It's always been a pet peeve of mine when software installers (and uninstallers, for that matter) treat a user's desktop and registry as their own personal playground. As far as I'm concerned, I'm leasing that space out to an application until further notice. It's a temporary home, not a permanent one. As such, an application would do well to not make any assumptions about where it's okay for them place shortcuts on my computer. If it's going to ask me what directory and program group I want it installed in, it's not a stretch of the imagination to believe that I'll also want to dictate whether or not the application is worthy of acquiring a piece of the the limited (and valuable) real estate afforded by the quick launch toolbar and system tray.
But of course, not every company out there sees it my way. One of the worst offenders of this dictum has always been Apple. It's difficult to enjoy all the media offered on the Internet without installing Apple's QuickTime media player. As an iPod owner, it's virtually impossible to go without installing iTunes, which requires installation of QuickTime as well.
<Possibly unrelated tangent>Yes, I'm aware that there are loads of third-party applications out there for managing one's iPod library. I've tried a handful of them. They inevitably would trash my iPod's database, forcing me to restore it from scratch. I'm as big of a supporter of third-party applications competing with vendor provided software as you'll find. However, I draw the line for my support for that kind of software when it becomes that much of a hassle to use.</>
As I was saying about Apple's blatant disregard for ownership of their user's desktops, it never fails that QuickTime ALWAYS adds a shortcut to my quick launch toolbar and ALWAYS inserts itself on my system tray. Why do they do that?? Is it really too much to ask for them to ask me if I'd like that done rather than force me to delete it every time it's installed? When it comes to the system tray, they don't even need to do that! They can check if it's running at installation time and if it is, keep it running in the system tray after the upgrade (which is what my company does with our applications).
Every computer I've ever serviced for a friend or family member has the ridiculous QuickTime system tray application running. None of them know what it is, where it came from, or why they need it. "Why does anyone need it?" is a better question, I think. Sadly, QuickTime is not the only icon in their system tray that they have no clue about. It's usually accompanied by something for their mouse drivers (especially on notebook computers), Windows Messenger (on computers running XP), an nVidia or ATi graphics driver application, and any number of a half dozen other ridiculous programs that come pre-installed on any store bought computer. And people wonder why the first thing I do with a new computer is wipe the hard drive and start all over?
The problem here lies in the hands of the application vendors. As an employee of such a company, I obviously have strong feelings about how it should be handled. In almost all cases, the user does not NEED to have my software installed. They chose to install it. As such, I should do everything I can do to ensure that I give them no reason to seek out an alternative that causes them to uninstall my application. Needlessly cluttering their desktop, system tray, and quick launch toolbar is all the motivation I need as a computer user to do just such a thing.
I hesitate to use this word in describing the problem at the risk of sounding corny, but I think it's about respect - respecting the user's space and not assuming that permission to install your application is the same as being granted permanent residence to make yourself at home. It's about respecting the fact that not all user's want the same things from your application and giving them the ability to configure it, and I mean configure it a SINGLE time, to behave the way they want it to. It's about finding and deploying a basic set of installation features that is unobtrusive and follows acceptable norms and standards.
In case you're wondering what started all this, I installed the critical updates from Windows Update this afternoon, including the security roll-up for IE7. After rebooting my computer, I was appalled to discover that Microsoft must have begun taking their installation queues from Apple. Gracing my quick launch toolbar was a "Launch Microsoft Internet Explorer" shortcut.
Sorry, Redmond. But I've already got a browser's shortcut placed there.