Vista Doesn’t Love Designers

Well, as I mentioned in a recent post, I went and bought a new computer. I didn’t feel like getting another custom job, and there was a good sale on a really nice system at the store. Of course, the downside to that was that I would have to deal with Vista. Now that I have it, I should have looked for something custom.

I didn’t like Vista, on so many levels, before I started using it. Now I just plain hate it. I disliked it for the DRM junk loaded inside it. I really didn’t care for the visual changes made to every menu system and folder in the operating system because nothing seems to be done with any sort of user logic in mind and I can’t find anything (took me about 15 minutes before I was fed up with the UI and started turning on the options to revert to the old layout).

But… all those things aside, I hadn’t quite ‘hated’ Vista yet. That changed today.

Vista showing MultipleIE's error.

Vista apparently doesn’t like my MultipleIE’s testing environment. So I can’t immediately start testing in IE6 and lower until I do a workaround for this. Apparently, it is a known issue, but new to me. I also tried downloading the standalone from Evolt. No luck there either.

Of course, I start thinking about what I can do to make it work. My best solution so far seems to be to install XP as a virtual operating system via VMWare and then install MultipleIE’s there. That is a MAJOR irritation. I’m not going to dual boot XP with Vista – that’s just plain inefficient for testing situations because I’m not going to log out of Vista and log into XP and then log out and log into Linux, etc.. that’s irritating. So… for now it seems that virtualizing XP is the best option I have at the moment. Of course, I’m very very strongly considering just picking up another copy of XP for this box and dumping Vista altogether.

Now, supposedly, there is a way to make it work, but it involves using another MS product when I’d rather just use VMWare (since I use it anyway). But… I might do this just to see if it works. Some instructions were posted on the MultipleIE’s site about how to virtualize XP and install MultipleIE’s on it via the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 software. Still, its highly irritating that I have to jump through so many hoops to use IE for testing when it is already the bane of every web developers existence.

In my personal opinion, I think Microsoft should be providing ways to run their various versions of IE simultaneously on their operating system, instead of other people around the community having to figure out ways to hack and piece together those browsers so they work.

I’m ranting, I know. But at least every quarter there is -something- that goes on with Microsoft or IE, that makes me just want to throw out all support for IE and just provide a page to all IE users that says something like:

Dear John/Jane,

I’m sorry you use IE. Truly I am. I am also very sorry that we can’t see each other anymore because you use IE. It’s not you, it’s me.

I can’t stand the fact that you use IE. It drove me to the brink of insanity and I need to drop all contact with it. You could save yourself before it is too late. Firefox, Safari, Opera… they are all trying to help you. Please, don’t be another statistic.

You can recover, but I can’t talk to you until you stop using IE. It’s not healthy for you, for me, and we just can’t have a relationship while you are still using IE. I hope you can understand, and that you’ll consider the alternatives. I’ll be around if you decide to stop using IE – you know where to find me.

With all my love,

~ This website.

I’m tempted to, I really am. So, thanks again Microsoft, for reminding me exactly why I started using Linux as my primary OS in the first place.

~Nicole