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Previous: Square Toilet | Main | Next: Amazon.com's personalized e-mails
April 16, 2004 12:01 AM
Broken: MSN software list
William Morris writes:
After recently rebuilding my Windows 2000 machine, I went looking for MSN Messenger as the final step in the process-- naturally I ended up at MSN.com.As you can see from the picture, the version they're currently offering is for WindowsXP. The text clearly states: "If you are using a different operating system, please select another version on the left side of the screen." But there are no other versions listed there! There are no links here, or anywhere else that I could determine, that take you to previous versions anywhere on the website Luckily, we had a copy sitting on our server at work. Hard to develop for it if you can't find it...
I've really gotta say - a majority of the entries posted here lately have been intermittent, unreproducible, or not really broken at all...
There are certainly a lot of broken designs in the world, but This Is Broken is not, in my opinion, picking good examples.
I agree with Dan. I myself have submitted what I thought is a much better example of brokeness (www.mofo.com - a Japenese lawfirm called "Morrison & Foerster") about a month ago, but to no avail. I wonder what's up.
Incidentally, MoFo isn't just Japanese (they've got offices all over the world, but primarily in the United States), and the double-entendre in their name is mostly intentional.
MoFo is well aware of the double-entendre of their name, and have been for years. They were known as MoFo long before they set up www.mofo.com.
Out of curiosity, were you looking for MSN
messenger, because Windows messanger is a very
annoying 'service' (it generates pop-up like
messages. good for network admins, but bad for
people at home. Unfortunately people have
learned to broadcast ads using the messenger
service) I don't think I've seen any OS
before XP that runs the service.
This was almost certainly a frames-related error: the "other OSes" were available in the outside frame, but the link found went to the inner frame alone.
What's broken here is that folks who use frames don't think about this happening, and don't offer links back to the page the way they meant it to appear.
What's more broken is that folks still use frames...
...phsiii
No one has seemed to notice the brokenness of the statement "...works with both [item number one], [item number two], and [item number three]..."
You can't work with BOTH of more than two things.. They could have simply removed the word "both" and had a gramatically-correct sentence..
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Square Toilet | Main | Next: Amazon.com's personalized e-mails
Where'd you even find this? Every Messenger download I've found on MSN gives the option to choose an OS. I've checked:
* www.msn.com, then click the Messenger link at the top, links you to msnmessenger-download.com:
* www.msnmessenger-download.com, has separate links for each OS
* messenger.msn.com, top-level download link detects OS from browser settings
* messenger.msn.com, Download link lets you choose an OS
I agree that the page you show is broken *if* it's not already in a logged-in state of some kind (e.g. you've already identified to the web page what OS you have), but I can't seem to find any such page. Has MS perhaps already corrected it?
Posted by: Grant Bugher at April 16, 2004 12:58 AM