Windows annoyances

There's nothing quite like ranting about something, I think it's even therapeutic. And what better topic for me to rant about than Microsoft Windows. Every time a new version of Windows comes out I install it eager to see what new and "cool" things Microsoft added. But sadly I'm also looking for what changes and annoyances Microsoft added as well. One of those annoying changes is full row select in Windows Explorer. Starting in Windows Vista if you change Explorer to "Detail" view it uses full row select, meaning you can select an item by clicking on the same row at the far right of the screen. In all previous versions of Windows you had to click on the name itself to select the item.

Here is an image of Vista with full row select:


And here is XP with the previous behavior:


This simple little change had a very profound impact on the speed and usability of Windows for me. I use the mouse a lot to select files, and when full row select is enabled you cannot click in the white space and drag a rectangle around multiple files to select them because of the simple fact there is no longer white space. Eventually I found a way to restore the original behavior by changing a registry key (surprise surprise). Suddenly Vista was usable again.

Fast forward a couple of years to Windows 7. That same registry key no longer works. If you google this people have tried tons of different things, and failed. Just the other day I found a post by a Microsoft employee on their support forum which confirmed my fears, Microsoft decided to eliminate the ability to control this and now always forces full row select to be enabled in Windows 7.

As if usability wasn't a problem enough, the reasoning behind full row select just pours salt in the wound. Microsoft added full row select to detail view to help touch-screen tablet users. I guess selecting small objects like files is difficult when using a fat inaccurate pointing device like your finger. But touch-screen tablet users are what, like 1% of the market at most. So to support less than 1% of the market Microsoft makes a change which inconveniences the rest of us. I'm all for adding a feature to support this, but make it user selectable.