The thing that gets on my nerves the most about javascript, is it’s silent deaths. I have a function XpathAttr that if you don’t pass it the correct parameter, In this case a XMLHTTPRequest object, it dies. No error, no Exception, no nothing.

Now I realise I could throw my own exception, or check that the xml parameter is actually the right type of object. But I really don’t care. I just want it to let me know execution has halted, here. Grr.

The OpenOffice 2 preferences dialog boxes are downright terrible. To select which document format to Save As, you have to select “Text Document” from one dropdown box and then change a second dropdown to “Microsoft Word”, then to edit the preference for Calc, you have to change the first dropdown box, which automatically changes the second back to where ever the setting is for Calc. It’s completely unintuitive.

I think it stems from the beginning of their preferences dialog, it has a tree navigation down the left and updates a pane on the right. It seems to be standard to have a tabbed interface for preferences, bringing up a second modal window if necessary. It seems like the OOO guys are sacrificing screen real estate for intuitiveness.