How to get rid of the MS "Community NewsGroups" Tree on this site?
 

Using XL 2003 up to date

I log into this site per next:
http://support.microsoft.com/newsgro...lic.excel.misc

I do not use any mail or Newsgroup reader to view this site other than
offered by MS on the WWW

The "Community NewsGroups" Tree window takes up too much screen space.

Does anyone know how to log in w/o the Tree window?

Is there a configuration of preferred view anywhere?

Thanks Dennis

How to get rid of the MS "Community NewsGroups" Tree on this site?
 

Hi!

They used to have a much better web interface than the current one. The
person(s) responsible for the current design should be fired and should not
be permitted to work as programmers!

You can "grab" the right border of the window with your mouse and and drag
it to the left to resize it.

Biff

"Dennis" wrote in message
...
Using XL 2003 up to date

I log into this site per next:
http://support.microsoft.com/newsgro...lic.excel.misc

I do not use any mail or Newsgroup reader to view this site other than
offered by MS on the WWW

The "Community NewsGroups" Tree window takes up too much screen space.

Does anyone know how to log in w/o the Tree window?

Is there a configuration of preferred view anywhere?

Thanks Dennis

How to get rid of the MS "Community NewsGroups" Tree on this site?
 

Dennis

I don't use the web interface, but I doubt it. Most computers at least have
outlook express on them and this is the newsreader many use as it's
free...there are many other free ones too...it's by far the best way to view
these groups

You need to enter news.Microsoft.com under the server setting and you can
then download any/all/none of the public groups available. many of which I
don't think are available through the web interface. For example there are
around 17 just for Excel
--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
www.nickhodge.co.uk
HIS


"Dennis" wrote in message
...
Using XL 2003 up to date

I log into this site per next:
http://support.microsoft.com/newsgro...lic.excel.misc

I do not use any mail or Newsgroup reader to view this site other than
offered by MS on the WWW

The "Community NewsGroups" Tree window takes up too much screen space.

Does anyone know how to log in w/o the Tree window?

Is there a configuration of preferred view anywhere?

Thanks Dennis

How to get rid of the MS "Community NewsGroups" Tree on this s
 

Please, don't get me started. I'm virtually certain that someone took a poll
and sent the results to committee with the goal of coming up with the most
INEPT method of offering and receiving assistance possible and implementing
it in a god-awful way.

You are now viewing the results of the committee's decision.

The inability to upload/download files, keep your text formatted without
breaking, and more other little things tossed into the mix is simply
crippling to both sides of the equation.

I could name a dozen other help sites where help is facilitated, not
hindered, by the delivery mechanism. None of them require anything except an
internet connection and a web browser.

You'd think a company with the networking, programming and software skills
of Microsoft could do a tad better.

"Biff" wrote:

Hi!

They used to have a much better web interface than the current one. The
person(s) responsible for the current design should be fired and should not
be permitted to work as programmers!

You can "grab" the right border of the window with your mouse and and drag
it to the left to resize it.

Biff

"Dennis" wrote in message
...
Using XL 2003 up to date

I log into this site per next:
http://support.microsoft.com/newsgro...lic.excel.misc

I do not use any mail or Newsgroup reader to view this site other than
offered by MS on the WWW

The "Community NewsGroups" Tree window takes up too much screen space.

Does anyone know how to log in w/o the Tree window?

Is there a configuration of preferred view anywhere?

Thanks Dennis

How to get rid of the MS "Community NewsGroups" Tree on this s
 

You'd think a company with the networking, programming
and software skills of Microsoft could do a tad better.

Actually, I don't blame the programmers. They only do what they're directed
to do.

It's the "committees" of middle managers that screw everything up! And
they're the ones that give final approval.

Biff

"JLatham" wrote in message
...
Please, don't get me started. I'm virtually certain that someone took a
poll
and sent the results to committee with the goal of coming up with the most
INEPT method of offering and receiving assistance possible and
implementing
it in a god-awful way.

You are now viewing the results of the committee's decision.

The inability to upload/download files, keep your text formatted without
breaking, and more other little things tossed into the mix is simply
crippling to both sides of the equation.

I could name a dozen other help sites where help is facilitated, not
hindered, by the delivery mechanism. None of them require anything except
an
internet connection and a web browser.

You'd think a company with the networking, programming and software skills
of Microsoft could do a tad better.

"Biff" wrote:

Hi!

They used to have a much better web interface than the current one. The
person(s) responsible for the current design should be fired and should
not
be permitted to work as programmers!

You can "grab" the right border of the window with your mouse and and
drag
it to the left to resize it.

