I was in a meeting at the office and we were discussing a bunch of changes to the computers we are going to make. I had a list of issues we were discussing and most of them seemed fairly reasonable.

When we got to discuss 'The Links Bar' the room got quiet. First, they looked at me like I was from Mars. I said, "You know, the Links Bar!" Then everyone looked at me with a sad face.

Before going forward here's what the Links Bar looks like:

The Links Bar is kind of like a displayed set of Favorites/Bookmarks that resides in your toolbars so that you don't have to pull down a menu to get to your frequently hit pages. It's called the Links Bar in Internet Explorer, but the feature exists in most modern browsers.

Back to the story...

I began asking why the Links Bar was locked and hidden away. They all gave me a look that said, "You poor out of date man. What are you going to ask for next, a fax machine?" I said, "Am I the only one that uses the Links Bar?" They all nodded. I simply couldn't believe this. I find the Links Bar invaluable. "Really, none of you use it?" I looked around the room and the eight other people all looked at me, shaking their heads.

Unable to wrap my head around this I asked how they got to their bookmarks. "Umm, we use the pull down..." Much head nodding.

They tried to be nice and humor me. They offered to unlock the Links Bar and put whatever bookmarks I wanted there. But the damage was done. I was the weird one, using the quirky feature noone else values.

The next time I am about to jab my Mom or Dad about the strange things they do on their computer that seem silly to me (electronic post-it notes and an upside-down touchpad instead of a mouse), I will remember this and cut them some slack.

Does anyone else use the Links Bar?

Posted by michael at February 03, 2003 05:08 PM