Planning to use MFC 7?
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Well, it's never just "a simple matter" of doing anything. You forget that it costs Microsoft *nothing* to say it's easy to do, but in "the real world" (you know, that place where all of the real programmers work), we have to regression test ALL of our code to make sure we (or Microsoft) didn't miss anything, or that we've considered all of the subtle side-effects related to "simply" changing over to a new way of doing things.
...regression test... What's that? :laugh: Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone
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given the deteriorating quality of Microsoft's UIs these days You have to remember that Microsoft's new UI (I mean the OfficeXP/VSXP one) is liked by far more people than it is disliked by, even though you personally may not like it. It is a huge step forward for Microsoft in terms of accessibility, and I find it a hell of allot more responsive than most other UIs. David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
new UI (I mean the OfficeXP/VSXP one) is liked by far more people than it is disliked by Source? --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
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...regression test... What's that? :laugh: Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone
isn't that testing under hypnosis? ;) --- "every year we invent better idiot proof systems and every year they invent better idiots ... and the linux zealots still aren't being sterilized"
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new UI (I mean the OfficeXP/VSXP one) is liked by far more people than it is disliked by Source? --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
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isn't that testing under hypnosis? ;) --- "every year we invent better idiot proof systems and every year they invent better idiots ... and the linux zealots still aren't being sterilized"
So that's why I can't remember it. ;) Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone
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new UI (I mean the OfficeXP/VSXP one) is liked by far more people than it is disliked by Source? --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
Office XP has a new look and feel that improves the user's Office experience. This includes removing visually competing elements, visually prioritizing items on a page, increasing letter spacing and word spacing for better readability, and defining foreground and background color to bring the most important elements to the front. There's no denying that the Office XP UI is a huge leap forward in terms of sheer ease of use. It really does indicate to you what you might want to do, but without asking "It looks like your writing a letter, I suggest you do this..." Apart from pretty much any company of individual that woks with disabled people - be that dyslexic, hard of sight, or something like downs syndrome – showing full out support (I work with these people, so I know that one for a fact) Source? You need to remember that amongst all the negative hype that follows any new Microsoft release (i.e.: “It’s the same as the last version, but with a different UI”), the “different UI” was not chosen by the programmers. Microsoft have dedicated research teams on each country working with end users all the way. Microsoft would not release a new UI if it was not going to be appreciated (aka ‘liked’) by the majority of its users. They may be greedy, but they are definitely not stupid. Believe it or not, research indicated that Clippy would be a good idea. Then people like you got hold of him… ;) P.S. I suggest you do your own little test… Set up a complex mail merge in both Word XP and Word 2000. Which one has the intuitive UI now? With XP you don’t even need to know what you are doing! David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
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This is one of those claims that Microsoft has puled out of their ass. Man you are in one hell of a grumpy mood today! :) cheers, Chris Maunder (CodeProject)
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Office XP has a new look and feel that improves the user's Office experience. This includes removing visually competing elements, visually prioritizing items on a page, increasing letter spacing and word spacing for better readability, and defining foreground and background color to bring the most important elements to the front. There's no denying that the Office XP UI is a huge leap forward in terms of sheer ease of use. It really does indicate to you what you might want to do, but without asking "It looks like your writing a letter, I suggest you do this..." Apart from pretty much any company of individual that woks with disabled people - be that dyslexic, hard of sight, or something like downs syndrome – showing full out support (I work with these people, so I know that one for a fact) Source? You need to remember that amongst all the negative hype that follows any new Microsoft release (i.e.: “It’s the same as the last version, but with a different UI”), the “different UI” was not chosen by the programmers. Microsoft have dedicated research teams on each country working with end users all the way. Microsoft would not release a new UI if it was not going to be appreciated (aka ‘liked’) by the majority of its users. They may be greedy, but they are definitely not stupid. Believe it or not, research indicated that Clippy would be a good idea. Then people like you got hold of him… ;) P.S. I suggest you do your own little test… Set up a complex mail merge in both Word XP and Word 2000. Which one has the intuitive UI now? With XP you don’t even need to know what you are doing! David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
