When a feature sucks...
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" The new Ribbon (i.e. fluent UI) is cool " "Cool" does not belong in UI design.
Yes, it does. Cool means easy to use, effective, and aesthetically pleasing.
Pits fall into Chuck Norris.
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I agree, the new Ribbon is fast and easy to follow. I know there are always the Luddites that don't like things changing becasue they are new and mean they have to learn new stuff and "I am nearly 50 yo know, I don't need to learn this new stuff" etc. A lot of people who use it after earlier version prefer it. Some don't , get over it
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Now hang on there a wee while sonny boy: my father-in-law (80) loves the ribbon and took to it like a duck to water. I really don't care: there is no point in lusting after old versions of anything: they are gone, get over it and move on.
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Yes, it does. Cool means easy to use, effective, and aesthetically pleasing.
Pits fall into Chuck Norris.
Brady Kelly wrote:
Cool means easy to use
The point is precisely that this is not always true. E.g.: look at a thousand Flash animations around there that killed the "Back" button.
Of all forms of sexual aberration, the most unnatural is abstinence.
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... "fix" it with a even worse new feature[^]. This is how bloatware evolves. E.g.: Can't find the old commands in Office Ribbon? Add a search box to look for them! But what about not hiding them behind a non-intuitive "result of tons of study of Office usage"? I know someone will ask this, so... yes, I "upgraded" my Office 2007 back to Office 2002.
Of all forms of sexual aberration, the most unnatural is abstinence.
It looks like this is the old "Scout" utility that got stomped on by the Office managers. This used to be an internal tool developed by someone on the Office team right about the time Office 2007 shipped. A bunch of people tried to get MS to release it as a separate PowerToy download but it just sort of disappeared for a while as Microsoft tried to wholly deny its existence - after all, if they'd just designed the "most usable" UI ever, why on earth would anyone have problems finding what they needed? :~
Imagine that you are hired to build a bridge over a river. The width of the river increases slightly every day, except when it shrinks. Your budget does not allow for you to use concrete or steel - you can only afford timber and cut stone. Gravity changes from hour to hour, as does the viscosity of air. Your only tools are a hacksaw, a chainsaw, a rubber mallet, and a length of rope. Welcome to my world. -Me explaining my job to an engineer
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I agree, the new Ribbon is fast and easy to follow. I know there are always the Luddites that don't like things changing becasue they are new and mean they have to learn new stuff and "I am nearly 50 yo know, I don't need to learn this new stuff" etc. A lot of people who use it after earlier version prefer it. Some don't , get over it
------------------------------------ No fee too high, no insult to low. Accounts, Quantity Surveying, Web Design, VBA for Excel, C#, Contract Assassinations - Email to Discuss Competitive Terms
My biggest gripes with the ribbon are: - it kills screenspace on widescreen laptops. Documents are vertical - the fade in/out effect causes hassles if you're on a Remote Desktop session - There should be a 'show small icons' option. Do I really need a 32x32 icon for 'Show Balloons'? - While not Ribbonesque per se, The 'Jewel' is just dumb. Why didn't they just add a 'File' or 'Document' tab?
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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... "fix" it with a even worse new feature[^]. This is how bloatware evolves. E.g.: Can't find the old commands in Office Ribbon? Add a search box to look for them! But what about not hiding them behind a non-intuitive "result of tons of study of Office usage"? I know someone will ask this, so... yes, I "upgraded" my Office 2007 back to Office 2002.
Of all forms of sexual aberration, the most unnatural is abstinence.
Someone a while ago (oh, a month or so) posted a link to site that puts the familiar menus back into Office 2007. I don't have the URL (it's on another computer that's not accessible right now). Marc
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It takes a while to get it. But it's no different (imo) to earlier versions that used to hide non-frequent items on the menus. When you have a lot of functionality it's not easy to put everything forward so they chose the most common ones. Trust me, someone sent me a password protected Excel spreadsheet and I couldn't unlock it for the world! Now it's a breeze.
Bert delaVega wrote:
earlier versions that used to hide non-frequent items on the menus
...and they soon realised that was a bad move and removed that UI style.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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It looks like this is the old "Scout" utility that got stomped on by the Office managers. This used to be an internal tool developed by someone on the Office team right about the time Office 2007 shipped. A bunch of people tried to get MS to release it as a separate PowerToy download but it just sort of disappeared for a while as Microsoft tried to wholly deny its existence - after all, if they'd just designed the "most usable" UI ever, why on earth would anyone have problems finding what they needed? :~
Imagine that you are hired to build a bridge over a river. The width of the river increases slightly every day, except when it shrinks. Your budget does not allow for you to use concrete or steel - you can only afford timber and cut stone. Gravity changes from hour to hour, as does the viscosity of air. Your only tools are a hacksaw, a chainsaw, a rubber mallet, and a length of rope. Welcome to my world. -Me explaining my job to an engineer
Robert Royall wrote:
Imagine that you are hired to build a bridge over a river. The width of the river increases slightly every day, except when it shrinks. Your budget does not allow for you to use concrete or steel - you can only afford timber and cut stone. Gravity changes from hour to hour, as does the viscosity of air. Your only tools are a hacksaw, a chainsaw, a rubber mallet, and a length of rope. Welcome to my world. -Me explaining my job to an engineer
Excellent sig :-D.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
It takes a while to get it. But it's no different (imo) to earlier versions that used to hide non-frequent items on the menus. When you have a lot of functionality it's not easy to put everything forward so they chose the most common ones. Trust me, someone sent me a password protected Excel spreadsheet and I couldn't unlock it for the world! Now it's a breeze.
Bert delaVega wrote:
When you have a lot of functionality it's not easy to put everything forward
And it's at that point that you need to start asking some really hard questions, such as why do we have *so* many functions? Do we really need them? Is there some other uniform, extensible way that we could do this? And then be willing to act on the answers. It seems to me that *no-one* at Microsoft is either willing to ask those questions, or if they do, then to actually act on them.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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Yes, it does. Cool means easy to use, effective, and aesthetically pleasing.
Pits fall into Chuck Norris.
Sometimes it does. But my experience is that when programmer say he/she just added this "cool" new feature, more often than not it means that it was "cool" for the programmer to write, i.e. fun and challenging, and mentally engaging to implement and think about. And frequently it impresses a fellow programmer to see it work. This is not necessarily the same as "cool" for the user.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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Robert Royall wrote:
Imagine that you are hired to build a bridge over a river. The width of the river increases slightly every day, except when it shrinks. Your budget does not allow for you to use concrete or steel - you can only afford timber and cut stone. Gravity changes from hour to hour, as does the viscosity of air. Your only tools are a hacksaw, a chainsaw, a rubber mallet, and a length of rope. Welcome to my world. -Me explaining my job to an engineer
Excellent sig :-D.
Software Zen:
delete this;He forgot gum and duct tape. No glue mind you, that would allow for too much stability between pieces. Also the chainsaw has no gas in it most of the time, and/or just explodes at random intervals when you use it.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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My biggest gripes with the ribbon are: - it kills screenspace on widescreen laptops. Documents are vertical - the fade in/out effect causes hassles if you're on a Remote Desktop session - There should be a 'show small icons' option. Do I really need a 32x32 icon for 'Show Balloons'? - While not Ribbonesque per se, The 'Jewel' is just dumb. Why didn't they just add a 'File' or 'Document' tab?
