« Don’t Allow Your Application to Hang | Home | Don’t use Brick and Mortar Metaphors for Online Business »
CD/DVD Drives and Windows
By Jacob Cohen | September 22, 2008
Why is it, after all this time, that we still have to press “OK” when we insert a disc that some program is waiting for? Can’t it just figure it out? CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives have provided notifications when a disc is inserted for at least 10 years now.
Maybe Windows isn’t the problem, and every application needs to write their own code to detect that the disc has been inserted, which is also stupid, but for slightly different reasons, and also indicates that the code should just be part of Windows to begin with.
Topics: General |

September 23rd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I don’t know if this still happens with newer versions of Windows, since I’m still running Win2k at home and XP at work. But my biggest frustration is that when an app wants me to insert a disc, not only do I get an app modal dialog instructing me to hit “OK” when the disc is inserted, before I can click the OK button the disc’s autoplay application launches, which can sometimes cause conflicts with the already-running application that wanted the disc in the first place.
September 28th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Um, this is up to the programmer to implement, like you suggested. Only… it’s easier not to do it so people don’t.
(Might also be people sticking to older paradigm’s because change is risky… Who know’s, people might have complained the first time someone made use of the ‘[ignore prompt]Media change notification’ *shrug*)
Autoplay sucks for it’s own reasons though. But while on the topic, applications can also disable it while they are running. Since it’s easier not to though… you get the idea.