So this morning I can’t get to subscriber downloads at all.  When I click on it, it takes me back to the subscriptions main page.  This happens to me all the time.  I have to try back at random times of the day to see if I can get in.  HUGELY unproductive, becasue I’m sitting here needing my Visio product key and can’t get to it because the linkage situation on the subscriber site sucks and you can only get to that stuff from the downloads page, which I can’t get to.

If there is an error or something causing the redirect, or too much traffic, or some other lame issue, tell us!  Don’t just let us sit here seething, unproductive and pissed, becasue we can’t access something as basic as the website for the fairly expensive subscription we have purchased!  Developers Developers Developers!  We’re why the Microsoft platform is everywhere…writing the corporate apps that run on your sytems and pushing the upgrades to .Net 2.0 and Vist and vNext of whatever else you conceive, so throw us a bone and hook us up with a decent subscriber site.

Since I mentioned the link structure…the navigation on that site is horrendous.  Non-download related information (the “What’s Hot” page) is on the main downloads page, but nowhere else.  The sign-up process for the MSDN managed newsgroups is crap.  The overall navigation is severly lacking, such that if, on a day like today, I can’t get to the main downloads page, I can’t get to anything.  Why should I have to start everything from the downloads page?  What if I don’t want to download anything?  What if I didn’t know that I had to start there (like most new subscribers I’d suspect) and had no idea how to get to what I wanted?  Put me in touch with the content manager and I’ll be glad to help him lay it out properly.  I know i’m not the only one with these complaints.

Also, can we freakin’ get off passport already?  That system is so borked.  How’s this for fun:  While I am trying to acecss my subscriber downloads, I’m also trying to post a question in the MSDN forums (the web ones).  Signing in to subscriber site signs you out of the forums site, and vice versa.  AWESOME!.  I’m now doubly productive because I have to keep re-signing in to each one when I want to use it.  Thanks Microsoft!

Let’s talk about GotDotNet…no…let’s not.  That’s like the poster-child for projects that should have been aborted long ago.  I’m afraid to even go there.  That thing was so featureless and borked from the beginning, it would take a miracle of engineering and marketing to make anyone use it again.  I just with the P&P guys would put their stuff elsewhere.  I couldnt’ even get the new CAB the other day, and it’s hurting your rep.

Oh yeah, and while we are venting, will you get over yourselves and start supporting Firefox already?  Nobody cares about the browser war anymore!  I can’t do something as simple as mouse-wheel scroll the main frame of MSDN2.  Seriously!  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?  A lot of your customers are using Firefox.  It’s not going to kill you to let us use Firefox to browse your stuff efficiently.  I mean, the big money is still going to you.  I have like $20K of (yes licensed) Microsoft software on my laptop right this second.  You can’t let me use Firefox?

I love MS, and most of their products, but please guys, get your heads out of your asses when it comes to your web properties.  You guys practically drive the web, and some of the sites being made on top of your technologies are the best ever, but not your own.  Sad.