Another Windows 8 Pre-Beta Surfaces

angry tapir writes "While Microsoft has not announced the release date of its follow-up to Windows 7, an early pre-beta version of Windows 8 (although its official name has not been confirmed) has surfaced on the Internet, the second version to appear within a month. It is the second milestone release that has showed up on the Internet this month. Users of this Windows 8 software have said it features a Ribbon-based user-interface, similar to the one used in recent editions of Microsoft Office. This specific milestone build also has software for a Webcam, a new task manager, a PDF reader and an immersive browser." "Surfacings" like this tell me that Microsoft sees the value in crowdsourced opinion gathering far more than they're sometimes given credit for.

Comments

The task manager is definitely the best feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally you get to know what those svchosts are actually doing.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[yakumo.unr]

In windows 7 you can already right click then select 'go to service(s)' and they're highlighted.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What I've never understood is why MS didn't just make the Sysinternals 'Process Explorer' the default task manager(or at least available by a simple "advanced mode" checkbox) years ago. They've owned Sysinternals lock, stock, and barrel for years, so it presumably isn't a copyright problem, and it blew the native offering out of the water...

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[Shikaku]

I can sum up why in 2 words:

It's complicated.

(As in not user friendly) And yes, even if you do "advanced mode clickbox," people will shitfit and complain to remove it because of privacy concerns, and/or older people will get scared and want it gone due to information overload.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[goombah99]

Finally you get to know what those svchosts are actually doing.

Master beta ing?

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[ColdWetDog]

I can sum up why in 2 words:

It's complicated.

(As in not user friendly) And yes, even if you do "advanced mode clickbox," people will shitfit and complain to remove it because of privacy concerns, and/or older people will get scared and want it gone due to information overload.

OK then, make a "Super Advanced" mode clickbox with pulsating red graphics and a low, 60 Hz rumble for a sound effect.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[EvanED]

In addition, can you think of the support calls?

Besides, anyone who knows how to take advantage of the extra features won't have any problem downloading it except in the complete absence of an internet connection. It's not like it's a 100 MB download with an installer or something like that. Sure, it's an extra step, but it's almost always a really easy extra step.

I can think of some other issues as well. Even though MS owns the code, that doesn't mean it's been vetted to the extent that other Windows components have. I can see Process Explorer doing some really nasty, fragile stuff internally.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[node 3]

Your reply makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The entire Computer Management console is complicated, but it's still there. There are tons of complicated aspects to Windows. Have you ever wandered about in the registry?

As for people complaining, who's going to complain? What "privacy" concerns? "Older people"? What the fuck?

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[redneckHippe]

I'm an older person you insensitive clod.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[clarkn0va]

And a couple layers of confirmation dialogs. Nothing says 'serious' like confirmation dialogs.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[definate]

Poppy cock!

I have setup a lot of machines for a lot of people over the years. I have found most users really confused by the current Task Manager, especially if it's something that isn't a window. I've tried setting up setup Sysinternals Process Explorer for many of these users, especially the ones who just don't understand anything, and I have found that they find it easier, or just as hard. The Process Explorer shows nesting well, doesn't obscure things, doesn't jump around in the list, and is more self-explanatory.

The learning curve on the Process Explorer, because it shows us the data in a more logical way, is MUCH smaller.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[Luckyo]

You can see these in XP if you're using process explorer (and if you're not, GTFO slashdot and leave your geek card before you leave).

Select svchost.exe you want to know about > properties > services.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[Bungie]

The main reason is because Task Manager is often used to try and regain control of a system which has stopped responding. It must be a small and efficient program so that it can be loaded and used when the system is low on resources (like processor time, memory, or even handles). It provides enough information for the user to determine resource usage for the system and running processes, and provides enough functionality for user to manage them. It is not meant to be used for in-depth performance analysis or detailed process information.

You'll notice that the "Services" tab which was added under Vista is very slow to populate when clicked. This is most likely no accident that it loads the service information from the registry on demand (only when the tab is clicked) instead of retreiving and storing it when Task Manager is first opened.

Process Explorer allows you to peek into intricate process details like handles and loaded DLL's, you can even view the strings in the DLL's memory. It also provides extremely detailed information about the system, like loaded drivers, DPC's and even hardware interrupts (which even interrupt the kernel scheduler and can't be tracked by standard Windows programming methods). This much information is great for doing a deep investigation of a driver or system issue, but is not necessary (and may even be confusing to many users) for regular process management.

They also probably do not include it in Windows because of anti-trust claims and such. They do not include software from most of their product lines in Windows anymore (even extremely useful things like Word Viewer, Windows Live Photo Gallery, or Windows Mobile Device Center). They are left to the user to download and install... If they included a checkbox in Task Manager for Process Explorer, competitors may cry that it's bundling.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[nschubach]

This next part is really dangerous and advanced

Ok

The next dialog will erase your drive

Ok

Erasing your hard drive

Ok

WTF Windows. I followed all your prompts and I lost all my data. Grrrr!

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[darkpixel2k]

What I've never understood is why MS didn't just make the Sysinternals 'Process Explorer' the default task manager

Or even better--in this day and age, why aren't the SysInternals tools pre-packaged into an MSI for easy deployment to machines complete with a %PATH% modifier so you can just push and run...?

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[VanGarrett]

I could use a bit more "complicated" in my Windows experience. Windows 7 has an obnoxious habit of producing error messages that amount to, "Something went wrong!" without any further information that might help me to narrow down and solve the problem. If we can get a Microsoft that does away with this attitude of making things user-friendly to the point of excluding the advanced and knowledgeable user, then I will welcome the change.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[Runaway1956]

I'm an "older people". Guess what - it was older people who built the first PC's. In fact, all the people who created the first operating systems are older people now. We made your apps, your games, your everything.

Alright, I'll make an effort to be fair here. Probably 20% of the people my age have never owned a PC, and never will. Another large percentage has never done anything with a PC other than check email, play a couple of games, and maybe read Fox News headlines. Many of the rest have never diddled in the registry, and have almost no idea how to diagnose or cure a virus problem - that's all automatic with the version of Norton shipped on the computer from Dell (or HP or Gateway or) and if that doesn't take care of it then the computer shop can fix it.

But, it isn't just older people. I can find a few dozen youngsters (25 and younger) who have no clue about the internal workings of a computer just as easily as older people. No freaking clue.

Older people. Phhht. Wait 'til you're an octogenarian, and the young pukes are making fun of you. Ha! More, I hope you live to be 120, and you have to tolerate the condescending bullshit from the kids for all of your last 40 years or more.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Excuse me, is this the help desk? I have a process called System Idle that is making my whole internet slow - and I can't turn it off."

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[SharpFang]

I still remember WinNT and my Amiga hard disk.
I used it with Linux+UAE at work, and with my Amiga at home. It worked fine.
Then something tempted me to see how would WinNT react to it.

No partition signature found.
In order to access this disk, a partition signature must be written.
This is a completely safe operation and will not affect other operating systems ability to access this disk.
Should I write the partition signature?
[yes] [no]

After good 12h of recovery of my files I knew for sure. NEVER trust Microsoft. They LIE.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[IainCartwright]

Try looking in the logs.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[Hylandr]

Can someone please mod this man God?

- Dan.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[TheRaven64]

To be fair to Microsoft, that message was true for any other operating system that ran on a hardware with a PC BIOS...

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[TheRaven64]

But, it isn't just older people. I can find a few dozen youngsters (25 and younger) who have no clue about the internal workings of a computer just as easily as older people. No freaking clue.

If anything, it's worse. People of my parents' generation either didn't use computers or used ones running a system that basically required them to know something about how it worked. Now, we have undergraduates arriving at university who have never used a command line. All of their interactions with the computer happen a couple of abstraction layers higher than was even available when I got my first computer.

If you wanted to do anything interesting with the machines I grew up with, you needed to set video modes, set pixels, shuffle palettes, and poke various memory addresses directly. If you wanted to do anything interesting with the machines my father learned to use, you needed to write machine code (if you were lucky, you got an assembler - you definitely didn't get a compiler) and you probably needed to build some hardware. If you want to do something interesting with the computers people have now, you fire up your favourite 4GL and sit in a comfortable virtual environment.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[SharpFang]

Nope, the Linux on the same machine that I used to read the disk (and run UAE) couldn't read it afterwards either. And it wasn't some fancy "image mount under emulator". Linux, using AmigaFFS system would mount the Amiga partitions within its own filesystem, using standard AmigaFFS kernel module shipped with vanilla kernel, making them normally, natively accessible, R/W mounts I could normally use from Linux. Then I would launch UAE with "local directory as hard disk" pointing to these mount points. So, no, the operating system that ran on that hardware, with PC

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[the_other_chewey]

You can see these without any extra tools in XP if you're using the command line.

tasklist /SVC

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[Bungie]

If they can't understand a sorted listview with the process names and information organized in columns, how the hell is nesting the processes in a treeview going to make it any easier for them to understand?

Once users realize they can click column headers to change the way it sorts the process information (like bringing processes using the most CPU to the top of the list) they have no problems finding and ending rogue tasks.