Microsoft have dedicated research teams on each country working with end users all the way. Microsoft would not release a new UI if it was not going to be appreciated (aka ‘liked’) by the majority of its users. I have serious reservations about MS's usability testing at times. The whole concept of flat UI elements is horrible, and the usability tests I participated in at Symantec confirm this. To this day, I cannot understand how MS thought taking a clickable UI element and making it not look like a button was a good idea. Take a look at SystemWorks 2000. There's a toolbar at the top with MS-style flat buttons. Our users did not know they were buttons. In fact, the toolbar didn't even register in some users' minds. When we suggested they look at the toolbar, several people said something to the effect of, "Oh! I didn't see that" or "I didn't realize I could click there." In the 2001 version, we got rid of the flat buttons. I've not seen Office XP, but VS.NET's UI is even worse with those pseudo-3D menus and toolbars. It does my #2 pet peeve in UIs (#1 being missing affordances) and that is it's distracting. Sliding/fading menus fall into this same category. Can I just get a menu, please? Don't slide into view; I know the menu's going to come up because I just clicked it. Grey is fine, too; I don't need 256-color alpha-blended 3D menus to get my work done. --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
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Microsoft have dedicated research teams on each country working with end users all the way. Microsoft would not release a new UI if it was not going to be appreciated (aka ‘liked’) by the majority of its users. I have serious reservations about MS's usability testing at times. The whole concept of flat UI elements is horrible, and the usability tests I participated in at Symantec confirm this. To this day, I cannot understand how MS thought taking a clickable UI element and making it not look like a button was a good idea. Take a look at SystemWorks 2000. There's a toolbar at the top with MS-style flat buttons. Our users did not know they were buttons. In fact, the toolbar didn't even register in some users' minds. When we suggested they look at the toolbar, several people said something to the effect of, "Oh! I didn't see that" or "I didn't realize I could click there." In the 2001 version, we got rid of the flat buttons. I've not seen Office XP, but VS.NET's UI is even worse with those pseudo-3D menus and toolbars. It does my #2 pet peeve in UIs (#1 being missing affordances) and that is it's distracting. Sliding/fading menus fall into this same category. Can I just get a menu, please? Don't slide into view; I know the menu's going to come up because I just clicked it. Grey is fine, too; I don't need 256-color alpha-blended 3D menus to get my work done. --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
The whole concept of flat UI elements is horrible I understand where you coming from, but I don't really see the issue. No one complains that clickable areas on website don't have 3D borders. Users recognise possibly interactive areas because they stand out; because they are identifiable as interactive areas. This does not mean they have to have 3D borders... Can you imagine what this site would look like if everything you interacted with had thick 3D borders around it? It is obvious to me - and my mum, which says a lot for the guy at Symantec - that anything that looks like it can be clicked on is to be clicked on, and with the new Office XP UI it's even more obvious as they have used subtle colouring to draw attention to the controls you are most likely to use. Grey is fine, too; I don't need 256-color alpha-blended 3D menus to get my work done. The menu colouring in Office XP is deliberatly off-white as that makes it easier to read for the hard of vision, but being of near perfect corrected vision, I can't say it has any negative effect on me. The highlight shades of blue, the light grey and off-white colours, are all chosen as they are very distinc against each other. Just try a few of the system colour schemes and you will see that generally the resulting colours in XP are easier to distinguish that those of a traditional style. Okay, so that might not effect you, but if you are heard of seeing or have difficulty distinguising like hues, then this is a huge improvement. Accesibility is a major issue with software such as Office. The only UI elements that are non-beneficial to the end user (i.e. "eye candy") are the sliding/fading menus, but they are off by default anyway. Everything else seems to have benefits for the people we'd traditionally ignore. Why is it a bad thing that Microsoft aren't? David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
