a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by goobster
goobster  ·  2051 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 12, 2018

The most agile, efficient, and professional company I ever worked for had committed entirely to the G Suite of tools. It's amazing how efficient and clear all communication is when you strip out all the stupid in PowerPoint, Excel, and Word, and make people's IDEAS stand in the forefront.

It makes decisions so much easier! And it enforces a stripped-down look and feel to all communications. Put your idea out there in a field of white space. If it's a good idea, people will get it. If not, they won't get swayed by animated transitions and colorful backgrounds and all the bullshit of Microsoft's America.

But everyone has to commit to it.

I do not have high hopes for your banking peers. This is gonna suck.

---

Owen Meaney. I still can't get that book out of my head. It pisses me off, and I'll be interested to hear what you have to say about it when you are done.





_refugee_  ·  2051 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Once again I am the Millennial expert, lol.

A lot of people have lost a lot of productivity and time. While I can understand it, when my manager asked how it went for me, I said, "My thought is that Gmail is not Outlook and my goal in switching is not to make Gmail like Outlook in any way. I'm just going to use it and see what works for me."

I've been in the industry for 8 years working with the same set of software the whole time - microsoft. I'm the youngest person in my department. There are a few others around my age, but there are also many others who literally know nothing except Microsoft and that's what they have been using at every job for 15, 20, 25 years. I have gmail at home and have used Gsheets, Gdocs, drive, etc. A lot of people never have.

I'm not a fan of the decision and some decisions Google makes about how to organize certain features of their products baffle me...why isn't the "Settings" icon consistent, for instance - in gmail and hangouts it's a gear in the upper righthand corner, for some reason in Chrome you can only get there by hitting the 3 vertical dots -- but I can live with it. It's familiar. It's not totally unknown to me.

I totally understand why for a lot of people it's just going to be incredibly difficult to transition. I'm glad I'm not as bad as them, at least. I don't pretend to be a technology loving expert.

also the way my company is transitioning just sucks as well. they're trying to make chrome our default browser but there are applications that simply do not work in chrome, only IE, and even with chrome add-ons designed to mimic IE chrome does not work. We're being forced into disorganized and confusing situations in places.

user-inactivated  ·  2051 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    also the way my company is transitioning just sucks as well. they're trying to make chrome our default browser but there are applications that simply do not work in chrome, only IE, and even with chrome add-ons designed to mimic IE chrome does not work. We're being forced into disorganized and confusing situations in places.

Not even knowing which bank you work for, I am almost certain a good part of your IT department's motivation is "if the applications start breaking because our users have migrated away from IE, management will have to give us the resources to replace the bullshit intranet apps that have been the bane of our existence since the consultants responsible moved on and left us with their steaming pile of ASP back in 2001."

_refugee_  ·  2050 days ago  ·  link  ·  

They’re vendor supplied apps and in talking to the Process development team today the understanding is that they won’t work in chrome and we won’t be spending the money to buy a version that will, basically. So no I don’t think it will push that kind of change.

user-inactivated  ·  2050 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well, that sucks.

goobster  ·  2049 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    "... they're trying to make chrome our default browser but there are applications that simply do not work in chrome, only IE ..."

Um. This scares the shit out of me, and I don't even know what bank you work for.

I spent 3 years working at the pointy end of network security (F5 Networks), and assessing how our products, and our competitor's products, defended against an incredibly broad range of security threats.

The ONE THING that enabled the vast majority of successful security breaches, was web apps running in Internet Explorer.

The same app, running in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc., would not have the same security flaws.

The simple fact that your app works in Internet Explorer and NOT in Chrome, is a deafening warning klaxon and flashing lights and alarms and explosions-off-in-the-distance-but-getting-closer-and-closer kind of warning that YOUR SHIT IS BROKE.

Why?

Because the fact the app won't work in Chrome means that the app is using some Microsoft-proprietary framework like ActiveX or .Net, to BYPASS PROPER SANDBOXING AND SECURITY and provide DIRECT ACCESS to the host computer's operating system.

There is literally ZERO other reason for an app to work in IE but not in Chrome.

(This is actually a "design feature" that MS used to sell. As a feature. Ability to bypass proper security permissions and rights systems, to get direct access to a protected resource. Of course, they called it something like, "Local resource speed optimizations!", but all they were doing was opening a back door to the club, and not even putting a bouncer on the door to check IDs.)

I'm seeing the wisdom of bfv here... I think this project may have been forced by your panicked IT Department, who has been unable to make any progress with getting the IE app EOL'd.

kleinbl00  ·  2051 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I'm not a fan of the decision and some decisions Google makes about how to organize certain features of their products baffle me...why isn't the "Settings" icon consistent, for instance - in gmail and hangouts it's a gear in the upper righthand corner, for some reason in Chrome you can only get there by hitting the 3 vertical dots -- but I can live with it. It's familiar. It's not totally unknown to me.

Google is not a company, not really; it's a loose confederation of warring business groups pretending to be a company. Don't think "country" think "Hanseatic league" or "the Pirate Coast." As such Hangouts looks like Hangouts, Chrome looks like Chrome, Gmail looks like Gmail, and the only thing uniting them are the Crayola Colors of the Company.

I mean, Apple has iMessage. It works on desktop, it works on iOS. Google has so far tried

- gChat

- Wave

- Hangouts

- Allo

- Duo

...and I'm still left in the position of texting from my laptop with a 3rd-party Haxie that works through a Chrome backdoor.

At least Microsoft is all about Skype. They have no interest in making it work, but they have it.