Plus, Task Manager will not let you kill off critical Windows processes like Winlogon.exe csrss.exe (it is hard coded into the application), while Process Explorer will.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[rjstanford]

The main reason is because Task Manager is often used to try and regain control of a system which has stopped responding. It must be a small and efficient program so that it can be loaded and used when the system is low on resources (like processor time, memory, or even handles). It provides enough information for the user to determine resource usage for the system and running processes, and provides enough functionality for user to manage them. It is not meant to be used for in-depth performance analysis or detailed process information.

Where they went wrong, in my opinion, is not replacing Task Manager with two other programs. They should have the über-powerful task manager (like Process Explorer) tucked away for the experts to use, and something akin to the OSX "Force Quit..." option for everyone else. In case you're not a Mac user, "Force Quit..." launches from the system menu and opens a very simple dialog with a list of public program names, some of which (if they start misbehaving) are identified with a "(Not Responding)" label. That's all. They're alphabetical, and you can't do anything except quit them (well, it also shows Finder but the quit button turns into a "restart" button in that case).

Not shoving everything into a single app can often be a more elegant solution.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[karnal]

Here's a suprise for you. Not all geeks care about it that much. I can count on one hand how many times I've wanted to know how svchost.exe instances matched up with services. So no, I'll be retaining my geek card, tyvm.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[jedidiah]

...because hunting down some log file is "user friendly".

Especially since hunting in general seems to be something that no one wants to encourage any more.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[cayenne8]

Yep...I'm getting older and had to do most of the stuff you mentioned.

And actually..the thing that stuck out to me about the new Win8....the fucking ribbon interface.

Geez...I hate that in MS Office (took me forever to find where the damned save and save as buttons were...nothing in the world told me that big round button top left was something you'd click on for that stuff.

It just isn't intuitive at all IMHO.

I can make my way around it now, but is a PITA to do anything and I only use MS office apps when I absolutely have to.

But now..the whole OS interface with ribbon?

I don't see myself buying any more windows stuff. I'll stick with linux and OSX when possible. I can have a GUI that is easy to use and find things...and good command line.

And get off of my lawn.

:)

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[jedidiah]

It's not the "number of times" that's significant.

Usually when you're at the point of bothering to mess around with what processes are running it's because YOU NEED TO and you are tired of your quad core monster acting like a 33Mhz 386. Actually knowing what's going on is of some importance because you need to know what to kill or turn off.

Sooner or later, someone needs to clean up after Microsoft.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[karnal]

I agree. The whole "turn in your geek card" got me fired up for no apparent reason. I don't disagree with the fact that it's useful.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[clang_jangle]

To be fair to Microsoft, that message was true for any other operating system that ran on a hardware with a PC BIOS...

How is making excuses being "fair to Microsoft"? What about being fair to the user?

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[TheRaven64]

You'd rather it said 'This is a completely safe operation and will not affect other operating systems ability to access this disk. Unless this disk is removed from this computer and placed in a computer with a different architecture and partition table format.' Do you really think that fewer users will be confused by such a message?

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[clang_jangle]

No, I'd rather it said "This is usually a safe operation, depending upon disk and filesystem compatibility. If you're not sure what this means, you might want to reconsider........Proceed?" With a thingie to click on that says "More details".

I'm sure that's less confusing than just lying.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[Patch86]

While I sympathise, I don't think you're being fair (or, possibly, are being too fair).

While it is true that the first computers were built by people who are now definitely "old", I don't think you'd disagree that computing was a niche occupation in those early days. The number of people in the world who had actually seen a computer up close in the 1940's could probably all fit in a reasonable-sized conference room. Right through the 70's and 80's, and into the 90's, computing remained the preoccupation of "geek culture", with little penetration into the mainstream. Compare with today, where even low-end budget TVs are reasonably advanced computers, and 99% of jobs involve using full-fledged computers in some capacity.

Anyone who retired more than a decade or two ago would have a pretty decent excuse for never having had to use a full desktop OS in their lives- and unless they're motivated to do so (and not everyone has to be or is), may never use one. The youth of today, in contrast, simply could not finish their compulsory schooling without having used computers an awful lot. And every single office job, industrial job, and indeed almost all jobs, now involve computers in some way.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[thoromyr]

I wouldn't say they lied, but it definitely isn't true. You are assuming, like whoever wrote that error message, that all disks intended for use on hardware with a PC BIOS are "pc formatted" -- that is the partition information is recorded as "DOS Partitions" -- the (up to) four primary partitions with extended partition scheme that Microsoft evolved. There *are* other partition schemes and they are completely valid for use. You may not be able to *boot* from such a disk, but that doesn't have anything to do with the operating system using it.

Microsoft's behavior is precisely why GPT uses a "protective" DOS partition in the first sector to fake Windows into thinking the drive is already partitioned. The DOS partition is "fake", however, and the real partition information starts in the second sector.

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[babyrat]

If they can't understand a sorted listview with the process names and information organized in columns, how the hell is nesting the processes in a treeview going to make it any easier for them to understand?

So should all our filemanagers look like this?

Filename Parent Directory GrandParent Directory
test.exe \test c:\

or is the nested model that explorer, nautilus and most other filemanagers use more intuitive and easier to understand? I mean it's just a sorted listbox - why not use it for everything?

 

Re:The task manager is definitely the best feature

[SharpFang]

I didn't need to remove that disk. I just rebooted to Linux and was unable to use the disk with Linux on the same PC any more.

And I'd much rather be confused by a convoluted and hard to understand message about potential risks, than be falsely assured with total certainty by a very clear and understandable message that there is no risk whatsoever.

PDF reader?

[pasv]

Great another vector. *fingers crossed* I hope they're sandboxing.

Re:PDF reader?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that using Adobe software to view untrusted material is the rough equivalent of injecting yourself with used needles in the hope of scoring free heroin, I'm going to adopt a "it couldn't possibly be worse?" stance until otherwise demonstrated.

Re:PDF reader?

[syockit]

What, does PDF scripting API include destructive methods? Microsoft can choose not to enable scripting by default.

Re:PDF reader?

[davester666]

hahahaha

I swear, 'delete' is the first verb they work on in any scripting language Microsoft implements.

Re:PDF reader?

[JerryLindenburg]

Hey man, say what you will about adobe systems, but used needles are the best!

Re:PDF reader?

[Runaway1956]

"for desktop use this is a fact of life."

And, there are people who can't figure out why so many of us switch to a Unix-like operating system. Tolerating compromised systems is NOT a fact of life with BSD, Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, Fedora, Suse - or even Mac. (Unless of course, you believe all the rumors about Apple tracking users!)

On the bright side, Microsoft really has been improving their systems. Security on W95/98/ME was nonexistent. Security improved slightly from W2k to XP, then again on Vista/Win7. Just maybe Win8 will actually be secure. I'm not betting on it, but they really should improve again.

Re:PDF reader?

[Richard_at_work]

The last time Microsoft tried to include PDF functionality in one of its products as a shipped feature, Adobe threatened to sue under antitrust law (see the Microsoft Office 2007 and "Save as PDF" fiasco - Microsoft eventually dropped it as a shipped feature but released it as an installable addon). Do you think that this time its going to be any different?

I predict a repeat of the internet browser lawsuits, and Microsoft removing their PDF reader from future Windows 8 builds.

Re:PDF reader?

[LocalH]

That's probably because it was a PDF creation tool, not merely a viewer. OS X comes with an in-built viewer and noone bats an eyelid, so I feel that Windows including a PDF viewer will be fine.

Re:PDF reader?

[Richard_at_work]

OS X also comes with built in PDF creation - any print dialog has a "PDF" button which allows you to output to PDF...

Re:PDF reader?

[syockit]

I think you've linked to a wrong article. For desktop use it should be something around buffer overflow or privilege escalation exploits.

Having a built-in reader is no more vulnerable than a third-party one. For people who never use PDF, then the reader is never used, hence no more security concern.

new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow down

[Joe The Dragon]

new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow down users moving to windows 8.

Some places are still stuck on XP and are moving to 7 now and now 8 is on the way with a new GUI?

also what software / hardware that works in XP / 7 will windows 8 not work with?

Shit gets shittier

[Stormwatch]

Users of this Windows 8 software have said it features a Ribbon-based user-interface, similar to the one used in recent editions of Microsoft Office.

Overheard at Microsoft: "Hey guys, you know that ribbon interface that everybody hated? How about we put it everywhere in the system?"

What's next, will they bring back Bob and Clippy as well?

Re:Shit gets shittier

[MrEricSir]

Microsoft has a history of shoving features down users throats no matter how much they complain. People loathed Clippy, so what did Microsoft do? They added an animated dog to Windows XP.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[syockit]

I don't know who your 'everybody' refers to. Maybe it doesn't include me and the plethora of other satisfied MS Office 2007 users. Are we 'nobodies'?

Re:Shit gets shittier

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I see that you are trying to write an anti-microsoft post. Would you like the Microsoft(r) Social Media Assistant, a Native feature of Genuine IE9, to help you with that?

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Frosty Piss]

Hey guys, you know that ribbon interface that everybody hated?

Many people don't like change, are satisfied with an existing menu system, and don't see a useful purpose in evolving a GUI paradigm. Others are not as set in their ways.

