Nutty Software Behavior
That’s nutty as in “It makes *me* nutty”.
I loath software applications that do not respond. You’d think responding would be an application’s biggest aspiration in life, too. I can point to two particularly frustrating examples on both Mac and Windows.
I have a very handy [VPN](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPN) utility on the Mac called [DigiTunnel](http://www.gracion.com/vpn/). This morning, I woke my computer up from sleep and attempted to make the VPN connection to work. DigiTunnel’s menu was completely disabled, though. I was puzzled. I thought I saw it disconnect last night. My expert conclusion was that something was wrong, so I restarted the computer. As all the applications closed down, one Window remained: a DigitTunnel dialog warning me that a network share was open. The dialog was left-over from the disconnect but got hidden behind a bunch of other windows.
Often, on Windows, I’ll unlock my work PC and try to open a minimized Outlook. The window doesn’t open. I have done something (I think involving the Task Manager) to get Outlook to show up, but I cannot remember the exact steps. I usually restart the computer, though since it’s the one procedure I have down pretty well. If I do manage to revive Outlook, though, it turns out that Outlook has displayed a modal dialog complaining about a failed archive attempt.
In both these cases, clicking on some part of the application should have brought those dialogs forward so I could deal with them immediately. Is that so hard?