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| -rw-r--r-- | content/technical/installer-anti-pattern.md | 16 |
1 files changed, 7 insertions, 9 deletions
diff --git a/content/technical/installer-anti-pattern.md b/content/technical/installer-anti-pattern.md index 6639ea2..be19b36 100644 --- a/content/technical/installer-anti-pattern.md +++ b/content/technical/installer-anti-pattern.md @@ -6,15 +6,17 @@ Slug: installer-anti-pattern ### AKA: the Installer Anti-Pattern -There's a common user experience anti-pattern that pops up all over the place. The 'wizards' in Windows really epitomized this, and hence the anti-pattern is named after them. But it's common elsewhere too, particularly in installers. - -Here goes: +There's a common user experience anti-pattern that pops up all over the place: <div style="font-size: 120%; line-height: 140%; padding: 1em 3em; background-color: #EEE;"> Interactive choices offered to the user during an install, creation or setup process are an anti-pattern. The negative consequences are in proportion to the number of configuration choices involved. </div> -Or put another way: "Interactive configuration during installation is bad." +Or put another way: "Interactive configuration during setup is bad." + +The 'wizards' in Windows really epitomized this, and hence the anti-pattern is named after them. But it's common elsewhere too, particularly in installers. + + Why? There are two negative consequences of interactive configuration during setup: @@ -37,11 +39,7 @@ Now obviously there are immutable aspects of the setup process. And those unfort It's easy to complain about Windows. Wizard style dialogs ask you a bunch of questions and then create something or perform some job. These wizards are pretty much the worst example of this anti-pattern ... and Windows has a lot of them. - - -But Windows does get this right in a several other places. - -The Windows installer asks minimal questions. Here are all the choices asked during the Windows 2008 Server install: 1) The language, 2) What to install, 4) Where to install it. In my opinion the choice on screen 3) is a kludge related to Windows upgrade brokenness. But in spite of that the installer manages to largely avoid this anti-pattern. Note the lack of a prompt for creating user accounts ... that happens later. +But Windows does get this right in other places. The Windows installer asks minimal questions. Here are all the choices asked during the Windows 2008 Server install: 1) The language, 2) What to install, 4) Where to install it. In my opinion the choice on screen 3) is a kludge related to Windows upgrade brokenness. But in spite of that the installer manages to largely avoid this anti-pattern. Note the lack of a prompt for creating user accounts ... that happens later.  |