I have no problems with "ribbons". Yes, it took me some time to master the new Office menu GUI, but I don't "hate" it, and I don't know any open-minded "users" who do. Yes, I know people that "prefer" the old Office menus, but "hate"? No, not really.

I think you are simply biased against Office. Fine, stick with OpenOffice (or whatever flavor thereof...) Or maybe you do all your letter writing with LaTeX?

Re:Shit gets shittier

[TheRealQuestor]

Clippy IS back in a video teaching people how to use the new ribbon.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[blai]

I don't see why you hate the ribbon so much. It is collapsible (double click any tab), has all items visible in appropriately sized icons (bigger icons are more commonly used) to the user on a single click, and the user may customise locations of icons as well as the availability of shortcut keys, quick access bars and graphical tooltips, just in case you still don't know what clicking on a giant "paste" button does.

Yes, we know some like menus, but as screen resolutions grow, ribbons are the definite way to go. If you don't have a large screen, you will notice collapsing your ribbon will save you about 10 vertical pixels, while the number of clicks to get somewhere remains the same (1~2).

Re:Shit gets shittier

[JDAustin]

No, your just people who choose to use a program that requires more keystrokes/clicks to accomplish the same task as Office 2003.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Nerdfest]

It's not just Microsoft. Apple's pretty famous for it, and with the Latest Ubuntu release, it's looking like Canonical may be heading down that road too. Sometimes it's the right decision, and sometime's it's not. It's great when the gamble pays off, but it can be really expensive for a company when it doesn't.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[montibbalt]

No, your just people who choose to use a program that requires more keystrokes/clicks to accomplish the same task as Office 2003.

I'm no MS apologist, but I would like to see an example of what you're talking about.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[milbournosphere]

In Microsoft's defense, the 'cute doggy', as my girlfriend calls it, was much more popular with the demographic made up of old ladies, babies, and people more susceptible to cute-attacks than the rest of the general population than Clippy ever was. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I hear a 'squeee!' coming from my girlfriend's general direction.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[firesnowball]

No, your just people who choose to use a program that requires more keystrokes/clicks to accomplish the same task as Office 2003.

Forever a Microsoft Office 2003 user.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the ribbon. Everything that I use frequently is as many clicks/keystrokes or fewer than what I did before. Especially styles in Word.

Everything I don't use frequently but do use sometimes, takes fewer keystrokes / clicks / mouse movements by virtue of the fact that I don't have to look for it anymore. Thus, I like the ribbon. I wonder what the specific patterns are among the people who find it takes way more clicks. Might also have to do with smaller monitors, since the ribbon is adaptive.

I did have to relearn a couple things, but adapted. I think I like the ribbon -- for Office. Works fine for Paint too, for my uses (I use paint to zoom in on screenshots to ensure pixel-perfect accuracy, draw straight 1px lines to mark alignment, or put a quick red circle around something wrong if I'm opening a bug). Can't think of anything in paint that takes more clicks.

I'm not sure how Windows 8 will be ribbon-based. Explorer? I'm skeptical of a ribbon there because I almost never use the menu in explorer, except to uncheck "hide extensions for known file types".

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Gadget_Guy]

People loathed Clippy, so what did Microsoft do? They added an animated dog to Windows XP.

The reason everyone hated Clippy was that it intrusively popped up while you were working. On the other hand, the dog was only displayed if you elected to search for something. In fact, I would suggest that Clippy demonstrates that Microsoft will remove features that people do not like. After all, they did get rid of the stupid paperclip after everyone complained.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm one. The other day I used my brother's corporate laptop, which has a newer version of Office installed

Couldn't understand shit. And i've used word since the 6.0 DOS version.

Why replace perfectly readable letters with cryptic, obscure icons?

If someone doesn't know how to read, then WHY THE FUCK WOULD HE BE USING WORD ANYWAYS.

sorry for the caps.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[AbRASiON]

Ribbon is garbage indeed.
I damned well hate it and I've been on it for 7 or 8 months now, it's horrible. I will stick with 7 if they screw up Windows explorer that badly.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[__aazsst3756]

Office 97 is the first usable version. According to to MS studies, I'm in the majority. I do realize many people have trouble with change though.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Belial6]

If your definition of not being "open-minded" is "hates the office ribbon interface", then you are correct that open-minded people don't hate it. I personally dislike it, but I don't get so emotional about my OS. I can certainly see how someone that doesn't enjoy trying new interfaces just for the sake of trying them, and just wants to get their job done, could "hate" a new interface that is noticeably worse than the old one.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Locutus]

there are lots of people who are paid by the hour and love those kinds of "features" from Microsoft.

LoB

Re:Shit gets shittier

[bmo]

Protip: Clippy and the Spot the dog are the same thing.

They are descendants of Bob. Praise be.

People hated Bob and its help agents, and help agents still keep being "reinvented" each time there is a new Microsoft OS release. Microsoft is the only OS vendor that has tools that actually talk down to the user. Frankly, it's insulting. For all the yelling that people do at Apple for "dumbing down the interface," Microsoft does a pretty good job of doing that all by itself.

Ribbons in Explorer. Good lawd, I saw a screenshot. "Hey, everybody! Let's uselessly take up 128 vertical pixels in already vertically challenged widescreen displays!"

--
BMO

Re:Shit gets shittier

[exomondo]

Ribbon is garbage indeed. I damned well hate it and I've been on it for 7 or 8 months now, it's horrible. I will stick with 7 if they screw up Windows explorer that badly.

we'll all stay off your lawn

Re:Shit gets shittier

[bmo]

>Pixels are not in short supply anymore

With wide screen displays and netbook sizes, yes, yes they are. This is why Microsoft is getting all the deserved hate for the Ribbon interface.

Wasting 128 vertical pixels for nothing in Explorer is maddening.

Want to make me and a lot of other experienced users happy? Context driven menus, accessible by right click, and key combinations. System-wide. Make them tear-off like in the old NeXT desktop, too.

But that requires actual re-engineering of the desktop instead of re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic.

Am I the only one that misses Workplace Shell?

--
BMO

Re:Shit gets shittier

[symbolset]

And Bob was a Melinda Gates thing. So we all sufferred - but maybe Bill got a little extra something out of it.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Anonymous Coward]

there are lots of people who are paid by the hour and love those kinds of "features" from Microsoft.

LoB

Yo mama gets paid by the hour, if ya know what I mean...

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Missing.Matter]

With wide screen displays and netbook sizes, yes, yes they are. This is why Microsoft is getting all the deserved hate for the Ribbon interface.

Netbooks were a fad, being replaced by the new tablet fad. I use office 2007 on a 12" 1280x800 display and I never particularly lamented over the ribbon interface. If I ever though it took up too much space I could just minimize it anyway. BFD.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[bmo]

Portability is not a fad, however.

People want lighter and smaller devices. Lugging a 7Kg desktop replacement Dell XPS gets a little long in the tooth.

Microsoft seems to be pooh-poohing the trend. They seem extremely hostile to mobile computing despite giving it a lot of lip service. They dismiss this to their peril.

--
BMO

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Gadget_Guy]

Protip: Clippy and the Spot the dog are the same thing.

Protip: Adding "Protip" doesn't make something true.

Clippy and the dog were both animated characters that would offer help, but that is where the similarity ends. As I said, Clippy was so reviled because it got in the way. It forced itself in your face. Even worse, it spied on what you were doing and tried to "help" (which gave us the meme that people still use as a joke today).

It is really annoying when someone stands behind you doing reading what you type and interrupting with "helpful" comments, so it stands to reason that people would hate it in a virtual character too.

As for Bob, it was not because it was a virtual character that people hated it but that the software was was an unusable mess! You can't tell the difference between badly drawn scenery and badly drawn icons for programs (without pressing F1 to reveal them). This was made back in the days when people thought you needed to imitate the real world to make computers seem approachable, but as the screenshot shows that is a horribly wrong concept.

Ribbons in Explorer. Good lawd, I saw a screenshot. "Hey, everybody! Let's uselessly take up 128 vertical pixels in already vertically challenged widescreen displays!"

You can auto-hide the ribbon so it only appears when you move the mouse over the top of the window. But 128 pixels is nothing compared to what users would subject themselves to with the old toolbars in Office. I would set up our systems at work with a nice two line set of toolbars in Office, but when I look at them later I find every toolbar turned on and half the screen filled with the bloody things (all mixed up in random order too). This is why I prefer the menus, because they tended to stay the same on every computer I had to use.

When I watch my pathetic users try to access an unfamiliar feature, they hover over every single button looking at the tooltips to find the one they are looking for. Even if I would tell them which menu it was on they would ignore that and look for the button.

As much as the ribbon didn't suit me, it did seem like exactly the right thing for my users. While we might love our menus and keyboard shortcuts, the average user just does a hunt-and-peck on the toolbars. The ribbon is a huge step-up for them.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[jax555]

OK then - Here goes. Most of the time I sit looking at the "Home" tab. Then I want to go an add a column to a table, so click on "Layout", add the column. But now I am still in the layout tab, and have to click back to "Home" again. 3 clicks instead of 2. And all that "Everything is visible once you are in the tab" isn't true anyway... There are heaps of sub-menus on the tabs anyway, so you still have the problem that you always had with menus.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Retron]

Well, the way you'd do that efficiently is to right click in the table, then click insert. That's the way it's been for years!

