When I'm a user, I like the old, simple HTML UI, and I've nearly always just deeply, profoundly hated and despised

> the desktop experience

To me, the whole "desktop experience" was based on some nonsense from Xerox PARC, that (1) the screen should be a metaphor for a traditional desk with several sheets of paper, (2) what was on the screen were representations of various objects that a user would manipulate directly using the pointing device, and (3) how the screen UI (user interface) worked should not be explained or documented but should be intuitively obvious, as obvious a sheet of paper on a real desk, and otherwise easy enough to learn just by experimentation.

Well, for a very well designed UI for, say, a microwave oven, it worked, yet my microwave oven did come with a nice user manual.

But for the goal of all of computing, IMHO, the Xerox PARC model and assumptions are a huge pain in the back side.

E.g., for Microsoft's Windows Media Player 12 with Windows 10, I tried for hours, clicking, and clicking, basically enumerating and traversing all the UI before I finally resorted to my old favorite -- just put the mouse pointer, trial by trial, at nearly every point on the screen and there do four things, left click, right click, double left click, double right click, and see what happens. Don't look for any links, push buttons, controls and, instead, just throw clicks at the screen, exhaustively. Finally via such meaningless clicking, I was able to get some new options and, eventually, play an old audio CD but was not able to play a movie DVD. Some "user experience".

To me, the situation is similar for a lot of common desktop software -- the UI is not described, documented, or obvious, and too often a LOT of experimentation is needed to figure out what the heck was going on.

My UI Excedrin headache #948,223,594,667 was just last week with Outlook from Microsoft's Office.

So, I wanted to use the old Microsoft command XCOPY, with some carefully selected options in a script in Rexx, to back up the directory tree that contains all of MY (not Microsoft's or HP's ) data on the computer, copy the directory tree to an external disk drive connected via USB (universal serial bus). So, I started the backup and in the morning discovered that the backup had failed.

Failed? The computer and the external disk drive are quite new, and XCOPY and the options I was using are quite old and long perfect, so what the heck could have failed? I've been doing XCOPY backup and restores for 10+ years back to Windows 2000. Before that I was doing similar operations with similar software on OS/2 and then Prime computers.

So, the last few lines on the screen explained the problem: The PST (personal storage or some such?) file that I have Outlook using was "locked". The actual message was the dreaded (from what can see via Google)

File creation error - The process
cannot access the file because
another process has locked a portion
of the file.

So, but the only program that could have that file "locked" was Outlook, and as far as I knew it was not running. Then I looked at the output of the latest version of Microsoft's Task Manager (Windows 10 does have one although it is very different from what was on Windows XP) and saw that a program OUTLOOK.EXE was running.

So, I told Task Manager to "kill" the program and started XCOPY again. So, then the XCOPY run worked fine!

Then, presto, bingo, the next day trying to run Outlook gave

Microsoft Office Outlook has
stopped working

A problem caused the program to
stop working correctly. Windows
will close the program and
notify you if a solution is
available.

Well, I decided not
wait for a notification!!!!

I renamed that PST file
and copied to the old
name an old PST file
and found that Outlook
gave the same message.
So, the problem was not the
PST file. So, the bad
memory Outlook was using
about had to be in the
Windows Registry.

So, maybe I could do a
system restore? Looking
around, such is still
available. So I did
a system restore.

Then Outlook started right
away but also said that the
PST file (the one Outlook
was using before this mess)
had not been closed properly
or some such, checked the file,
and found nothing wrong and
now Outlook seems to be
working again.

So, before doing a backup,
do a system save. For Outlook,
try to have it not running.

Why was Outlook running when
I'd long since closed it?
Okay, someone sent me via e-mail
an appointment. A first
ever for me. Of course, no
way do I want Outlook involved
in appointments. But, then,
with that appointment, Outlook
kept giving me notifications.
The first backup attempt was
actually after the appointment
time and date, but somehow
Outlook, when healthy again,
reminded me again about the
appointment. So, apparently
if there is an appointment,
Outlook will not stop but
just keep running so that it
can send notifications about
appointments.

So, before doing a backup,
go into Outlook and delete,
cancel, eradicate, obliterate,
get rid of, destroy utterly
everything about appointments.

I JUST want Outlook to do
e-mail, JUST e-mail, JUST
simple, old SNMP (simple
network mail protocol) and
POP3 (post office protocol
3) e-mail. And, actually
I want all the e-mail
to be just simple, old
ASCII text or UTF8.
For more, use attachments
as in MIME (multimedia
internet mail extensions)
with base 64 encoding, etc.

So, for this cause and cure,
are just throwing stuff
against the wall, hoping,
causing problems, getting into
a system restore with some
work lost etc. Bummer.
Huge bummer.

No, Xerox, Microsoft, your
UIs are NOT "obvious". No,
you NEED documentation.

But, for old, simple HTML, say, without JavaScript, for some 100+ million such Web sites in the world, some trillion+ such Web pages in the world, and for 2+ billion people in the world, modulo natural language, every person can understand every Web page and Web site right away, no users manual or experimentation required.

Lesson: On the desktop, the Xerox PARC stuff was an open door for chaos; on the Web, the simple HTML with its few, simple, well understood controls cleaned up much of the chaos and provided discipline that greatly helped UX (user experience).

So, for the goal of having Web pages more like desktop applications, UIs, UXs, no thanks.