Comments on: A Rant About Application Customization

By: jamesmelzer

jamesmelzer — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:03:59 +0000

Jason – Agreed! There is a small portion of my brain that continuously works on the problem of “how to bring my Mac to work full time.” It’s a small portion and I’m not that bright, so I haven’t figured it out yet. But I definitely agree. The basic problem is this: there is a staggering level of effort required to bludgeon through the IT and PM bureaucracy to get both funding and access. It outweighs the short-term benefits. I can bring my Mac in any time I want but it is the company’s responsibility to buy me software and give me access. And then there are the ripple effects. I work on a team. If I switch to an Adobe suite or Omni suite, then the rest of the team is cut off from my work products (or needs to switch too). So inertia keeps me from making the switch, much as I would love it.

“You’re only a Master of Evil, Darth”

A final consideration is that I’m pretty darn handy with Visio. I would rate my Visio skills at about 9.5 out of 10; shapesheets, custom stencils, the whole nine yards. I am nowhere near as proficient in the Adobe suite… yet. I scored a demo of the entire CS suite a while back and I will be training myself in it with some side projects. “You must unlearn…”

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:16:56 +0000

This is why I wish most places would give IA’s/IxD’s a Mac and give them the choice of either OmniGraffle, Illustrator or Visio (BLAH!). At least it’s one hardware platform to manage and if using VMWare, one software (operating system) platform to manage. Yes it’s three separate software licenses, but what is productivity worth to a company? In the end, the file gets pushed to a PDF version for all people to pour over in the business/product/marketing groups.

What is needed is a frameworks within organizations. I’m all about patterns as other folks speak of, but Visio needs to be taken out of the framework.

It is counter intuitive and for folks who do wireframes and design, it’s two separate mind sets.

Stupid Microsoft!

By: Liv Labate

Liv Labate — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:20:32 +0000

Funny that, InDesign remembers your customized toolbars. It actually allows you to save different modes of customization in case you have a preference when working with your big monitor at home, versus different resolution at work, versus on the train, etc.

Let me get get Nathan and we’ll plant the inDesign chip on your brain…