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Hadlock]

In fact, I would suggest that Clippy demonstrates that Microsoft will remove features that people do not like. After all, they did get rid of the stupid paperclip after everyone complained.

I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever made that call in 2000 was not in that position for the release of Word 2007.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Xtravar]

People are resistant to change. As a software developer, I'm sick of my boss saying "we can't make things better because it'll disrupt users". Fuck that. Let's disrupt some goddamn users so we aren't stuck with Win 3.1 interfaces everywhere. Software evolves. The first interface is not the best. People should evolve with it.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Frosty Piss]

Portability is not a fad, however. People want lighter and smaller devices...

And most MS Office (or even OpenOffice) users are *not* using small portable devices to do the majority of their word processing and spreadsheet work on, just as it would be silly to design *ALL* user interfaces with the assumption that significant numbers of people will be using their smart phones to compose documents and work on spreadsheets.

The *facts* are that most MS Office users a using devices that are ever-so-slightly bigger than a netbook / tablet.

I think a much more realistic argument involves the "ribbon" not being as intuitive as a conventional menu, but that idea is questionable in the face of studies that suggest otherwise.

Another solution might be to make menu style an option, though that might not be practical.

The bottom line is that *most* MS Office users do not have issues with the "ribbon", and *most* people that do not like the "ribbon" do not like MS and probably don't use MS Office anyway.

So, it's just something to bitch and moan about "Micro$loth" about...

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Warlord88]

I, personally, like the ribbon interface since it makes things finding so easy. I rely on Office only when I need to and so I don't need to know what lies where in the myriad of Menu Bar.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Hadlock]

In the case of Excel 2007, not all the features are available unless you stretch the window over 1200px wide. If you've got multiple windows open for a project and you want to easily color code things, you're going to need either a giant monitor, or multiple ones.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[ebs16]

I still can't find my way around the Ribbon menus. They aren't as logically organized as the "old" menus. That said, they are prettier. I'll be satisfied if users have the option of turning off the ribbons in favor of traditional menus.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Gadget_Guy]

I don't need an animated dog to get in the way of showing me the search form....And when I tell the intrusive and unnecessary animation to go away, no, I don't need to waste another couple of seconds to watch it stroll away.

You know, you probably spent more time thinking about then writing that paragraph than it took for you to look at the dog, go into preferences and turn it off.

And Microsoft responded to complaints? Only after YEARS of constant and angry complaints over several versions.

What? They disabled it by default in the very next version of Office. You would have to go into preferences and turn Clippy on to start hating it again.

And that's where the ribbon in the new version of Office really, really sucks. There is no built-in "classic" mode.

I initially thought the same as you. It seemed crazy just to completely throw out the old interface. When I thought about it for a while, I realised that the interface had changed so dramatically that it altered every part, including pop up dialog boxes and the placement of some features. If Microsoft were to keep the old interface too, then they would have to completely duplicate their user interface code. People already think that the package is bloated now, imagine how bad it would be to double up on all the UI code.

What I think that they should have done is add the ribbon interface into the Windows applications first so that people could get used to it on simpler programs (eg. Paint and Wordpad in Windows 7). Then it would not have been such a culture shock to be confronted with the new system in such a complicated application like Word or Excel.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[phantomfive]

I used to hate ribbons a lot, until one day I realized it wasn't the ribbon that was causing me problems, it was the general UI design. Things are crammed everywhere in ways that don't make much sense. Clicking on one button often causes the entire UI to change. Things like that. Ribbons could be made to work well, but in Microsoft products, they continue the Microsoft tradition of being a mess.

And it is really a shame because the ribbon element itself is rather nice. Microsoft has created the association of 'ribbon = bad' because of their poor overall design.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[blincoln]

Overall, I think the ribbon is a bit of a wash - it's probably better in some ways, and worse in others.

But there is one thing that *really* annoys me, and that's the microscopic unlabeled button in the lower-right corner of some of the panes in the Office ribbons. I didn't even know it was a button until I read a tutorial about how to do something that required functionality in a window that one of them opens.

On my monitor at work, I couldn't even tell what it was supposed to represent. I thought it was just a little square. On my larger monitor at home, I can see that it's a frame with an arrow pointing outward, indicating that it is going to open a larger window of some kind. But without knowing that in advance, it's incredibly unintuitive and therefore a poor design.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Anonymous Coward]

As a software developer, I'm sick of my boss saying "we can't make things better because it'll disrupt users". Fuck that. Let's disrupt some goddamn users so we aren't stuck with Win 3.1 interfaces everywhere. Software evolves. The first interface is not the best. People should evolve with it.

This is why you're only a developer.

Just sayin'.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[bmo]

I said "smaller" not "small." I'm not assuming 3 inch iphone/ipod screens.

A netbook is just fine for on-the-go word processing. You've got a keyboard and screen. It's light, it has long battery life. A tablet with a bluetooth keyboard would be fine too.

I have a laptop with a 17 inch screen. It's a detriment when I want to travel with it. It's heavy. It burns through batteries, because it's power hungry since it has a "real" video card with it's own RAM and multiple cores in the CPU. It's a nice machine, but I don't like lugging it around.

I've been around and I've seen interfaces come and go. Ribbon is not "just one more thing to whine about." You are only partly right. It's the people who have seen other interfaces than Microsoft's that get riled up when they have to use something as broken as Ribbon. Because they know that better is out there. Novices just don't know any better.

--
BMO

Re:Shit gets shittier

[man_of_mr_e]

But what if you need to access something on the same tab? It's now just saved you clicks, because you don't have to click on the Menu, and drag down to the submenu, then drag over and down to what you want... again.

It likely all averages out. What you lose when having to click back, you save in not having to find the menu item again. Most common tasks are on the right click or in the popup menu when you highlight something anyways.

It should be noted also that Ribbons are MUCH easier to use for those who have limited manual dexterity, shaky hands, etc.. ever watched an older person try to navigate menus and slide off then have to start over again? Sometime 3 or 4 or 5 times to get it right?

Re:Shit gets shittier

[man_of_mr_e]

Dude, Ctrl-F1 auto hides the ribon. Now it takes up even less space than the old way.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[jax555]

But then most menu-driven systems also have a toolbar with the most common functions in that... Which you can make large for the elderly.

Another problem with the ribbon is the amount of distance that you have to cover - Menus tend to cluster at the top right, whereas the ribbon means that you travel all over the top of the window - Top left to select the tab the top right to grab what you are after wheras the menu item is almost always straight underneath the menu you just selected.

As for manual dexterity - That would be true if the ribbon was all icons, but it isn't. Its icons with menus under them... Often with several km of mouse movement between them.

And yes, most of the time I use the context menu or keyboard shortcuts, but then given that is the case, why not keep the menu system. That is the problem that I have with the ribbon - It is just different, and often worse. If it is not markedly better, why change it. Why not try and simplify Office, rather than hiding the problem behind a GUI that looks like an airline cockpit.

Outside of Slashdot, the most positive thing I have heard about the ribbon is "Well, I am used to it now" - Talk about damning by faint praise.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[man_of_mr_e]

The problem with reverting back to the old style is that people like you won't ever learn the new one. So, Microsoft has to keep supporting the old style indefinitely. Then when the next interface comes along, they have to support 3 of them, then 4, then 5... at some point you have cut the cord or your support effort increases into infinity.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[man_of_mr_e]

That's not true. As you shrink the window, the least used features are put into the chevron menu. Still there, still accessible no matter what size the window is.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[man_of_mr_e]

I'm not sure I follow you. How are organizing functions in logical tabs, then organizing them into logical (and named) sections "crammed everywhere in ways that don't make much sense". Certainly there's a few odd ducks in there (like View->Macros) but those are few enough that you should be able to remember them.

Can you give an example of something that doesn't make sense?

Re:Shit gets shittier

[attah]

People are resistant to change. As a software developer, I'm sick of my boss saying "we can't make things better because it'll disrupt users". Fuck that. Let's disrupt some goddamn users so we aren't stuck with Win 3.1 interfaces everywhere.

Same appearantly was the case with Ubuntu's unity.. but that time the dev-team won. :( Bleeping mouse-centric GUI, it takes forever to get stuff done, and here i've been complaining about win 7's grouping taskbar and OSX, but that seriously takes the price.

Software evolves. The first interface is not the best. People should evolve with it.

How about not disrupting, but instead enabling users to work in new ways (as well)? We can't all think the same you know... just because the new "flow" is better it's not for every one of us.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[man_of_mr_e]

What if the functions you need to repeat aren't the most common? You're going to create a toolbar button for something you need to use 3 times in a row one time?

The menus under the ribbons are one level deep, not multiple submenus. And, the most common function is the default action. All this is easy for even the dextrously challenged.

I have no idea what you mean by "Menus tend to cluster at the top right". That doesn't even make sense. Menus are everywhere. Top left, top right, top middle, within menus, etc..

