I was a little sleepy when I answered the first time and I misinterpreted this statement. In general autorun is incredibly useful. Although I abhor software doing things without my permission, not being flexible enough, or thinking for me and making bad decisions, I also believe that there should be a maximum single-action default for any user interface interaction. Most of the time people insert CDs into the computer to do something with the CD – giving the software vendor an option of using that single action of CD insertion is important (giving the user the ability to disable this feature on their computer doubly so).
So many pieces of professional software I consider simply unusable because the developers prioritized a unified approach and flexibility over usability. The most recent example I have encountered is diagramming software –
- Click rectangle on pallete
- Drag it out on the canvas
- Click or double-click to select it
- Paste/type text
- Click outside on the canvas to de-select (in some packages this is optional)
- Click link on pallete
- Choose one endpoint
- Drag or simply point to the other end-point and click
8 fairly reasonable steps to add a box with text to a diagram and link it to something. That’s rather flexible, all sorts of predefined shapes and arrows and things… but this is too close to MS Paint for my comfort. In fact, diagramming software seems to be a degenerate form of illustration software with a nice shape library and XML export, and that’s ridiculous :mad:
Software should react simply, accurately and usefully to simple actions but still allow complex behaviors to be achieved through complex actions. There’s no excuse for Microsoft Visio for not being able to build an unconnected appropriately scaled diagram automatically by me repeatedly pasting into it. When I have to chart something out for myself the last thing I want is to keep dragging boxes around pasting into them.
Most applications do not have a reasonable default for very common “single actions” that all applications support to one degree or another. What happens if you drag or paste things into them without extra steps for example – most applications will not let you configure that behavior nor will they react appropriately. Sometimes the configuration is there but not obvious. I still don’t know how to make “Paste Special → Unicode Unformatted” the default behavior for “Edit → Paste” in Microsoft Office applications.
Autorun is a pleasant deviation from that – you can turn it off, you can turn it off on a case-by-case basis, or you can leave it on and it’s a single action behavior. It’s unfortunate if some software vendors abuse it, but most do not. If I put in most software CDs I will be prompted with a nice menu giving me the choices to install, read the manual or visit their website. Expecting everyday users to double-click on My Computer, locate their CD-ROM drive, double-click on it, figure out which of the files on it is the executable that installs the right thing and run it is not a realistic expectation. It would be nice if users knew what a file is, but computers are supposed to be tools and frankly they shouldn’t have to.
In this way I agree with the Amish. It is very easy for technology to enslave us. Learning complicated things is like a modern rite of passage that shouldn’t be there. If you are happy bringing your car to the dealership on a fixed schedule and paying out of your ass for them to do nothing simply because you don’t have to clutter your head with worries of when you need your spark plugs changed.
In my experience, yes. If autorun is disabled, it’s disabled.
