Lazesharp.net

Windows Vista’s UAC (User Account Control) has sparked much controversy on the internet. The simple fact is that UAC prompts the user far too much, something everyone agrees on, but is it really the fault of UAC?

UAC, in principle, is a good step towards making Windows a better and more secure operating system, unfortunately in practice it proves more of an irritation to users, who find themselves clicking “continue” out of habit. Reminiscent of software installation licence agreements.

OS X and most desktop Linux distributions have been using a similar approach to allow temporary administrative access for years to much success. However, both of these require more from the user than UAC, needing a password to “continue” whereas UAC merely prompts the user to click a button.

The problem is that administrative access is required by far too much on the Windows platform. Each time something requests administrative access. Want to delete a shared shortcut from the start menu? You’ll need administrative access for that! How about playing Battlefield 2142 online? Sorry, Punkbuster requires administrative access (why!?).

The truth is, it’s not UAC that’s the problem. It’s all the various programs for Windows that assume and have always assumed that they have full administrative access to the machine. It’s a long standing loop-hole that Microsoft have finally closed and now developers have to actually put some thought in to their software before coding.

Of course, Microsoft themselves have this lesson to learn as many actions in Windows Vista require administrative access when they probably shouldn’t.

Hopefully, in time everyone will learn that they’re not in charge of the computer. The user is.

One of the goals for Firefox 3 is to use native cocoa widgets for it’s user interface. Great, it’s about time because at the moment, it looks out of place on OS X. But why stop there?

Where’s my native GTK+ widgets on Gnome? Qt on KDE? Or, dare I ask, native widgets on Windows, which is by far their largest demographic. I admit, Firefox looks worse on OS X than it does on any of the above, but that’s no excuse.

At the moment, on Gnome, it’s a toss up as to which is better, Firefox or Epiphany. Epiphany, with it’s native GTK+ user interface, is much faster and integrates well with the desktop, but Firefox, with it’s add-on system and huge development community is much more powerful.

We need a clear winner. We need a GTK+ build of Firefox.