Microsoft plan sounds worryingly like Clippy
Microsoft plan sounds worryingly like Clippy
Shakespeare once wrote that "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Conversely, an animated paperclip by any other name is just as irritating.
Nevertheless, that has not stopped Microsoft from ploughing ahead with plans to introduce more pop up dialogue boxes and other messages on its future software releases, designed to educate users about security, despite widespread criticism of its animated paper clip that appears in the Office product suite, which has been described as unhelpful and annoying.
The new dialogue boxes, which will feature in the soon to be released Service Pack 2 of Windows XP, have been programmed to appear when a user is about to do something that the software does not consider to be a safe practice, such as opening an executable file.
Whereas Microsoft's animated paperclip popped up to offer suggestions to improve productivity by utilising additional features, Microsoft has assured the user community that the new dialogue boxes will be less intrusive.
"We will find a way to do it in the most appropriate, least interruptive fashion," said Jonathan Perera, senior director of Microsoft's security business technology division. "To put it another way, you won't see the Outlook-type approach, probably. We are trying to make it very friendly and intuitive."
Let's hope the software giant sticks to that assurance, or there'll be a lot of hacked off users out there.
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