Thursday, April 17, 2008

I'm going back to cuneiform tablets

I must have unzipped thousands of files since I started using computers. I bet billions of files are unzipped every year by computer users.

And yet...

Not a single fucking software vendor has noticed that a lot of zip files contain just a folder with the actual files inside it.

In fact, I think that's probably the most common use case for zip files.


Instead every vendor says "oh, we'll just be flexible and give the users a choice"

"Do you want to unzip all the files in this zip file you haven't looked inside to a folder or not?"
a) Sure, I love having folder structures like \Desktop\downloaded_file\downloaded_file\setup.exe
b) Nah, randomly dump files all over my desktop


Why give users a choice when you know what they'll want and you could pick for them? This goes double for a choice where the user would have to research which option to pick (like looking inside every zip before choosing)