I am usually a fan of open source software, but the latest two that I have downloaded are sore on my eyes and a real pain to use! The first is Media Coder, while the second is JJ MP3 Renamer. It has been my findings that open source software in general is much more difficult to use than their commercial counterparts. Maybe someday I will do a comparison of open source to commercial software and the usability between them.
Background
I recently purchased a 120gb Zune player when I used to have an Apple IPod. I want to transfer all of my IPod stuff over to my Zune player. I was able to get songs I ripped from CD to work properly, but songs I purchased on ITunes don’t work. I am currently working on stripping the DRM from those purchased songs to add to my Zune. I realize this is illegal, but hey, I legally paid for these in the first place, so I don’t feel bad about doing it.
Media Coder
Lets start with the program (that I hope?) can convert the DRM laden files to non-DRM formats. I haven’t quite used the program yet, but on the first look I immediately said WTF. This is UI hell.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
1.) I’m given a transcode option in the menu bar. I could pretend like I’m not an idiot, and say that my grandma won’t know what “transcode” means, but in reality I don’t know what it means. I will assume that “Convert” would have been a better choice. (Hell, even Windows Live Writer doesn’t have transcode in its dictionary!)
2.) They have some weird icons to show, one of which being the “Skip” icon which looks like someone is getting ready to soccer kick something. This reminded me of wanting to physically kick the software, which is what you see my little stick figure doing!
3.) Why is there a “…” and an “Open” button next to the folder? This is confusing.
4.) Why the hell are there so many tabs?
5.) WHY THE HELL ARE THERE SO MANY TABS!!???
6.) Why would I want to refresh rss? Do you really think I keep this application open for long enough for you to post something new? And even if I did, do you think I would want to refresh the rss feed to find out new information?
7.) WHY THE HELL ARE THERE SO MANY TABS?!?!?!
JJ MP3 Renamer
As if the first UI design wasn’t bad enough, here is another gem. This was used to rename and move around files from my IPod’s crazy directory layout into a more human readable format. Overall this wasn’t as bad as the last one, but it did take me about 5 minutes to actually figure it out.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
1.) The item that has “click” next to it is actually clickable! Wow, who would know that? There is absolutely no indication that it can be clicked. In fact, there are no visual indications that anything on the screen can be clicked.
2.) Why do I have to be shown the difference between idv2 and idv3? Is there really any reason why I would still want idv2?