Biff

"Dennis" wrote in message
...
Using XL 2003 up to date

I log into this site per next:
http://support.microsoft.com/newsgro...lic.excel.misc

I do not use any mail or Newsgroup reader to view this site other than
offered by MS on the WWW

The "Community NewsGroups" Tree window takes up too much screen space.

Does anyone know how to log in w/o the Tree window?

Is there a configuration of preferred view anywhere?

Thanks Dennis

How to get rid of the MS "Community NewsGroups" Tree on this site?
 

Nick Hodge wrote:
I don't use the web interface, but I doubt it. Most computers at
least have outlook express on them and this is the newsreader
many use

I find it hard to believe that OE is preferred over a web interface. I
agree that for reading and posting individual articles, OE provides a
reasonable and familiar interface. But when I tried to use OE for this
purpose long ago, I was disappointed with all the network traffic
required before I could even begin to search for interesting threads.
As I recall (correct if I am wrong or things have changed), OE must
pull over __all__ of the articles posted since your last visit; you
cannot simply get a list of articles, then pick and choose which ones
to pull over (read). That might not be so bad (except for the very
first time) if you check the newsgroups often enough. But even reading
once or twice a day can be a bother in high-traffic newsgroups like
some of the Excel groups. Moreover, there is the constant local
maintenance to do if you want to conserve disk space, deleting the
predominantly uninteresting articles.

Having said that, I, too, do not like the "MS Community Newsgroups"
interface. Generally, I use groups.google -- another lousy interface
:-(, but at least it works. The only problem is: for some reason, the
first article of a thread posted in MSCN does not appear in
groups.google. But some or all follow-ups posted in MSCN do appear in
groups.google. Consequently, I occassionally go to MSCN just to see
new postings.

PS: Only recently (in the past couple months), I have been
experiencing an annoying problem when using the MSCN web site: at the
very least, a huge delay before the tree appears; and often, it "never"
appears, or it appears only when I abort the initial search and search
again. Looking at the TCP/IP traces, the problem does not seem to be a
delay or failure when establishing the TCP connection; the 3-way
handshake completes immediately. My guess is: the subsequent delay or
failure arises due to a hand-off of the connection to another server
within the MSCN backend network. Does anyone else experience the same
delay? Does anyone know how to report such problems to the MSCN staff?

(I tried writing to two different MS support email addresses, to no
avail.)

How to get rid of the MS "Community NewsGroups" Tree on this s
 

Biff wrote:
You'd think a company with the networking, programming
and software skills of Microsoft could do a tad better.

Actually, I don't blame the programmers.

Sure you can!

They only do what they're directed to do. It's the "committees"
of middle managers that screw everything up! And they're the
ones that give final approval.

I know nothing about how MS programming teams work -- and the MSCN
programming team, in particular. But even in a "chief programmer"
team, the external interface and the high-level logic are determined by
a programmer -- perhaps one with a lot more experience than the grunt
who does the coding. In any case, at some point in time, a programmer
is responsible for the line-by-line coding, and hopefully other
programmers are responsible for "inspecting" the results -- reviewing,
critiquing and specifying improvements. In any modern programming
environment, the finished product is almost always the result of a team
of programmers, if not an individual, who do have input on details of
the external design. In fact, often the "middle manager" has very
little involvement in the details. He/she is only responsible for
staffing and scheduling. More to the point, the real problem is: the
finished product is not used by the "middle managers" and the marketing
types who might specify the external functional requirements (usually
at a very high level, if at all). Sometimes, they rely on user
feedback (sometimes "focus groups") to evaluate prototypes and final
results. But that is only as good as the feedback mechanism and the
willingness of management to pay attention to comments. And for minor
"services" such as MSCN, I would be surprised if they even subject the
external design to users for feedback.

I have tried in vain to offer feedback on recent apparently purposeful
changes to the MSCN user interface. I have not yet found a mechanism
that gets past the first-level support person, who truly knows little
about what is going on. Of course, the MSCN UI was never very good.
But two recent changes are particularly irksome.

1. When I double-click an article title (subject line), that used to
open a new window that contained the initial article and all
follow-ups. The window had vertical and horizontal scroll bars. This
was very useful to me because on another computer with an odd pixel
dimension to make it "user friendly" for someone with poor eyesight,
this new window was the only way that I could see the entire line of
most articles. (Of course, that is because of another flaw in the MSCN
UI, which fails to have a horizontal scroll bar normally.) But that
new-window UI changed recently to include a "tree" frame on the left;
at the same time, the horizontal scroll bar was removed. Klunk!

(To make matters worse, if I try to move the right margin of the tree
frame to the left, IE freezes up. Double-klunk!)

