I'm building up a new QA environment for a system that I expect will take a few months to build. So I decide I want to get the latest cumulative hotfixes for SharePoint. (Feb 2009 at this writing). So I go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961756 and I click over to view the hotfixes with the link at the top of the article ...

After agreeing to something like providing blood I get to a page that looks like this:

Of course, I'm looking for an x86 build (developer tools and workflow support mean x86). So how in the heck am I supposed to figure out how to get the x86 update? Well, apparently I'm stupid because I didn't get that I had to click the link next to the second link next to a one icon () -- I clicked a link for additional information flipped back and forth a few times and ultimately reached out to a friend at Microsoft to see what the problem was. He thought there was a problem and forwarded it to someone else. That person was able to point out the error of my ways.Turns out I'm not the only one that thinks this is insane. You see someone had already blogged about the confusing user interface (http://blogs.msdn.com/jb/archive/2009/03/09/downloading-hotfixes-for-multiple-platforms.aspx). Unfortunately they work for Microsoft and can't (or shouldn't) have the sarcastic attitude I have to the situation. If you think the interface is confusing please add a comment to this blog post and say so. When we've captured enough people I'll forward it over to the folks that own this interface at Microsoft and see if we can convince them that their current approach isn't the best. (Or that we're all stupid -- one or the other.)