finished there was still no sign of my burger. The woman who ordered her stuff at the same time was also waiting for her McOz with extra tomato when she finished her lunch with her kids. After a bit more waiting, I eventually decided to go back in and chase up my order. Mrs McOz asked me to follow up hers while I was in there.

I got in there to find it packed out with people waiting, and employees doing their stuff behind the counter and avoiding eye contact. Not wishing to barge in, I waited off to one side, as I could see Manager Woman with her back to me, dishing out chips into bags. I thought she would be done soon, so I waited. And waited. After she had done about 304 bags of chips, she turned around and I managed to attract her attention. I told her politely that I’d been waiting for 25 minutes for my burger, and that there was another woman outside in the same situation. She asked what the orders were for, and then she went into the kitchen to find out what’s going on. She came back out and told me she was going to have fresh ones made and brought out. I told her that I was near the playground, and that Mrs McOz was too. So out I went again.

I could see the drive-through customers being served reasonably quickly, orders coming and going even before I got to place my original order. If I had any sense, I should have abandoned the queue right then, got in my car and driven round and placed the order. So much for hindsight, on with the story.

The kids were playing away happily enough, but by the end of the party at 1:00, it was time to go. Neither missing burger had turned up. However, the clueless girl who took the order did come outside and say the Manager was sorry for the delay, the burgers would be out soon, and if we went inside we could have a free sundae. By this time, neither Mrs McOz nor myself were in the mood to hang around any longer, and certainly weren’t interested in joining the queue in the hope of eventually getting a large cup of lamb lard with added sugar, so we both declined and both requested a refund. Surprisingly politely, given the circumstances.

Another five minutes later, Miss Clueless came out with a $3.95 refund. However, she seemed completely baffled by the concept that there were two people who both needed refunds, despite the fact that she had been told about that 5 minutes earlier, so she couldn’t work out who it was supposed to be for. Eventually, I took the money, politely declined a second offer of lamb lard with added delay, and left with my kids. Mrs McOz was still waiting for her refund when I left. For all I know, one day in the distant future they will discover her skeleton and those of her kids, still sitting on that bench waiting for their $4.25 refund.

If the manager had any sense, given that she had two customers already annoyed by a 25 minute delay, she should have either done the orders herself or stood over the guys in the kitchen for the 2 minutes it takes to assemble a burger, then brought them out herself, with profuse apologies and vouchers for free stuff. The fact that she didn’t do that, and she quite astonishingly allowed the situation to repeat itself immediately after having had it brought to her attention, shows that she was even more clueless than the girl who took the order in the first place and then forgot about it. Some degree of cluelessness isn’t unusual in a 16-year-old girl working in a busy Macdonald’s, but Manager Woman was supposed to be the manager. Well, she managed to get a lot of chips into bags, so maybe that’s all that is required in that position.

Actually, that’s not quite true. She also managed to annoy not only two customers-of-the-moment, but two customers with five kids of Macdonald’s party age between them, who had actually held at least two kids’ parties there in the past, and who never will again. Plus, the other parents saw what was going on and won’t be too keen on going back. They will tell other parents, and so on. Plus, it’s now on a blog. How to lose bulk customers in one easy step.

McDonald’s Melville – The Place Where It Takes Over An Hour To Not Be Served With A Burger. Twice!

As I was leaving, we Hungry Parents had this little exchange:

Steve: “They call it fast food.”
Mrs McOz: “Faster than what?”
Steve: “Faster than starting with a cow and a field of wheat.”