2. I experience an odd delay (extremely long!) or failure to see the
article list when I click on the newsgroup name on the left-hand frame.
Sometimes the article list never appears; sometimes it appears only
after I click on the newsgroup name again (and again, as needed).
Looking at TCP/IP traces, I can see that the problem is __not__ with
making the TCP connection; the 3-way handshake completes almost
immediately. I suspect that this problem results from a failure when
handing off the TCP connection to another computer in the MSCN backend
network. But that is only a WAG. Arguably, it would be a routing
problem within my ISP's backend network -- but only after the TCP
connection is established. (Surprise!)

If anyone has experienced with those problems and knows of a
work-around __other_than__ using some other method of accessing the
newsgroups, I would appreciate it if you could share the information
here or send me email. Normally, I avoid the MSCN UI. But I believe I
"must" go to MSCN occassionally because some articles that I can see
using the MSCN UI do not appear in my usual web-based news server,
groups.google. (Yeah, I know: another lousy UI.)

How to get rid of the MS "Community NewsGroups" Tree on this s
 

Poor Dennis - lost in derailed discussion.

But I have to comment: one provision of standards such as ISO 9000 is that
it is incumbent upon the provider (programmer) to point out obvious flaws in
design that are going to impact the usefulness of any product, including
software. That is also the stand of the Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering
Institute. I concur with both stands.

" wrote:

Biff wrote:
You'd think a company with the networking, programming
and software skills of Microsoft could do a tad better.

Actually, I don't blame the programmers.

Sure you can!

They only do what they're directed to do. It's the "committees"
of middle managers that screw everything up! And they're the
ones that give final approval.

I know nothing about how MS programming teams work -- and the MSCN
programming team, in particular. But even in a "chief programmer"
team, the external interface and the high-level logic are determined by
a programmer -- perhaps one with a lot more experience than the grunt
who does the coding. In any case, at some point in time, a programmer
is responsible for the line-by-line coding, and hopefully other
programmers are responsible for "inspecting" the results -- reviewing,
critiquing and specifying improvements. In any modern programming
environment, the finished product is almost always the result of a team
of programmers, if not an individual, who do have input on details of
the external design. In fact, often the "middle manager" has very
little involvement in the details. He/she is only responsible for
staffing and scheduling. More to the point, the real problem is: the
finished product is not used by the "middle managers" and the marketing
types who might specify the external functional requirements (usually
at a very high level, if at all). Sometimes, they rely on user
feedback (sometimes "focus groups") to evaluate prototypes and final
results. But that is only as good as the feedback mechanism and the
willingness of management to pay attention to comments. And for minor
"services" such as MSCN, I would be surprised if they even subject the
external design to users for feedback.

I have tried in vain to offer feedback on recent apparently purposeful
changes to the MSCN user interface. I have not yet found a mechanism
that gets past the first-level support person, who truly knows little
about what is going on. Of course, the MSCN UI was never very good.
But two recent changes are particularly irksome.

1. When I double-click an article title (subject line), that used to
open a new window that contained the initial article and all
follow-ups. The window had vertical and horizontal scroll bars. This
was very useful to me because on another computer with an odd pixel
dimension to make it "user friendly" for someone with poor eyesight,
this new window was the only way that I could see the entire line of
most articles. (Of course, that is because of another flaw in the MSCN
UI, which fails to have a horizontal scroll bar normally.) But that
new-window UI changed recently to include a "tree" frame on the left;
at the same time, the horizontal scroll bar was removed. Klunk!

(To make matters worse, if I try to move the right margin of the tree
frame to the left, IE freezes up. Double-klunk!)

2. I experience an odd delay (extremely long!) or failure to see the
article list when I click on the newsgroup name on the left-hand frame.
Sometimes the article list never appears; sometimes it appears only
after I click on the newsgroup name again (and again, as needed).
Looking at TCP/IP traces, I can see that the problem is __not__ with
making the TCP connection; the 3-way handshake completes almost
immediately. I suspect that this problem results from a failure when
handing off the TCP connection to another computer in the MSCN backend
network. But that is only a WAG. Arguably, it would be a routing
problem within my ISP's backend network -- but only after the TCP
connection is established. (Surprise!)

If anyone has experienced with those problems and knows of a
work-around __other_than__ using some other method of accessing the
newsgroups, I would appreciate it if you could share the information
here or send me email. Normally, I avoid the MSCN UI. But I believe I
"must" go to MSCN occassionally because some articles that I can see
using the MSCN UI do not appear in my usual web-based news server,
groups.google. (Yeah, I know: another lousy UI.)