On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 10:48:34AM -0400, Jim Giner wrote: > And besides - I'm sure there are PLENTY of people here who despise scrolling > thru endless repeated paragraphs from a long list of posts just to get the > the latest contribution to the topic. :) > > This newgroup may have its rules, but if bottom-posting was such a wise and > preferred method, why do millions of business users subscribe to a product > such as Outlook, that top-posts by default, to conduct their daily business > via emails flying back and forth with the latest post at the beginning so > that readers don't have to re-hash old news unless they want to?
Seriously? That behavior is dictated by Microsoft and could be simply a shortcut, making it easier on Microsoft. (They don't have to scan down the email and place the cursor at the end of the email. They can just put it at the top, easy-peasy.) Or it could have been dictated by Bill Gates, who didn't want to scroll down. One thing's for sure: Microsoft's rarely met a standard they liked or willingly followed. Business users simply went along with this behavior, mostly because they had no knowledge of anything else. It was the default behavior of the only email client that came with their operating system. They learned to live with it and even appreciate it. My point is, I seriously doubt that business users (who were not the original target audience for Outlook) dictated to Microsoft that they arrange their email client so that the cursor defaulted to the top. And by many accounts, Outlook (et al) is an appalling broken email client for many reasons. Business users don't "subscribe" to the Microsoft email client. It comes with their operating system for free and it pretty much does what they want, even if it has gaping holes in it. Why retrain and spend billions to install something else on every computer in their company? A similar question might be, if Unix/Linux is so great, why do millions of business owners stick with Windows year after year? Answer: because it comes with their computer and pretty much does what they want. And Microsoft actively blocks, discourages and prevents the installation of any other operating system on hardware from anyone they can possibly control. Questioning bottom-posting is one thing. Holding up the widespread adoption of Outlook as a reason why top-posting is superior (because business people demand it) is silly. No offense, but it's pretty weak reasoning. Paul -- Paul M. Foster http://noferblatz.com http://quillandmouse.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
