Is consistancy too much to ask for?

How come both Outlook (2003 at least haven't used 2007) and Windows Live
Mail CLOSE when you push the X and minimize to tray when you push Minimize
(with the option to hide the window in the tray icon context menu) but Live
Messenger Minimized to tray on X and Minimizes in the normal manner when the
minimize button is clicked? Can you PLEASE make Live Messenger behave like
the other two?

Greetings,

Messenger is not a mail client, it's intended as a notification application and to never
close. The default experience is to automatically start with your computer, sign in when
there's an Internet connection and then continues running until you shut down the PC. A
simple usability study would show you that most people click the X to close Messenger and
expect it to keep running.

I'd support maybe removing the minimize option so its more consistent with other applications
and parts of Windows that act the same, but that's about it.

--
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2007 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.
--

"Nicholas Hanson" <> wrote in message
news:8DC50228-B8A4-499E-A2DD-...
> How come both Outlook (2003 at least haven't used 2007) and Windows Live Mail CLOSE when
> you push the X and minimize to tray when you push Minimize (with the option to hide the
> window in the tray icon context menu) but Live Messenger Minimized to tray on X and
> Minimizes in the normal manner when the minimize button is clicked? Can you PLEASE make
> Live Messenger behave like the other two?
>

Nicholas Hanson wrote at 08.06.2007 :
> How come both Outlook (2003 at least haven't used 2007) and Windows Live
> Mail CLOSE when you push the X and minimize to tray when you push Minimize
> (with the option to hide the window in the tray icon context menu) but Live
> Messenger Minimized to tray on X and Minimizes in the normal manner when the
> minimize button is clicked? Can you PLEASE make Live Messenger behave like
> the other two?

MS say this is "by design", therefore there is no problem.
It's your problem when you be not pleased with a "bad design"... :-@
(Answer about this behavior on connect.microsoft.com)

I never closed my EMail client or my newsreader too, therefore I can't
understand the argument about that the Messenger is an "always running"
application and EMail and others not, AND why the old WL Mail Desktop
works the same way? No sorry, this argument is pointless in my opinon.

And btw, this "cost" 1-2 checkbox fields in the options, I can't
understand why MS give not the users the choice what they want. :-(

Peter

NO. It works just fine and as intended.
They had one version where the (X) closed the application (early 2002?) for
a short time.
And everyone screamed because they had to go into programs to make it
startup again.
And it was a mistake as I remember fooling around with many registry edits
to change it.
--
mae

"Nicholas Hanson" <> wrote in message
news:8DC50228-B8A4-499E-A2DD-...
| How come both Outlook (2003 at least haven't used 2007) and Windows Live
| Mail CLOSE when you push the X and minimize to tray when you push
Minimize
| (with the option to hide the window in the tray icon context menu) but
Live
| Messenger Minimized to tray on X and Minimizes in the normal manner when
the
| minimize button is clicked? Can you PLEASE make Live Messenger behave
like
| the other two?

Hi,

This was an option in 4.0 and below actually. It wasn't till 5.0 in 2002 that the feature
was axed (well you could get it back by modifying the registry till 6.0).

--
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2007 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.
--

"mae" <> wrote in message
news:...
> NO. It works just fine and as intended.
> They had one version where the (X) closed the application (early 2002?) for
> a short time.
> And everyone screamed because they had to go into programs to make it
> startup again.
> And it was a mistake as I remember fooling around with many registry edits
> to change it.
> --
> mae
>
> "Nicholas Hanson" <> wrote in message
> news:8DC50228-B8A4-499E-A2DD-...
> | How come both Outlook (2003 at least haven't used 2007) and Windows Live
> | Mail CLOSE when you push the X and minimize to tray when you push
> Minimize
> | (with the option to hide the window in the tray icon context menu) but
> Live
> | Messenger Minimized to tray on X and Minimizes in the normal manner when
> the
> | minimize button is clicked? Can you PLEASE make Live Messenger behave
> like
> | the other two?
>

As I recall it always stayed in the tray for me and one time it didn't.
(I had to make changes so it would stay there when closing)
Always depended on it notifying me of mail

Except the Live one is too ugly for me now.
When I get Vista in couple months guess I will have to.
--
mae

