Daniel:

I've read Inmates and read parts of my About Face copy. I agree that following standards blindly, is not always good. Windows standards may be fine for Word processing and spreadsheets. But when you get to the old style heads down data entry that I taught at a local business college (keypuch & key-to-disk equipment), some of the standards get in the way.

That said, however, what would happen if Compaq decided that the decisions made years ago about key placement on manual typewriters was all wrong (and they were), that they intended to only provide Dvorak keyboard layouts to increase worker productivity. It would and it did for those users who bought that style keyboard. But what about the Dell, Gateway and IBM computers in the same office. Think what the transistion would be when you went to someone else's computer.

At DevConnections, one of the sessions dealt with the design of doors in the hotel. Some doors had a solid pushbar, but the behavior to open the door was to "pull" it. There is a book called "The Design of Every Day Things". As I remember, it discusses many poor designs that are common. If these poor designs were improved, what would be the effect of the changes if the "thing" is something we all use often?

I have no love for M$ (except for the 10 shares of stock that I've lost money on), BUT they are an 800 lb. gorilla and they software world is littered with the dead businesses who did something "better", but was swept away in the M$ tidalwave.

$ .02