No room for Content.
(but with plenty of room for an enormous thanks
to Google Desktop Search)
Years ago I used to joke about a friend who was enamored of the toolbars in
Word. I don't know whether he wrote anything, but it was clear that writing
wasn't his first priority. It couldn't have been, since so much room was taken
up with all the various toolbars he had open, there was hardly any room on his
screen for actual writing.
Though I actually know someone who "worked" in this way, this sort
of story has entered computer folklore. Numerous web pages can be found where
people bring us screen shots of an overly-toolbar-populated word processor.
One example
is on a page promoting some sort of back-up product. After showing us all the
available toolbars we're informed that:
This amazing picture is Microsoft Word 2003 with all of its default toolbars
enabled. That's an awful lot of functionality.
though to my mind it's hard to find the functionality in all that. Another screen
shot of this sort is here.
One blogger suggests that we can save screen space by positioning our toolbars
on the sides
of the screen.
But as my toolbars started infringing upon my browser screen space, I relearned
a lesson about glass houses. My basic operating set-up sees me with my Links bar
always available, and below it (of course) the Google Toolbar. But I don't stop
there. Furl has a toolbar which I use quite
frequently, and I want my esnips available
as well. (Yes, I also have Net Snippets, but it's a fair guess that even though
it's a more heavy-duty tool than esnips, it's probably being phased out for that
online version.) That's about it for Internet Explorer, but with Firefox things
can get much more seriously out of hand (though there's another, perhaps surprising,
advantage to Explorer). My links bar (make that
the bookmark bar), Google Toolbar, and esnips are available to me when Firefox
is open, but too many people seem to be developing new tools for Firefox, so I
have to make room for their toolbars and buttons as well. But as I've noted in
the past, sometimes I download something that I think I'll use, only to discover
after a short period of time that it doesn't do what I'd wanted it to do, or perhaps
hasn't attracted enough users to make it really useful, or simply isn't something
I need. I thought that I'd be accessing RSS feeds from Firefox, for instance,
but found that I prefer to click over to Bloglines to read the feeds I subscribe
to there. MyStickies seemed like a
great idea, but after installing it I couldn't seem to find much need for
it. Wikalong also seemed promising, but in general
I don't like sidebars because of the space that consume, and no community seemed
to be developing around that tool that merited taking up the space, meaning that
I'd basically be conducting conversations with myself - and I don't have to learn
to use new internet-based tools in order to do that.
I should admit, however, that no matter how cluttered I felt that my screen
was becoming, it didn't get anywhere close to the clutter on this
person's screen.
Go to: It's just too Oh!