So this week my desk received a fresh, sparkling Windows XP delivery. Then I got back into my Outlook to sort through all the email I missed while my machine was down. Upon attempting to open up a text doc that someone sent me, I landed into a classic example of Microsoft's utter inability to achieve any kind of simple, intuitive user design.

First of all, somebody needs to tell the Office wonks that a computer is not a book. We do not glean any sort of comfort by "flipping pages" on a monitor. On computers, we vertical-scroll. We like to scroll. Our mice have built-in scrollers (that work in about 60% of boxes on Windows, I find). The web scrolls. When we write a huge text document, we scroll as we type. There is nothing to be gained by presenting a multi-page document as if it were a book. It never was a book. We don't expect to read it like a book. Yet Microsoft's engineers, consistently flummoxed by genuine achievements in competing interface design, typed up a pleasant-sounding dialogue box to tell us that we ought to really enjoy this feature.

Which brings me to the larger point: if an interface feature works well, you don't need to tell your users about it. It will just work. If this "reading layout" was so great, so natural, it could just happen when I boot a doc. Not happen after an instructional warning box that will only go away permanently if I take action by clicking a checkbox.

Reading Layout warps the user into an Office sub-universe, where your tools have all been removed, and the font is altered by an algorithm that knows you better than you know yourself.

I love the list of caveats. "Um, we had to adjust the page size. There might actually seem like there's more pages than if you would print it, so, like, don't be surprised that you're not seeing what would actually print. We, like, put in an extra button for you to find if you want the page count to match. Sorry, students-writing-term-papers."

I stopped installing Office on my Macs about five years ago and I have never needed it since. In Windows world, I can't be as smart.