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Vox Pop: What default settings would you change?
Merlin Mann | Aug 21 2007
As I am wont to do, I was thinking out loud on Twitter this morning.
I'm convinced that, for better or worse, a lot of computer-related habits come straight out of using the default settings. For example a stock Mail.app install checks your email every 5 minutes (I reset mine to 'Manual') and, without interdiction, Apple's mail program will also create all your new messages as "Rich Text" (Nuh uh. Mine? 'Plain Text'). And then, in some cases, even if you want to do things differently, you have to swim upstream to do so. In the case above, I can't set iCal or gCal's default to anything but 1 hour (any more than I can autoset multiple alarms1). God only knows what poor John Gruber would give to have Mail.app more easily let people quit top-posting. The Question to You:What default settings would you love to change in popular applications? Taken a step further, what excellent habits could be taught to users by looking at defaults as something beyond familiarity and day one ease-of-use? Could the aggressive use of smart or personalized defaults create a generation of short-meeting-makers and intersperse-responders? 68 Comments
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 Illustrator: I'm really sick of...Submitted by Egypt Urnash (not verified) on August 22, 2007 - 8:31am.
Illustrator: I'm really sick of having to double-click on the 'pencil' and 'brush' tools and turn off either 'keep selected' or 'edit selected' to make them usable. One or the other works fine, but having them both on (as is the default) makes these tools absolutely useless. Photoshop: I gotta agree with Brad about apple-Z/shift-apple-Z not defaulting to 'forwards/backwards in history'. Flash: And what's with Flash thinking 'apple-Y' makes sense for 'redo'? Every other program I've used in my life uses 'shift-undo' for 'redo'. Is the Mac screengrab still defaulting to PDF? I can't remember. » POSTED IN:
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