It's actually
sad...hopefully, one day, someone will create a system that will be able to recognize what the user wants or needs and...
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...tells them to
step away from the tool.
OTOH, just yesterday I got very frustrated (angry, even) when my wife got an email with two attachments and I couldn't get one to open correctly. One was a plain RTF that gave "instructions" on how to open the other one. That 'other' one was labeled as a PDF. However, the instructions said it
must be opened with Adobe Reader. Most people who know me will recognize that telling me to do something only one way, particularly if it involves a specific piece of software and a widely used format, is a good way to make my stubborn side come alive.
Preview could open the PDF. Pages could open it, including the formatting which Preview ignored. Even Mariner Write could open it. Of course, what every one has already guessed is that the PDF had embedded text entry blocks that none of these apps would display. Not even PDFpen Pro would do that. I would have sworn that we've had this problem addressed at TS before, but I was in no mood to show my ignorance or ineptitude. I simply caved and downloaded the latest Reader and opened the file.
The whole point of this organizations use of this kind of file was to receive a "digital" copy of the application. I'm sure it was done with Acrobat as they specifically
warned against opening it in that app. Thus, someone there recognized the marginal 'protection' their method had from editing.
The worst part of the whole situation is that I realized that my wife had no idea what had to be done, despite the 'instructions' to navigate to a site, determine which file was appropriate, download a file and uncompress the file, install it on the computer, open the attached file with the new app and fill out the form. Apparently, the user would need no instructions on how to actually get the new app to send the edited file back to the organization...
The vast majority of TS members would have absolutely no problem with any of the above steps, of course. But my wife has basically zero experience in downloading and installing applications, much less determining which of several versions of an app she should download. Fortunately, the OS pretty much takes care of uncompressing and installing things. But she would still have to contend with the dialogs asking for permission to continue doing something that she had no idea as to whether it was safe or not. She would probably just decline the EULA agreement and the whole process would stop there!
But many click the OK button so automatically that they are easily duped into installing malware!
This whole mess comes from my lack of educating her (and my grand daughters) about some of the basics of computer usage. How to use a particular application is one thing, how to do so much more than that is even more important! I can't blame her for a still confusing machine.
Of course, it's usually easier to simply become the 'tech/geek' in the family...
But that really doesn't help our family and friends learn what they
could be doing...while actually
enjoying it because the fear factor would be gone!