"Jonathan Kay [MVP]" <> wrote in message
news:...
| Hi,
|
| This was an option in 4.0 and below actually. It wasn't till 5.0 in 2002
that the feature
| was axed (well you could get it back by modifying the registry till 6.0).
|
| --
| Jonathan Kay
| Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
| Associate Expert
| http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
| Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
| All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2007 Jonathan Kay.
| You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.
| --
|
| "mae" <> wrote in message
| news:...
| > NO. It works just fine and as intended.
| > They had one version where the (X) closed the application (early 2002?)
for
| > a short time.
| > And everyone screamed because they had to go into programs to make it
| > startup again.
| > And it was a mistake as I remember fooling around with many registry
edits
| > to change it.
| > --
| > mae
| >
| > "Nicholas Hanson" <> wrote in message
| > news:8DC50228-B8A4-499E-A2DD-...
| > | How come both Outlook (2003 at least haven't used 2007) and Windows
Live
| > | Mail CLOSE when you push the X and minimize to tray when you push
| > Minimize
| > | (with the option to hide the window in the tray icon context menu)
but
| > Live
| > | Messenger Minimized to tray on X and Minimizes in the normal manner
when
| > the
| > | minimize button is clicked? Can you PLEASE make Live Messenger behave
| > like
| > | the other two?
| >
|
|

I can understand how the change could be jarring and unexpected to existing
users. If Microsoft did this without alerting users I'd expect most people to
be upset. I suspect though that if you clicked the X and a dialog box popped
up saying something like "This will close the application, please use
minimize if you would like Messenger to continue running so that you may
receive messages, check email, etc." and gave the user the OK or Cancel
options as well as a "don't show this message again" checkbox it would
resolve most, if not all, of the confusion. They already do something like
this when you try to close it the first time where it pops up and tells you
it's not really closed... which begs the question... If it's so intuitive
that pushing X minimizes, why do they feel they need to pop something up to
tell you it's still running? The answer is it is NOT intuitive at all to new
users, but it's what they've trained existing users to expect. Anyway I'm
sorry to hear about the confusion it caused you and thank you for sharing
your experience.

"mae" wrote:

> NO. It works just fine and as intended.
> They had one version where the (X) closed the application (early 2002?) for
> a short time.
> And everyone screamed because they had to go into programs to make it
> startup again.
> And it was a mistake as I remember fooling around with many registry edits
> to change it.
> --
> mae

Well I never claimed it was a mail app, but thanks for clarifying that for
me. As for a "notification application" what do you call an app that sits in
the tray and checks something every x minutes and when it finds one changes
it's icon and optionally displays a pop-up and/or sound? I'd call that a
notification application and that's what both Outlook and Live Mail do.

As for your "simple usability study" I suspect you WOULD find that most
EXISTING USERS click X and expect it to keep running because that's what MS
has TRAINED them to do. I highly doubt however that someone who has not used
an app with this behavior would expect the X (close) button to minimize...
that's what the - (minimize) button is for. I seriously doubt the average
user thinks to him or herself "this app is a notification app so X will
behave differently". Just because you've trained your users to expect a bad
UI design doesn't make it a good one. Removing or at least disabling the
minimize button would be a slight improvement at least.

I'm really not sure what the weight of a MVP's opinion is to the actual
designers but if they show as much contempt as you (thanks again for letting
me know Live Messenger is not a mail app, I really appreciate it, I never
would have figured that out myself) I understand that there is no chance this
is ever going to change.

Thank you for taking your time to explain these things to me.

"Jonathan Kay [MVP]" wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> Messenger is not a mail client, it's intended as a notification application and to never
> close. The default experience is to automatically start with your computer, sign in when
> there's an Internet connection and then continues running until you shut down the PC. A
> simple usability study would show you that most people click the X to close Messenger and
> expect it to keep running.
>
> I'd support maybe removing the minimize option so its more consistent with other applications
> and parts of Windows that act the same, but that's about it.
>
> --
> Jonathan Kay
> Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
> Associate Expert
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
> Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
> All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2007 Jonathan Kay.
> You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.

mae wrote :
> ...
> And everyone screamed because they had to go into programs to make it
> startup again.
> ...
Sorry, but this implies for me that MS knows about this problems since
4 years and found no solution for both group of users.... ???

AND No after reading some post here or on other we resources, I still
not see any differents between Instant messaging, EMails, Newsgroups
and RSS Feeds.
AND MS is not a single application company like ICQ, AIM, Yahoo,... I
am surprised that it seems to me that no-one from MS spend some
thoughts about this problem, either make all apps equal, give the users
the choice what the want to do OR maybe told some of the vista
developers about this problem to enhance the tray for all applications.

Peter

On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 00:08:19 -0400, Nicholas Hanson wrote:

> How come both Outlook (2003 at least haven't used 2007) and Windows Live
> Mail CLOSE when you push the X and minimize to tray when you push Minimize
> (with the option to hide the window in the tray icon context menu) but Live
> Messenger Minimized to tray on X and Minimizes in the normal manner when the
> minimize button is clicked? Can you PLEASE make Live Messenger behave like
> the other two?

You are asking for something from the company which invented
"inconsistency". Expect pigs to fly sooner than the Gnomes of Redmond figure
out how to make things work with consistency.

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum