Windows 8: Pushing hated UI elements
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
I love the ribbon. It took a while to get used to it in Excel where I had memorized menu layouts, but now I can't go back. Using Excel 2003 is just painful. On any app I had not used menus in previously, the ribbon just feels natural and perfect. So few clicks to get where I want and do what I want. Plus, with ribbon customization in Office 2010, it meets my needs exactly. I'm a HUGE fan of the ribbon interface. Plus, it's touch-friendly, so it's forward thinking for the Windows-8-on-a-tablet strategy.
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Being accustomed to menus for over a decade, I found ribbons too difficult to cope up with initially. But as I got used to it, I found that it is really a useful alternative for menus and toolbars. Almost all commands that are applicable to the current context are available right in front of you without the need to keep clicking and searching for items in a menu. You get the added advantage of less mouse clicks.
I wouldn't mind it so much if the ribbon were a little more flexible - drag and drop customizing of items in toolbars is essential, especially in software like AutoCAD, where there are about 10 times as many toolbars as any given person wants to see. In a couple cases I've seen, the ribbon seems to sequester custom commands (say add-ins, macros or vb) in a corner of one tab, so far out of context that they compel you to set up keyboard shortcuts. Apart from that, though, the ribbon seems to be like the dvorak keyboard layout. It's apparently much quicker, but only if you never learned qwerty first. Look at the top left of your keyboard and tell me which won. :)
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
This is the only thing that really annoys me about the way microsoft operates. There is one little feature from microsoft labs that can solve this delemma http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspxwhich I found when I first started using office 2007 and had trouble finding a few buttons. All I did was a quick search on google and found the plugin but for some reason people don't seem to be interesting in doing a bit of research to see if this problem has been solved. When searching for a command it will list the top 10 results where the user can click it straight away to fire the action or hover over the result to find it normally. Another plugin I like is the save as PDF/XPF which is also free but not intergrated with the office suite for some reason. Personally I love the ribbon and in terms of customising it's second to none. I've developed a few small plugins and being able to extend the microsoft default ribbon tabs or adding your own personal ribbon tab is excellent. One client wanted to insert their electronic signatures so I literally extended the insert tab to add an extra section which had one button called add signature. From a training point of view telling a user to click insert and then click add signature is logical and easy. If we still had those stupid tool bars then you have to make sure the user has the toolbar activated, then find where the toolbar has been moved to (incase it's being hidden behind another toolbar, etc) then click the button just to get one image showing (it would probably be easier to do keyboard shortcuts to open the insert picture command).
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
From my (and my wife's!) viewpoint, the problem is not so much the ribbon, though we both prefer the old cascading menus approach. A bigger problem is that each new version of Word (and, to a lesser extent, the other Office applications) seems to change the interface just enough to be confusing. Another, is that it seems to be the functionalities that we use most often that are most frequently moved between versions.
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
You know, you can Minimize the Ribbon, in which case it takes up about as much space as a old-school menu bar.
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
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Our company doesn't suffer from this malady. On the last set of rolled out new PCs we were happy to find - against hope - the new W7 operating system. Apparently our argument that we couldn't easily investigate software errors that our clients working on W7 report to us finally took hold. (not to mention we had to ask our clients just to find out whether or not our application actually runs on W7 :doh: ) We were somewhat surprised however to find that the new workstations still came with the old Office 2003 suite installed! :wtf: Looks like nobody considered it neccessary to upgrade... I've yet to see the ribbon in action, I only read about it and at home I'm not using MS Office at all...
Well, if you want to experience it on plain vanilla W7, just open up Paint or WordPad.
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
I like the Ribbon. Really, I always used to make my toolbars extend horizontally off the screen anyway, and had multiple rows of them, so this is kind of a tabbed toolbar thing which actually works better for me. Yeah, I use keyboard shortcuts for some things, but not everything. In Office 2010, you get the return of a functional File menu except IMO it's better than the old menu was. Mini print preview right there. Then you can just collapse it by double-clicking the active tab, or using the chevron (Office 2010, not 2007), or I hear there's a shortcut like Alt+F1. I like collapsible panes of tools, like drawers in a toolbox. Sometimes I just wish I could alter the layout a little bit more than they allow. The comments on the related Slashdot article[^] are full-on, unadulterated flame wars. But if you want to see the different viewpoints and can weed out the people who just want to argue, go for it. Reminds me of why I like CodeProject!
