In response to my post last night about the Speech Recognition Tutorial in Windows Vista not running at 800x600 Rob Chambers has posted about some of the thinking behind the decision:
“I understand the feedback ... and it was a painful decision to have to make ... but we had to go up to 1024x768 minimum resolution for a bunch of the screens in the Tutorial that Craig didn't show you. We tried doing that in 800x600, but it just didn't work; especially in the "Dictation" and "Working with Windows" sections of the Tutorial.
You see, in the tutorial, we try to make the system look as much like an actual running Windows Vista PC as possible, and also give the user instructions off to the right. We ask them to interactively try things (in a directed manner) so when they're done with the tutorial, they'll have a great idea of how to use WSR in the real world.
We may revisit this decision in the future (for Vista + 1), but for now, you'll have to run the Tutorial on a system that supports 1024x768. However, users can still use the old style Training window on lower resolution screens.”
Firstly I would like to thank Rob for responding at all. It is good that you are listening at all and that you take the time to respond. That said I could not disagree more.
Rob claims that a couple of the screens didn’t work at resolutions below 1024x768. As a user of a small screen tablet I would much rather have to put up with something not quite working visually than have it not work at all.
Typically users who have chosen a device with a small screen and a lower screen resolution have made a conscious decision to give a little bit away visually to get some other benefit small physical size, light weight or both. We choose to do that. We live with the applications and websites that don’t layout properly and we scroll left and right as well as up and down to use them. If it is too unusable then we can choose to go away and dock to do what must be done. Developers – when you error out below a particular resolution (or don’t take into account that the screen can be oriented in portrait mode) you take that decision away from the mobile user and that is bad!
Rob – that exact same if statement that is used to throw up the error that tells me that my screen resolution is too low could instead be used to change the layout of the form, turn some stuff off or simply enable scroll bars. Sure it may not look quite as pretty but at least it would work and put the decision with me as to whether or not to go and dock instead.
Developers of the world – use your if statements for good, not evil.
As a final point – don’t forget that it is not just mobile PCs that run at 800x600 either. My in-laws run their desktop PC at 800x600. It drives me nuts, but that is how they like it and it is not for me, or any developer, to tell them they are wrong.