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The whole concept of flat UI elements is horrible I understand where you coming from, but I don't really see the issue. No one complains that clickable areas on website don't have 3D borders. Users recognise possibly interactive areas because they stand out; because they are identifiable as interactive areas. This does not mean they have to have 3D borders... Can you imagine what this site would look like if everything you interacted with had thick 3D borders around it? It is obvious to me - and my mum, which says a lot for the guy at Symantec - that anything that looks like it can be clicked on is to be clicked on, and with the new Office XP UI it's even more obvious as they have used subtle colouring to draw attention to the controls you are most likely to use. Grey is fine, too; I don't need 256-color alpha-blended 3D menus to get my work done. The menu colouring in Office XP is deliberatly off-white as that makes it easier to read for the hard of vision, but being of near perfect corrected vision, I can't say it has any negative effect on me. The highlight shades of blue, the light grey and off-white colours, are all chosen as they are very distinc against each other. Just try a few of the system colour schemes and you will see that generally the resulting colours in XP are easier to distinguish that those of a traditional style. Okay, so that might not effect you, but if you are heard of seeing or have difficulty distinguising like hues, then this is a huge improvement. Accesibility is a major issue with software such as Office. The only UI elements that are non-beneficial to the end user (i.e. "eye candy") are the sliding/fading menus, but they are off by default anyway. Everything else seems to have benefits for the people we'd traditionally ignore. Why is it a bad thing that Microsoft aren't? David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
No one complains that clickable areas on website don't have 3D borders. Um, your analogy is flawed. Web site UI != Windows app UI. Users recognise possibly interactive areas because they stand out; because they are identifiable as interactive areas. Assuming the web site is well-designed. Badly-designed web sites suffer from the same missing affordance problem, namely links that aren't underlined. This is another area where I could rant on for hours, but I'll give a synopsis - before IE proprietary styles and CSS and everyone thinking HTML was a good thing to use as an application UI, hyperlinks were underlined. Why? Because underlining meant "this text is clickable". Unfortunately -- and Microsoft's was the first site I ever saw this done at, right after the release of IE3 -- people got the idea that underlining was ugly, or got in the way, or whatever. So the visual cue specifically used for the purpose of indicating clickability was removed. Tell me the sense in that. Then there are more serious problems like sites that set the link color to the same as the normal text color. Your point about the XP menus being easier to read for visually impaired folks is well taken. I still don't like 'em though. ;) --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
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No one complains that clickable areas on website don't have 3D borders. Um, your analogy is flawed. Web site UI != Windows app UI. Users recognise possibly interactive areas because they stand out; because they are identifiable as interactive areas. Assuming the web site is well-designed. Badly-designed web sites suffer from the same missing affordance problem, namely links that aren't underlined. This is another area where I could rant on for hours, but I'll give a synopsis - before IE proprietary styles and CSS and everyone thinking HTML was a good thing to use as an application UI, hyperlinks were underlined. Why? Because underlining meant "this text is clickable". Unfortunately -- and Microsoft's was the first site I ever saw this done at, right after the release of IE3 -- people got the idea that underlining was ugly, or got in the way, or whatever. So the visual cue specifically used for the purpose of indicating clickability was removed. Tell me the sense in that. Then there are more serious problems like sites that set the link color to the same as the normal text color. Your point about the XP menus being easier to read for visually impaired folks is well taken. I still don't like 'em though. ;) --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
Um, your analogy is flawed. Web site UI != Windows app UI. And Windows app UI != The "definitive UI". Migrating traditional desktop applications to what you call "web UIs" is the logical way to move forward, so long as they are designed carefully. Assuming the web site is well-designed. Badly-designed web sites suffer from the same missing affordance problem, namely links that aren't underlined. The same can be said for traditional Windows app UIs. I've seen my fair share of crap UIs where they haven't followed the simple rules (GoZilla, ZoneAlarm, MS Money 2k). With web UIs there are still the same rules as there are with traditional UIs. The difference is that you wont get kiddies who write their webpages in Notepad, writting applications. (or if they did, they'd use VB anyway). And your specific points about not using the "standard" things we are used to (i.e. underlining links) is not applicable to Office XP, as anything you'd call a link is blue and underlined. Your point about the XP menus being easier to read for visually impaired folks is well taken. I still don't like 'em though Windows 95 anyone? I seem to recall this same conversation... :rolleyes: David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
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I've used it with VC 4 and 5 and wasn't very happy with it. But, I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to class frameworks. Borland's OWL in their v4.5 C++ compiler was a nice framework, but they had a hard time keeping up with Microsoft's changing API's. I've been using WTL lately and I'm warming up to it. I don't generally like the way that templates tend to obfuscate code. And I really don't like the macro-madness in MFC, but WTL seems like a reasonable compromise.
I find that most people that claim that MFC takes away control truly don't understand how MFC works. While I agree that MS encourages the use of wizards and Doc/View, etc.. there is nothing stopping you from bypassing all that (which I do quite quickly). I use MFC as a base toolkit framework, not as a higher level framework. I don't use Doc/View very often, And most of my windows are custom built, rather than CFormViews or the like. MFC truly provides you a swiss army knife of tools, if you know how to use them. I'll agree that WTL also has many advantages, and I do prefer it to MFC in many ways. MFC isn't as bad as most people think it is. It's just that if you only use the IDE tools, then you're going to feel limited. -- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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No one complains that clickable areas on website don't have 3D borders. Um, your analogy is flawed. Web site UI != Windows app UI. Users recognise possibly interactive areas because they stand out; because they are identifiable as interactive areas. Assuming the web site is well-designed. Badly-designed web sites suffer from the same missing affordance problem, namely links that aren't underlined. This is another area where I could rant on for hours, but I'll give a synopsis - before IE proprietary styles and CSS and everyone thinking HTML was a good thing to use as an application UI, hyperlinks were underlined. Why? Because underlining meant "this text is clickable". Unfortunately -- and Microsoft's was the first site I ever saw this done at, right after the release of IE3 -- people got the idea that underlining was ugly, or got in the way, or whatever. So the visual cue specifically used for the purpose of indicating clickability was removed. Tell me the sense in that. Then there are more serious problems like sites that set the link color to the same as the normal text color. Your point about the XP menus being easier to read for visually impaired folks is well taken. I still don't like 'em though. ;) --Mike-- http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/ Trillian: What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot? Marvin: You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot?
I think your perspective is flawed. Yes, if you are used to the old Windows 3.1 or 95 way of using a UI, the new way might seem less intuitive. Who SAYS buttons have to be raised to mean their buttons? Various UI elements have ALWAYS had that flat look. Menu's, for instance. How is a user supposed to know he's suppoed to click on them? They're just words at the top of the window. When you see icons, you must assume that they are intended to portray information. Your users who "didn't know they could click on that" were handicapped by a preconcieved notion of what kinds of things you are supposed to click on. The idea that "We can't change that, because that's the way it's always worked" is what keeps the industry from advancing. One of the big complaints from users is that buttons tend to be distracting. By making them more low profile, the user doesn't get as distracted by them as they used to when typing their leters or editing their spreadsheets. As for your complaint about distracting menus... I don't get it. A user doesn't want to be distracted when they're doing their work. When they're selecting menus, or clicking buttons, they've already distracted themselves from their task to do some operation. MS's studies show that menus that just "appear" are more harshe, and much more distracting than ones that transition. Transitions allow the eye to become accustomed gradually to the new image, rather than "shocking" it with an instant image. Think about being in the dark and having a light suddenly flipped on. Is it, or is it not better to gradually raise the light level than instantly flick it on? This is a more extreme version of the same effect. Instant image changes produce eye strain that gradual ones do not. -- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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Um, your analogy is flawed. Web site UI != Windows app UI. And Windows app UI != The "definitive UI". Migrating traditional desktop applications to what you call "web UIs" is the logical way to move forward, so long as they are designed carefully. Assuming the web site is well-designed. Badly-designed web sites suffer from the same missing affordance problem, namely links that aren't underlined. The same can be said for traditional Windows app UIs. I've seen my fair share of crap UIs where they haven't followed the simple rules (GoZilla, ZoneAlarm, MS Money 2k). With web UIs there are still the same rules as there are with traditional UIs. The difference is that you wont get kiddies who write their webpages in Notepad, writting applications. (or if they did, they'd use VB anyway). And your specific points about not using the "standard" things we are used to (i.e. underlining links) is not applicable to Office XP, as anything you'd call a link is blue and underlined. Your point about the XP menus being easier to read for visually impaired folks is well taken. I still don't like 'em though Windows 95 anyone? I seem to recall this same conversation... :rolleyes: David Wulff dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
> Migrating traditional desktop applications to what you call "web UIs" is > the logical way to move forward, so long as they are designed carefully. Logical for who? I personally don't think the internet is adequate for running the vast majority of applications. I also don't think the internet should be used for such a thing because all it's gonna do is eat up what little bandwidth we currently have a available to us. Verifying proper licensing is one thing, but distributed applications on the internet is a joke, and probably always will be.