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
I cannot comment on the remote desktop issues, not something I have observed, but the Jewel is not intuitive, I agree. There is nothing for new users to look at and say "Ah that will be the button I need to click on". It is ok for us, we know better, but a newbie will not be able to just plough on in unless told first. Perhaps his Billness needs to be reminded that not everyone in the world is a Geekoid Lifeform! :)
------------------------------------ No fee too high, no insult to low. Accounts, Quantity Surveying, Web Design, VBA for Excel, C#, Contract Assassinations - Email to Discuss Competitive Terms
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He forgot gum and duct tape. No glue mind you, that would allow for too much stability between pieces. Also the chainsaw has no gas in it most of the time, and/or just explodes at random intervals when you use it.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
I could only get so many words into 500 characters...
Imagine that you are hired to build a bridge over a river. The width of the river increases slightly every day, except when it shrinks. Your budget does not allow for you to use concrete or steel - you can only afford timber and cut stone. Gravity changes from hour to hour, as does the viscosity of air. Your only tools are a hacksaw, a chainsaw, a rubber mallet, and a length of rope. Welcome to my world. -Me explaining my job to an engineer
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Bert delaVega wrote:
earlier versions that used to hide non-frequent items on the menus
...and they soon realised that was a bad move and removed that UI style.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Yeah, I know, it's lipstick on the same pig. :-D
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Bert delaVega wrote:
When you have a lot of functionality it's not easy to put everything forward
And it's at that point that you need to start asking some really hard questions, such as why do we have *so* many functions? Do we really need them? Is there some other uniform, extensible way that we could do this? And then be willing to act on the answers. It seems to me that *no-one* at Microsoft is either willing to ask those questions, or if they do, then to actually act on them.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
The problem is that Office (or office components) stopped being a general use app a long time ago. They crossed over into the vertical market space and you can't make your users happy when that happens. They really have two issues. One of them is the view. You can't be all things to all people so you frustrate a large majority. The second is bloat. Why do I need (or want) things I never need (or want). I'm not saying a-la-carte but it needs to be chopped up.
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Now hang on there a wee while sonny boy: my father-in-law (80) loves the ribbon and took to it like a duck to water. I really don't care: there is no point in lusting after old versions of anything: they are gone, get over it and move on.
digital man wrote:
there is no point in lusting after old versions of anything: they are gone, get over it and move on.
It's not gone, it's just not new anymore. Personally, I've had no compelling reason to upgrade so I'll stick with my old version until it no longer functions.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - -Lazarus Long
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... "fix" it with a even worse new feature[^]. This is how bloatware evolves. E.g.: Can't find the old commands in Office Ribbon? Add a search box to look for them! But what about not hiding them behind a non-intuitive "result of tons of study of Office usage"? I know someone will ask this, so... yes, I "upgraded" my Office 2007 back to Office 2002.
Of all forms of sexual aberration, the most unnatural is abstinence.
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Someone a while ago (oh, a month or so) posted a link to site that puts the familiar menus back into Office 2007. I don't have the URL (it's on another computer that's not accessible right now). Marc
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I agree, the new Ribbon is fast and easy to follow. I know there are always the Luddites that don't like things changing becasue they are new and mean they have to learn new stuff and "I am nearly 50 yo know, I don't need to learn this new stuff" etc. A lot of people who use it after earlier version prefer it. Some don't , get over it
------------------------------------ No fee too high, no insult to low. Accounts, Quantity Surveying, Web Design, VBA for Excel, C#, Contract Assassinations - Email to Discuss Competitive Terms
I find that at least half of my users hate it and ask me to put back the old version. They have been using Word and Excel for years and they really do not want to relearn everything just because Microsoft thinks it was time to change the user interface.
John
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Sometimes it does. But my experience is that when programmer say he/she just added this "cool" new feature, more often than not it means that it was "cool" for the programmer to write, i.e. fun and challenging, and mentally engaging to implement and think about. And frequently it impresses a fellow programmer to see it work. This is not necessarily the same as "cool" for the user.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
Jim Crafton wrote:
This is not necessarily the same as "cool" for the user.
It is NOT cool for the user if it forces them to have to relearn every thing they know about using a software package.
John