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
I admit it...I like the ribbon. I was skeptical at first but then quickly learned it and now find it faster. Additonally it seems from this artical http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/29/improvements-in-windows-explorer.aspx[^] everything people use most is on the same tab and they worked it to have more space then Windows 7. I for one welcome the new explorer.
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
The ribbon is quite simply very cool. Finding things is in fact easier - once you get acquainted with the layout. As far as screen space is concerned, if it takes up to much room for your liking all you have to you is minimize it. I think the problem is that some people just don't like change, and even less so if Microsoft makes the change! Of course some applications are not suited to the ribbon UI, and I would agree that Explorer is one of them, but then as with all things we will get used to it. I for one never use any thing but the context menus in explorer, so if it annoys me enough it will simply be in permanent minimized mode. If the Office ribbon really gets to you then there are other alternatives. If you have to use it at work then it's your job to learn how it works and where things are now located. So my vote is: The ribbon is cool - I like it! :)
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peterchen wrote:
Self-drying paint
Is there another kind of paint?
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering” - Wernher von Braunahmed zahmed wrote:
Is there another kind of paint?
I'm trying to think of a smart-a$$ed answer. Check back after the paint dries.
XAlan Burkhart
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vonb wrote:
I'm old fashioned and prefer the Menu / Tab Pages interface (Visual Studio like is not bad)
Me, too. I don't care for all this artsy-smartsy stuff they're doing nowadays. Why can't they just leave it alone?
XAlan Burkhart
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That's because you are an accountant. Self-drying paint is exciting for you. ;P
FILETIME to time_t
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | WhoIncludes - Analyzing C++ include file hierarchy -
Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
David Kentley wrote:
Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find.
Nope, don't care for it. I have it at the office but on all my equipment I still use O2003. I don't see an upgrade path at all from there. 2003 does far more than I personally need and it still runs fine under Windows 7.
David Kentley wrote:
I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
You may go stand in the corner now. :-) -Max
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Being accustomed to menus for over a decade, I found ribbons too difficult to cope up with initially. But as I got used to it, I found that it is really a useful alternative for menus and toolbars. Almost all commands that are applicable to the current context are available right in front of you without the need to keep clicking and searching for items in a menu. You get the added advantage of less mouse clicks.
I agree with you at first I did like the menus everything was organised and I knew what each menu had in it and when they released the ribbon I hated it at first. But then I got used to it and then began to like it because everything is there without having to look for it(of course that's after digging through the new ribbon to find where they dumped everything)
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
I don't like the ribbon, I love it. The context groups are brilliant and really help me to be more effective in my work with the Office suite. It's quite different from before though so I understand that many get lost for a while before finding their way to the specific feature set that they use. Still, looking at the other comments, my impression is that most people disaprove of change and not the ribbon itself. However, I don't think that I'll use the ribbon much for explorer. The file management I do is simple enough that drag-n-drop suffice, with the occasional F2 or Delete. I will probably minimize the ribbon there.
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
The thing I like about the Ribbon are they way it leads you through learning keyboard short-cut keys when you press Alt. What I don't like is the room it takes and how it repositions buttons when there's less room.
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Dalek Dave wrote:
non-drying paint
Then it's not paint.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering” - Wernher von BraunOil based paints tend to dry very slowly or not at all. This is why oil paintings by artist can begin to drip and run under certain heat and humidity conditions. You can have an oil painting sitting for months and add a little linseed oil and go back at it.
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Does anyone like the ribbon interface? My wife, decidedly non geek, curses Office 2010 every day she has to use it because of the ribbon. I can't stand it myself. It takes up too much room with the added benefit of making things harder to find. I'm glad I bought my first Mac.[^] Yeah, I said it.
I like the ribbon in Office2010, especially since it not only supports keyboard shortcuts but it also supports the old shortcuts that are part of my fine-motor memory. Gotta say that it takes a lot more work to create a good ribbon than a menu. I found the combination of menu and toobars a little messy. The ribbon integrates the two functions quite well.