Menus are not scalable. Adding more functions, and each new release of Office does, means more menus. It's to the point that there are literally hundreds of commands in Office 2003 that don't even have menu items. You have to bind them to key combinations, or create new menus if you want to use them.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[jax555]

Yeah - But practically how often do you use an obscure function lots of times in a row as a one off. The sort of stuff I am talking about is inserting page breaks, switching windows, approving changes... All of these were one click away.

The ribbon menus are only one deep, but you still have to go to that tab first. Face it - anything that is on the "Home" tab was also on the standard toolbar and just as few clicks away.

I meant that menus are on the top left (sorry)... Menus start at the top left, and work across to the right. If you look at the path your mouse takes... For a menu, you go to the top left of the window, then straight down from the menu that you select to the item you want. With the ribbon, you go to the top left to select the tab you want, then often over to the top right to pick the item, then often back to the top left to switch back to the home tab.

Your last paragraph makes no sense - Anything true of menus is equally true of the ribbon. All it shows is that they aren't thinking all that clearly about how to structure Office. It is horribly bloated whether you look at it through menus or through a ribbon....

Another advantage of menus - You can look at the keyboard shortcut by just dropping the menu down. The ribbon requires you to hover over the control for the shortcut.

I am used to the ribbon, but after 2 years it still feels horrible compared to menus.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[gbjbaanb]

think of every shitty UI change you hate and loathe. Now imagine that they were the features your users wanted (they probably are. for them), now imagine changing your software to put those things in to 'make things better'.

You see, change sometimes isn't better. Often slow evolution is the best way to change things. Little by little, people get used to the new bits, then another then another and over time they get all the changes you want, without the massive disruption you want to impose on them.

Also don't forget - you write that software for the users benefit. Not yours.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[blind biker]

It is collapsible (double click any tab), has all items visible in appropriately sized icons (bigger icons are more commonly used) to the user on a single click, and the user may customise locations of icons as well as the availability of shortcut keys,

If this were true, it would be great, but it's a lie: the ribbon does NOT have all the items visible, nor made accessible! There's a shitton of features/functions which you cannot access throug hthe ribbon, especialy in Excel. There you have to add these to the (wait for it..) toolbar with the customize function - you must find it among thousands of functions sorted alphabetically (and if you don't remember the exact name or don't guess the name Microsoft decided to call that function in the new Excel, you're SOL) add it to the toolbar and you're good to go (?). Except, then you have a fucking long toolbar, and it's the exact antithesis of what Microsoft was allegedly trying to avoid.

With menus, all the functions were available. With the ribbon, only the most commonly used. The less commonly used ones (but still extremely important for, e.g. researchers) can not be accessed in any other way but through customizing the toolbar.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Lord Byron II]

When I watch my pathetic users try to access an unfamiliar feature...

And we wonder why most people can't stand the IT guy...

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Ant P.]

Screen resolutions don't grow. They haven't grown since a bunch of scammers started marketing 1366x768 screens with 1mm-wide pixels with labels like "HD Ready".

Re:Shit gets shittier

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

amen to that.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[drinkypoo]

What's pathetic is the HR departments who continually hire people to do jobs who do not have the skills listed in the job description, and further do not make training available to them to bring them up to grade. It's pathetic because they're making hiring decisions based on entirely subjective criteria (you smell nice) and then justifying them based on bullshit. Welcome to the downfall of America.

Can you tell I'm bitter? I've known one good HR employee and another department snapped her up as quick as they could when they found out she had a brain. You're not allowed to work in HR if you're smart, or nice.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[master_p]

True, but there hasn't really been a better interface than the "Win 3.1" one so far.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[smelch]

What's pathetic is HR hiring.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[smelch]

No, you're being deliberately stubborn. "I need to return to the Home tab" is not a valid complaint. You click layout, you do your thing, and you leave it there. When you need something from Home you click on home and do what you need to do and leave it there. 2 clicks in both actions. If you reset to Home then don't use an action on home then why did you do that? Because you're dumb? Or is this just the flailings of somebody trying to get used to a change, but too arrogant to admit he has a problem and not the interface?

Re:Shit gets shittier

[smelch]

A netbook is just fine for on-the-go word processing.

They're a fad, unimportant.

A tablet with a bluetooth keyboard would be fine too.

Would you seriously want to navigate the old style menu on a tablet? Perhaps this is a move for tablets.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[AmiMoJo]

People just don't like change, they prefer the familiar. Even if the new UI is better people will moan just because it isn't what they are used to.

Of course sometimes it is justified. Firefox 4 is a good example. They get rid of the status bar and so had to move the link-destination-display out of and into the address bar. People hated it because they were used to looking in the bottom left when hovering over a link, and eventually they moved it back down there as a pop-up. Unfortunately that wasn't the only problem with the FF4 UI but the point is that people are conservative and unless there is an immediately obvious benefit (harder/faster/better/stronger) they tend to hate UI changes, which only sometimes is justified.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[LynnwoodRooster]

When you have to go to the grocery store, get gas in the car, and drop off some bills at the Post Office, do you drive back home each time, in between errands? That's basically what you're doing by insisting on going back to the "home" tab each time. Leave the tab as-is until the next time you need to use the ribbon. Maybe you'll need a function on the same tab, or a different (non-home) tab...

Re:Shit gets shittier

[LynnwoodRooster]

Then re-organize them. You can edit the ribbon tabs and function groupings...

Re:Shit gets shittier

[AmiMoJo]

I find the ribbon useful because I don't do much typing in Word, meaning I don't know all the icons and keyboard shortcuts by heart and actually have to look for what I want. I can do everything in Notepad2 or AVR Studio from the keyboard, but that is because I use them a lot.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[AmiMoJo]

Microsoft is the only OS vendor that has tools that actually talk down to the user.

Used to. This was one of the major design changes they made for Vista because users hated it so much. Instead of "My Documents" it just became "Documents" and so on. The animated characters disappeared, error messages tried to be less patronising, wizards went away to be replaced by more traditional (but still helpfully commented) dialogues... They really did make an effort to be less annoying.

Of course they also introduced the much hated User Account Control where the screen goes black when something requests superuser rights, but that was necessary because of the insecure legacy of XP allowing apps to shit all over the filesystem and registry. Compared to the early days by the time Windows 7 came around most apps had been fixed to produce the minimum number of prompts, which was in fact the intention from the start and the reason it was so annoying. If developers know users will be pissed off by their app doing something they will generally try to avoid doing it, and produce a better app.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[jollyreaper]

Looks like someone doesn't get the Idiocracy reference.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[jedidiah]

Clearly the notion of change control is something that is alien to you.

All you care about is changing things, consequences be damned.

These things aren't your private toys. It's not your own little hobby. People actually use this stuff. Sometimes, they use it for real productive work.

The expression "production outage" is something you should make yourself familiar with.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Frosty Piss]

A netbook is just fine for on-the-go word processing. You've got a keyboard and screen. It's light, it has long battery life. A tablet with a bluetooth keyboard would be fine too.

And when you do "on the go" word processing on a tiny laptop, don't expect a premium experience.

It's just that simple.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Kielistic]

"on-the-go" word processing is not likely Microsoft's main target for Word. The users that do perform on-the-go probably still do the majority of their word processing not on-the-go. It makes a great deal more sense to optimize for a much better working experience (ie a larger screen) that most people will be using anyway (Anyone who is going to spend hundreds of dollars on an office sweet probably also buys nice workspaces).

A 17" laptop with a "real" video card is normally referred to as a "desktop replacement". Their use is for someone who occasionally moves their computer from one desk to another. If you do a lot of carting a laptop around you should be using a slightly less powerful (so it doesn't use so much of your battery) 13" or so. If you move a tonne and don't need to do a lot of heavy work then you go for a netbook. Right tool for the right job and all that.

Just because people disagree with your opinion does not make them wrong, nor does it make them novices that don't know any better.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[asdf7890]

Protip: Clippy and the Spot the dog are the same thing.

Protip: Adding "Protip" doesn't make something true.

Protip: Stating that adding "Protip" doesn't make something true doesn't make that something false if it is in fact true. They were the same thing, or at least belonged to the same family of libraries. Both were implemented by some version of the "agents" library - different versions of the library perhaps but still the same line. The search helper only has a limited range of things it can offer as hints not because it is something different but because it is the calling programs responsibility to key the help prompts, not the libraries.

One of our clients had us implement the damn things as a hint system in an app because they liked the parrot character (http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/merlin/msagents_download.html). Fools...

Re:Shit gets shittier

[tokul]

The first interface is not the best

There is no guarantee that your interface will be the best and your boss is right about choosing "stuff that works" instead "test new stuff on our customers" path.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[phantomfive]

Sure. One problem is that in Outlook, clicking on seemingly unrelated things will cause the ribbon to change, and it isn't entirely obvious what happened. It looks like everything changed, and suddenly you can't find the old buttons you wanted. Then finally you realize what you have to click to get back to the old ribbon. That is really annoying.

Other than that, the general strategy for a good UI is "make the common case easy; make the uncommon case possible." Microsoft designs things by committee, and it ends up being kind of hashed together.

On the other hand, they do look pretty.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Maestro4k]

People are resistant to change. As a software developer, I'm sick of my boss saying "we can't make things better because it'll disrupt users". Fuck that. Let's disrupt some goddamn users so we aren't stuck with Win 3.1 interfaces everywhere. Software evolves. The first interface is not the best. People should evolve with it.

Yes, innovation needs to happen in user interfaces too, but the ribbon isn't it. It's also not an innovation, it's been around for a while now and still is one of the most hated/reviled features of MS Office. When your "innovation" in user interface design is near universally reviled by everyone who uses it, it's not an innovation, it's a failure. Continuing to try and force users to use it just pisses them off and actually holds back progress.

And how much people hate (and are confused by) the ribbon is underrated. My father, who's very much a computer neophyte and never complains about things like the user interface (he probably doesn't fully understand what the user interface is) has only complained to me about one UI feature: the ribbon in MS Office. I had to find him an old version of Office so he could have a version without it as he simply couldn't figure out how to do anything with the ribbon interface. He handled the switch from XP to Vista without any problems, but he can't cope with the ribbon at all. That's a serious UI failure.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Gadget_Guy]

They were the same thing, or at least belonged to the same family of libraries.

That is an implementation issue. It is like saying that a picture of a naked woman is the same as a picture of a fire truck because they both are made with pixels. If my wife didn't fall for that, then I don't see why we should do so now.

The real difference between the two animated characters is in how they are used. One actively intrudes over the user's work, while the other is just a bit of decoration. The proof of the difference is that Clippy is much hated and ridiculed, while the other is pretty much ignored (with a few hysterical exceptions).

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Compaqt]

The reason people don't like change for little benefit is simply that they have other stuff to do in their lives than learn the new version of MS Office for fun.

People have been using computers for a long time now. All of corporate (and small-business) American already knew how to use Office before the ribbon came out. So what's the benefit?

I can see the benefit for MS: constantly having to come out with new stuff to justify their commercial software price/licenses. But if you took a poll of users and asked if they'd like things to stay just the same as they are, I think you'd get a resounding Yes.

The reason MS is able to do this (determine that "this is the direction we're going to be moving users") is because they have a monopoly. They're acting in loco parentis, or like a central planner coming out with a 5-year plan.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Compaqt]

What's funny is how people talk about how "intuitive" the ribbon is supposed to be.

Well ... you can only talk about intuitive if you have a test population which has never used a computer.

And where are you going to get them? The get-off-my lawn contingent?

Anybody under a certain age already knows how to use a word processor and so forth, having used it to write school and college papers.

I have no idea what an "intuitive" UI for driving would be. But the current standard of wheel for direction and pedals for faster/stop seems good enough. Changing it to a joystick or something for the sake of some Program Manager's resume would be stupid.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Darinbob]

Because if users won't use your new features when they're optional, the solution is to make them mandatory.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[stewbacca]

...and don't see a useful purpose in evolving a GUI paradigm.

Except for when, you know, the evolving GUI actually makes file management better and/or easier. I think every release of OSX since about 10.3 has provided scores of UI tweaks that improve on the existing UI. Take for example in column view the columns are now manually re-sizable when they previously weren't.

And yes, sometimes the updates are empty eye candy with no real functionality, but for the most part, the updates are made to improve usability.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[stewbacca]

That's my main beef with the ribbon. Too much functionality (the thing you describe, plus the "chevron" menu when the screen isn't wide enough) is hidden from view and not obvious how to access it.

For the most-oft accessed items, though, I think it is superior to menu system. My brain seems to remember the positioning of an item in a ribbon better than remembering which menu item and which choice in the drop down from that menu item.

Of course keyboard shortcuts make it all irrelevant.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[Darinbob]

Apparently the solution to ugly toolbars is to make uglier ribbons. They have ALL the drawbacks of icon toolbars; no hints about what the keyboard shortcuts are, and you have to mouse over them to get the tooltip so you know what the icon does. But it adds almost no advantage over toolbars, except that you have tabs, and icons can be half height or full height, and a new fuzzy name.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[man_of_mr_e]

Can you give an example of this behavior in Outlook? Most of the time when the ribbon changes, its because the context has changed, and the buttons that were there previously don't make any sense. Like having a "Forward" button in task view.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[man_of_mr_e]

I frequently use the same function repeatedly, insert tables for instance. Or insert graph. I seldom find myself clicking on a different tab and only using one function on that tab.

Yes, you have to go to that tab first, but then it stays on that tab, unlike a menu which will close if you happen to move your mouse to the wrong position.

I'm still not following you about the top left. Ribbon buttons start from the top left as well and move right. What's your point?

You do know that you can see the shortcut menus in the ribbon just by pressing alt, right?

Re:Shit gets shittier

[phantomfive]

Indeed, for example, I'll click on an appointment, and it will go into calendar mode (or something like that, I don't have Outlook in front of me). But I don't want to go to calendar mode, I just want to see what meeting it is. I don't need to use anything on the other tool bar. Then a little while later, I want to send a new email, but that is when I notice the buttons have all changed. I'm not sure what to click on to get back to my email buttons. Of course, eventually I figure it out, but it annoys me for a while.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[man_of_mr_e]

Outlook has always done this, even before the ribbon. When you're in calendar mode, the old outlook toolbar removed the new message icon.

If you really want a new message, you can click "New Items" and from the dropdown choose "Email Message". In the old outlook you had to do File->New->Email Message.

This really has nothing to do with the Ribbon, but how Outlook was and still is designed. Arguably, the "New Email Message" function in calendar mode is easier than it was in the old outlook.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[phantomfive]

This really has nothing to do with the Ribbon, but how Outlook was and still is designed.

And if you read my comments, that was exactly my points. It isn't that ribbons are bad, it's that Microsoft sucks at designing things.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[steelfood]

Even though I don't use Office 2k7 much (I use 2k3 much more), I adapted to the ribbon interface pretty quickly. It's fairly easy to use and far more intuitive than the menu system of old, especially for things previously hidden by layers of menus and tabs but now brought to the forefront.

The biggest advantage of the ribbon is that previously, there were duplicates of everything; there was one in the toolbars, and one in the menus. Having only one (they were converging anyway, and it was only a matter of time before they became one) makes the interface much cleaner. I think they used the best of both worlds. On a macro level, features are organized by category, while they show up as widgets on a micro level.

The only complaint I have is that you can't really customize the ribbon in 2k7. I'd like to add some icons, move some around, and bring out some of the things in the sub-menus, but it seems that isn't possible.

Otherwise, I'm satisfied with it. There's nothing I have more trouble doing in 2k7 than 2k3, now that I know where most things are. And finding them don't require much effort (though occasionally, there is the occasional thing here and there that I'd end up spending several minutes searching for).

It's a personal anecdote, so it might not count for much, but they have at least one user who doesn't disagree with the change. I'd be interested in seeing the ribbon interface at work in Windows 8, as well as how they plan to transition developers (and existing software) to the ribbon interface. I'd also be interested in seeing what Microsoft does to reduce or streamline the cruft they introduced in late-XP, Vista, and 7.

Re:Shit gets shittier

[syockit]

Seeing how someone mentioned he remembered the accelerators for the menu and menu items, you ought to make it emacs.

I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

A built-in PDF reader, eh? Should I feel sorrier for Adobe's devs, so incompetent that Microsoft felt the need to step in and provide a PDF reader built by grown-ups, or for Microsoft's XPS team, who have so failed to set the world on fire with XPS that Microsoft felt the need to step in and provide a PDF reader?

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[UnknowingFool]

Interesting because I never heard of the XPS thing until I read it here. I would hope that MS does a decent implementation of PDF because Adobe has had it's share of problems.

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It shows up behind the scenes a fair bit, because it replaced GDI as Microsoft's native spooler format as of Vista, and "Vista certified" printers are required to work with that(not necessarily by replacing the Postscript RIP with an XPS one; but at least supporting it on the driver level); but I'm fairly sure that I've never seen one in the wild, outside of a few of the newer pages on Microsoft's own site. I can't comment on its technical merits, or lack thereof; but it seems to lag somewhere behind the internationally unrenowned .djvu format when it comes to document distribution.

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[artor3]

No one should pity the Adobe Reader devs, after the plague that they've unleashed upon the world. Thank God that Foxit and Sumatra have finally gotten good enough to free us from Adobe's clutches.

Incidentally, that same fact tends to make a MS-supplied reader redundant. I wonder if they just repackaged Sumatra?

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[Locutus]

Adobe is possibly the only company left which has product which gets preloaded on close to 100% of Windows systems shipped. By Microsoft building their own PDF reader into the OS they remove one of the two Adobe products( Acrobat Reader ) needed to eliminate that threat.

LoB

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[gman003]

Actually, I have to dispute that a bit. According to this survey, only 73% even have Acrobat installed. Admittedly, that's a survey of PC gamers - a significantly more computer-savvy group than average. And it is in third place, after Flash and the program used to conduct the survey.

Is Acrobat too common. Yes. While I will concede that it may be needed in situations where doing pixel-perfect PDF rendering, or where highly-scripted custom PDFs are heavily used, Foxit/Sumatra is MORE than enough for 99% of users. If Microsoft focuses on making a small, fast, PDF viewer that doesn't even TRY to run embedded scripts, it'll be good. And since making a big, complex, script-heavy PDF viewer would eat into their Office share...

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[cbhacking]

Third-party PDF readers tend to have terrible security issues (Foxit is the canonical example, not a counterexample, in case you're curious). They mostly skate by because everybody targets the marketshare, since that's what makes the most money (malware being all about money these days). I would never suggest that everybody should use Adobe Reader, but it's actually a lot harder to find an exploit which works against it than it is to find one against (for example) Apple Preview.

Where does Microsoft enter into this? Well, they have a *ton* of experience hardening code. People tend to remember the early days of IIS and IE, but those were the wake-up call to MS that being a success also makes you a big target, and you've got to armor yourself against all the attacks that will bring. Today, MS software is actually quite good on security. I think there's a decent chance that they could make a PDF reader, and get the security right.

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[man_of_mr_e]

Microsoft has never really promoted XPS. It's largely a behind the scenes thing, and useful as a "print to file" feature. Microsoft has not tried to make it a dominant format. It's a pretty good technology, but it's not capable of doing everything PDF can do (Forms, for instance, or annotations).

You can bet that Microsoft's PDF reader will not be full featured, but rather useful for common PDF viewing. It's just that Microsoft wants to have basic support for common things. They leave more full featured stuff to third parties in most cases.

90% of people who need to view PDF's don't need adobes full featured reader, and that means it can be simpler and less prone to vulnerabilities. After all, Apple has PDF reading built into their OS as well.

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[AmiMoJo]

Meh, Foxit has its own security issues and Sumatra doesn't support all the form filling and annotation stuff. Personally I use Sumatra at home but for work it pretty much has to be Adobe Reader. The lock-in is as bad a MS Office was back in the 90s.

Hopefully if Windows 8 has a built in PDF reader it will encourage people to only use the features that it provides and all the other bullshit Adobe added will fall by the wayside.

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[Locutus]

exactly, PDF file use eats into their MS Office sales. To this day I still get MS Office files which are one page and just a few lines of standard text( basically a note ) and people expect others to have MS Office just to read it. If Acrobat was not cross platform then you'd probably not see Microsoft too concerned about embedding their own PDF viewer. But with Adobe having Acrobat and Flash on nearly every Windows PC along with every Mac, Android, Linux system etc they get the target for elimination put on their back. So yes, it's about keeping people using and passing around Microsoft Office files instead of some other company's software product. IMO

LoB

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[Darinbob]

The one thing that a PDF needs to be is a document displayer, and nothing more. All the Adobe headaches come from adding in the unnecessary bells and whistles. Get rid of forms, and signing, and enabling malware. It should not be a word processor or document management system. All I want is to see the pages, and search for pages quickly, use table of contents navigation, and hopefully scroll around quickly, all things that Adobe has made slower or more inconvenient with every successive release. Though they do keep older versions of the reader around for download if you know where to look.

Re:I'm not sure who to feel sorry for...

[Darinbob]

You don't need hardening if you just refuse to do all the goofy stuff modern PDF files want to do. Sort of like email being totally secure as long as it refuses to run executables or scripts and only presents you text and basic graphic formats. Display the documents and nothing else, run the PDF interpreter in a sandbox, refuse to write to any files, check for buffer/stack overflows, etc. Then when someone says "hey this document doesn't work right" you tell them it's broken and absolutely refuse to put in security holes to support that misguided feature. Ie, a subset of PDF-1.3. It's not that hard.

Microsoft is the company that decided to enable scripting by default in word processors and email, I don't have confidence that they will do this right as they'll tend to lean towards user convenience and away from user security.

The Ribbon:

[Anonymous Coward]

#1 reason I'm trying to avoid using MS Office.

Re:The Ribbon:

[atomicbutterfly]

Oh come ON! We're geek here, and my non-geek fiance was able to learn how to use the ribbon in a few minutes.

Are Linux nuts so incapable of learning a UI? Or is it a UI in a Microsoft product that automatically puts up a mental blinder that they cannot push through?

Ever day that passes I have less and less respect for geeks who can't remain impartial.

Re:The Ribbon:

[ThosLives]

It's not that the ribbon is a new UI to learn. It's that they changed other fundamental things. For instance, a big pet peeve of mine: you used to be able to double-click the axis of a graph to pull up the axis properties dialog; now this doesn't work and you *must* right click and select a menu option (or navigate to the ribbon). Also, the tab stops in the new dialog don't work the way they used to, increasing the number of key-transitions required to change the axis dimensions. This is a real pain for those of us who were forced to use Excel for technical things.

Re:The Ribbon:

[atomicbutterfly]

Well hey, that's cool. At least you've got some tangible reasons for not liking the changes. Most people just bash relentlessly without any real basis. That's the main thing which bothers me.

Re:The Ribbon:

[RobbieThe1st]

If microsoft were smart, they'd do what autodesk did with autocad: Provide multiple configurable interfaces, including a /command line/. I mean, when I learned autocad in school, I found myself using the comand line at least as much as the gui, and I'm a guy who learned on Windows mainly.

'Course, I then found out how nice a command line everywhere could be when I switched to Linux; It's now a part of my every day routine. Having a nice command-box in Word/Excel would definitely be nice.

Getting back to the Ribbon, I don't see the benefit. I like the good old file, edit, view menues. It just seems more useful...

Re:The Ribbon:

[Nursie]

"Oh come ON! We're geek here, and my non-geek fiance was able to learn how to use the ribbon in a few minutes.

Are Linux nuts so incapable of learning a UI? Or is it a UI in a Microsoft product that automatically puts up a mental blinder that they cannot push through?

Ever day that passes I have less and less respect for geeks who can't remain impartial."

it's funny because this is the exact same argument people use against switching to Linux - Things are different, change is hard, it should always work exactly the same!!

It is weird that geeks get stuck in ruts just as badly as everyone else.

I have no comment on the Ribbon UI as I've never (to my knowledge) used it.

Re:The Ribbon:

[pdabbadabba]

Anecdotal evidence seems to reveal, remarkably, that ability to learn and use a new UI (at least, without whining about it) is inversely proportional to geekiness. One of the great paradoxes of our time.

Re:The Ribbon:

[westlake]

Oh come ON! We're geek here, and my non-geek fiance was able to learn how to use the ribbon in a few minutes.
Are Linux nuts so incapable of learning a UI? Or is it a UI in a Microsoft product that automatically puts up a mental blinder that they cannot push through?

The ribbon UI in Office was designed for the convenience of the full-time clerical worker, which is not the self-image the geek likes to project.

Re:The Ribbon:

[techno-vampire]

If what you write were true, geeks would still be using punched cards or paper tape. As an example, I learned how to use computers in an "80 column wold" but now I use Linux and XFCE. Until recently I used Gnome, but I didn't like the way the devs took almost all of the user configuration away from the new Gnome Shell so I migrated to something that I can still set up to work the way I want not the way somebody else thinks I should want it.

If I were still using Windows, I think that that's one of the things I'd like least about the newer versions of Windows: the One Size Fits All GUI that doesn't let you set things up the way you want them or allow you to enable the new features one-by-one as you get used to them or disable them again if you find you don't like them. Never mind all of the FOSS arguments for using Linux, the ability to customize your computer and switch from one DE to another if you don't like the way one works is the main reason I switched and each time I read about the latest version of Windows I get happier with Linux. That's not to say that everybody should switch, mind you; if you're happy with Windows and you like the way it works, by all means keep using it; just don't ask me to join you.

Re:The Ribbon:

[man_of_mr_e]

I just tested a line graph in Excel 2010, double clicked on the Y axis and the Format Axis dialog popped up. Same for the X Axis.

You seem to be wrong.

Re:The Ribbon:

[jedidiah]

> The problem is that geeks like to learn things like emacs key combinations and such.

        No we don't really. That's why we keep using emacs. We learned it ONCE 20 years ago and don't have to bother with that again.

> When they are presented with an easy interface, they become both suspicious and fearful.

        Except it is not in fact easy. It's mainly just bothersome.

Being forced to learn something new to do something new is fine. Being forced to learn
something new to do what you've already always been doing is the exact opposite of
what all of that Apple-centric UI propaganda is supposed to be about.

Re:The Ribbon:

[jedidiah]

Some of us "geeks" were using GUIs long before they became generally accepted even by the biggest "UI champions" whining here today.

Re:The Ribbon:

[jedidiah]

Of course the non-geeks aren't going to complain. They don't know any better. They aren't aware that they can have something better. They aren't aware that there is anything for them to complain about. It's part of their ignorance.

It's the same as being blissfully satisfied with Budweiser, a Big Mac, or a Ford.

Re:The Ribbon:

[jedidiah]

> The ribbon UI in Office was designed for the
> convenience of the full-time clerical worker,
> which is not the self-image the geek likes to project.

My spouse despises the new interface. While she is not a "clerical" worker, she does work with documents all day. The word processor is one of her key working tools.

This idea that "ribbon is for everyone but geeks" is just more of the recent Apple fanboy assinine anti-intellectual nonsense.

Genuine clerical workers can be just as "geeky" as computer professionals when it comes to their own tools. It amazes me how anyone that tries to talk about these things can't be aware of that.

It seems that all of the self proclaimed champions of "ease of use" and the "non-geek" don't actually bother to interact with real users.

Re:The Ribbon:

[pdabbadabba]

One of your premises seems to be that non geeks do not often use and are not familiar with GUIs. This seems implausible to me, especially in the case of MS Office products. I'll bet the typical professional secretary, middle manager, etc. is quite well acquainted with the changes in MS Word over the years.

Re:The Ribbon:

[jedidiah]

> The ribbon UI in Office was designed for the convenience
> of the full-time clerical worker, which is not the self-image
> the geek likes to project.

It's not the self image of 90% of the people that are forcibly subjected to Microsoft's monopoly products.

Re:The Ribbon:

[ThosLives]

They must have fixed it in 2010; my company *just* upgraded us to 2007. (And, of course, we're still using XP.)

Re:The Ribbon:

[man_of_mr_e]

Maybe. One quirk, you have to click the axis once first to 'select' the axis, then double click the selected axis.

Has an ARM build leaked?

[gman003]

I'm actually interested in seeing how well the ARM version handles. Will it actually be able to run quickly on hardware usually much weaker than the average PC? Only one way to find out.

Re:Has an ARM build leaked?

[the linux geek]

It won't be that simple. Microsoft is probably going to be targeting a specific hardware reference design with specific firmware. "ARM" is not a standardized computing platform like PC or CHRP or various others.

Re:Has an ARM build leaked?

[gman003]

True. Although I do hope a standard ARM-PC platform evolves - something roughly equivalent to the IBM PC standard, although based on modern designs, of course. Something widely cloned and modified, but still close enough to the standard for interoperability.

Re:Has an ARM build leaked?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm inclined to be pessimistic. The economics of interoperability(along with the fact that any stupid proprietary connector gimmicks with have $5 adapters on ebay within the week) seem to be winning, sharply reducing the number of genuinely non-interoperable oddities in the world; but the rise of relatively cheap cryptographic lockdown/DRM mechanisms seems to have replaced them in a number of their former applications. Obfuscation/pointless redesigns/stupid proprietary connectors were a waste of time and money; but were also comparatively simple to defeat, particularly if interest was great enough(the venerable IBM PC, of course, only became ubiquitous once a reverse-engineered BIOS became available). Cryptographic locks, on the other hand, are Hard.

Imagine if Compaq's task had been, rather than cleanrooming the BIOS, dealing with the fact that the BIOS was well known; but only BIOSes signed with an IBM private key would work...

Re:Has an ARM build leaked?

[cptdondo]

I really hope not. The strength of ARM is that there really is no standard, so everyone is free to build whatever they want. Look at the breadth of ARM hardware: watches, phones, embedded platforms, video players in airplanes.... How do you shoehorn that into a standard PC platform? I like the bazaar that is ARM. We have the PC cathedral, let the bazaar goers have the ARM.

Re:Has an ARM build leaked?

[Belial6]

Give me a full, decent VM for running Windows less than 8 as well as images of those OSes, and get rid of any 'legacy' code in the x86 version while they are at it. They should have done that with Vista, and failing that Windows 7. With the current state of VMs, 'legacy' and 'backward compatibility' are no longer legitimate excuses for MS to have bad code. Although to be fair, Windows 7 is pretty good.

Re:Has an ARM build leaked?

[symbolset]

I like this train of thought. "It's harder" isn't really an excuse. The devices aren't there to fit the developers. They're there to serve the people - and people have differring needs.

Re:Has an ARM build leaked?

[cbhacking]

I don't know of any leaked build, but at MIX they demoed IE10 running on ARM, which means running on Win8. They showed the system specs screen too, and it wasn't anything dramatic - dual-core 1GHz or something like that. The only app they really demoed on it was the browser, but considering it was easily smoking Chrome on a much beefier (and x86) machine, the OS can't have been imposing that much overhead.

Re:Has an ARM build leaked?

[AmiMoJo]

Windows 7 runs quite well on low end systems. At work I had an old box used mainly for data recovery which ran 7 a bit faster than it ran XP and was quite usable. It was only a P4 1.8GHz with 512MB RAM.

ARM is fairly efficient and the models used in phones are at the 1.4GHz level already, plus most ARM systems use flash memory for storage rather than a slower HDD. My Galaxy S phone has 512MB RAM so by the time Windows 8 is out I imagine 1GB will be the baseline.

crowdsourcing

[uvajed_ekil]

"Surfacings" like this tell me that Microsoft sees the value in crowdsourced opinion gathering far more than they're sometimes given credit for.

Yeah, they like to listen to what everyone has to say, then they listen to the most vocal, stupidest fucking idiots, and inocrporate their preferences into the final releases, with as many bugs as possible left in tact.

Re:crowdsourcing

[glwtta]

I'm a vocal stupid fucking idiot, and Windows 7 was my idea.

Come on fellas

[The End Of Days]

In the good old days you got rants like the holy fire of whatever god you think is the coolest rained down on the world.

These are the most pathetic Microsoft bashes I've ever read.

Not even an M$ so far. WTF?

Re:Come on fellas

[Tawnos]

It truly is "The End Of Days"

Re:Come on fellas

[phantomfive]

The sad truth is M$ has gotten better. Think about it, what is the most common attack vector on a windows box? Typically it's a trojan email or an Adobe exploit or something like that. Roll back to 2002, and no user intervention was needed. All you had to do was attach your Windows box to the internet, and BAM! 30 minutes later your PC was infected with some worm. Now they've added a firewall, some stack protection, and it's gotten a lot harder.

Also, WinXP was really ugly (that is a personal opinion, if you disagree, that is up to you). I used to feel sad when I got to work and looked at it because of how ugly it was. Seriously. I always liked being able to switch to Linux because it *could* look better if you customized it right. But now, with Windows 7, it isn't ugly to the point of hurting my eyes anymore. It has alpha blending everywhere, I can tolerate it.

Besides, M$ has been losing their evil edge. Ballmer hasn't thrown a chair in a while. Their last few products (WP7, Zune) have been laughable failures. It's hard to hate someone when you are laughing at them riotously; it's hard to mock someone who is dying pathetically. Goodbye old Micro$oft, I had fun hating your evil empire.

Re:Come on fellas

[bmo]

>Besides, M$ has been losing their evil edge. Ballmer hasn't thrown a chair in a while

You haven't looked at the Microsoft vs Barnes&Noble lawsuit.

Basically they're saying all of Linux infringes. The B&N response is available on PACER - filed yesterday. But since someone was generous, here it is on ompldr.

http://ompldr.org/vOGZ1dA/bnmsft.pdf

--
BMO

Re:Come on fellas

[symbolset]

The bile will be back when this thing ships - the every-second-version scheme is with us still. And any month now with IPv6 every Windows box will once again be globally adressable from the Internet. And they've not given up the evil empire bit: look at Nokia, at Yahoo, at the IP lawsuits they're filing both directly and by proxy. That day is not done.

But yes, they are dying pathetically. Still a lot of kicking left before the horse is all the way dead though.

Re:Come on fellas

[Creepy Crawler]

Who cares?

I maintain servers in FreeBSD and Linux.
My desktop has been Ubuntu for the last 3 years.

The last time I dealt with Windows was for a client who bought a new desktop. And it had Windows 7 on it, so he wanted it as similar to WinXP. And it served his purpose.

Re:Come on fellas

[drinkypoo]

Also, WinXP was really ugly (that is a personal opinion, if you disagree, that is up to you). I used to feel sad when I got to work and looked at it because of how ugly it was. Seriously. I always liked being able to switch to Linux because it *could* look better if you customized it right. But now, with Windows 7, it isn't ugly to the point of hurting my eyes anymore. It has alpha blending everywhere, I can tolerate it.

Seriously, Alpha blending is what makes you tolerate Windows 7?

Get yourself one of the many Windows 2000/XP transparency managers and a nice theme. There's even a nice official theme that Microsoft produced to go with the Zune, black with limited orange highlights. I have literally had all custom themes cause some kind of problem with Windows XP applications except for this one so I gave up on Style XP and just use the Zune theme.

Re:Come on fellas

[phantomfive]

Yeah, I know I could do that if I wanted, but mostly I just prefer to turn windows off. I am kind of curios what that Zune theme looks like, though.

Re:Come on fellas

[drinkypoo]

Amusingly it bears a striking resemblance to Ubuntu these days... well really, the other way around.

Re:Come on fellas

[stewbacca]

It's 2011...O$X is the new thing these days...

Re:In related news

[PsychoSlashDot]

Microsoft says Give us more money to fix the bugs in Windows 7. It's called Windows 8.

Not a popular question I know, but I've got to ask... what are these bugs in Win7 that you've encountered that need fixing? Seriously. No, don't go searching for something. Tell me what part of Win7 that you have ever tried to use has failed you due to bug. Not design critique. Bug.

Be real. Given the massive feature set of the OS and how many lines of code there are in it, the thing is very, very reasonable quality-wise.

Pre-beta?

[rsilvergun]

is there some reason we can't just call it an Alpha?

Re:