Matthew Thomas has updated his legendary “Why Free Software usability tends to suck” (and “Why [it] tends to sucks even more”) with another installment, more than six years down the road.

The verdict?

I’ve mellowed a bit since then, and so has the software. Today’s best Free Software applications and operating systems are much better than they were six years ago. But this is largely from slow incremental improvements, and low-level competition between projects and distributors. Major problems with the design process itself remain unfixed.

I’m not sure “a culture in Free Software of design first, code second” is even remotely realistic, but the write-up comes with many constructive ideas, most interesting (and suddenly obvious) of which I found the idea of “annual Free Software design awards”.

After all, the Apple Design Awards are exactly that. Highlighting extraordinary results makes for a great incentive to try harder (when you don’t win), or book a trip to Malibu (when you do).

Having spent over two hours fixing my Boot Camp drivers (and partially failing), I finally got around to trying to install Team Fortress 2. This involves setting up Steam, Valve’s content distribution system. It makes for a far more convenient buying experience, at least in theory.

Valve’s website points me to their Steam site, where I get to find the title I was looking for, among a choice of bundles that would include it. Next to it: a price tag, and a button labelled Purchase. So far, so good.

That button asks me if I have Steam installed. Still good. After downloading and running Steam’s installer, it updates itself, then asks me if I have an account, or offers to create one. This is where it gets not so good.

1. Its password fields don’t properly work with my keyboard layout, or the software doesn’t seem to understand keyboard layout changes. That is, I have to exit Steam, change my keyboard layout, then relaunch it, just so I can enter my password. A minor annoyance, but an inexplicable one nonetheless.
2. It doesn’t support the plus sign (+) in an e-mail address. Many websites pull this nonsense too, never having read the appropriate spec. Still, this means I can’t use GMail’s wonderful support for this, nor can I use that sign for any other reason.
3. It masks the passwords when entering… But then, without warning, it shows the password you in clear text when it’s done setting up your account. If you’re going to proudly show it off, why mask it to begin with? I don’t remember the last time I saw any app or web site do this.
4. I installed it by clicking “purchase” at the Team Fortress 2 website, but after installation, it says absolutely nothing about TF2. I would have expected it to remember I was looking for TF2. Instead, I basically had to do the same search twice — once in my browser, and then in Steam’s embedded browser.
5. I get all the way through purchasing, only to have it tell me the game is not available in my country. Yeah, uh, thanks for collecting my address, credit card number, blood sample and fingerprint, only to tell me I don’t even get to buy your game? (Which, by the way, doesn’t make sense. You’re your own publisher. Why would you not want to distribute your game to Germany, one of the countries with the largest gamer populations?)

I’m still going to play this one way or another; that’s not the point. My problem is that the average person would have or should given up after those steps, and unnecessarily so.

1. Why doesn’t Steam use standard controls, so it can work with keyboard layouts just like any other Windows app?
2. Why can’t software developers wisen up that, yes indeed, you can have a plus sign in your e-mail address?
3. Who thought having a masked password field only to reveal the password mere minutes later was a good idea?
4. Why can’t it pass on the information what game I was looking for when I clicked the Purchase button? Making this as seamless as possible is the whole point of Steam, at least as far as the consumer is concerned.
5. And if country limitations are so relevant, why not ask me much earlier what country I’m in, so the software and I both waste far less time?