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The parent poster would probably change his mind if he were to watch any of the presentations made by Jensen Harris, the man in charge of the new Office UI.

I am a Windows 2000/Office 97 user who does not upgrade just because Microsoft decides they need to make a few extra billions with a bump in version number and some new eye candy. I assumed (without any evidence) that the new Office would be more of the same. But then I found Jensen Harris' presentation at BayCHI last December to be so interesting that now I am excited about trying the new Office UI.

Essentially, the new UI gets rid of the menu bars, button bars, side panels, clippy agents, personal menus and other cruft that slowly accumulated over the successive revisions of Microsoft Office. His argument is that a complex product needs a clear interface. And that's what the ribbon is: Everything is there, and its choices are always context sensitive.

My own personal opinion is that the new interface is pure brilliance, and it won't be long before other companies start poorly(*) imitating its task-based approach over the traditional feature-based approach.

Download the BayCHI slides and video. If you develop software, the new UI is definitely something to behold.

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(*) The imitations will be done poorly because most other software firms do not have the huge sample of user reports automatically created in the current version of Office. The Office UI team was able to determine the frequency of commands so that even their arrangement on the ribbon will be from most-used to least.

...today, and in fact, there are numerous websites, blogs and podcasts focusing on solving the issues brought by "always on", "continous partial attention" etc.

At the center of attentions stands a certain book, Getting Things Done by David Allen. (Slashdot review) This book does not deal with this particular issue, however, it provides a framework for managing time in the age of continous partial attention.

One site I would particularly recommend as a starting point is 43Folders. It's a blog, a community and a useful portal to the part of the Web focused on this issue. If podcasts are your thing, there is a funny yet educational speech available from BayCHI held by 43Folder's founder you might want to listen to - if it sounds familiar, it would probably be a good idea to check out the book.

If history serves, no changes are in the offing.

Really. I've seen many things lately which indicate the contrary.

http://www.baychi.org/calendar/files/harris2005121 3/harris20051213.pdf

Lanier was VRs biggest promoter in the late 80's. I remember seeing him give a demo at the time, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. It was a pretty exciting and compelling talk about cool stuff just around the corner. But then, years passed, and nothing happened.... He recently gave a talk about why VR hasn't happened, after all: http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20030909/#1

For a job seeker, making your resume one among thousands is not an effective strategy, even if it takes little effort. When I have listed my resume in databases, the only result has been calls from recruiters in India asking me if I would consider commuting from California to Delaware. Presumably, they call people at random without reading even the address.

When job listings are free, as they are on company web sites, they often do not correspond to jobs that the company is really going to fill anytime soon. This is something I evaluate. Looking at how Google, for one has had the same listings for years, it seems they are fishing for whatever might come up. This kind of thing is not allowed in newspaper ads: it used to be considered unethical to collect resumes (which may be from employees of your competition) unless you have a bona fide opening. I am also suspicious of Craigslist job ads.

More useful are very targeted job listings. For instance, BayCHI runs a job bank for user interface folks. Employers know they are reaching people who have bothered to join a professional organization, and members know the employers at least know enough about the field to know that if they just want graphic design, they'll say so. (Unfortunately, BayCHI listings are also free and some companies have listed the same openings there for years too without seeming to fill them.)

Alumni organizations might be targeted enough to attract mutually compatible jobs and applicants.

Who would run Gnome or KDE when they can have Aqua - a professionally designed UI which has undergone professional usability testing?

Eazel also has professional usability testers. In fact, just last week Andy Hertzfield gave a presentation of Nautilus to a room full of user interface experts at a BayCHI meeting because Eazel is trying to hire more usability experts.

Eazel is trying to make the Gnome inerface to Linux seriously cool and seriously usable. I hope they give Apple some competition because MacOS X still seems to need it.

Who would run Gnome or KDE when they can have Aqua - a professionally designed UI which has undergone professional usability testing?

Eazel also has professional usability testers. In fact, just last week Andy Hertzfield gave a presentation of Nautilus to a room full of user interface experts at a BayCHI meeting because Eazel is trying to hire more usability experts.

Eazel is trying to make the Gnome inerface to Linux seriously cool and seriously usable. I hope they give Apple some competition because MacOS X still seems to need it.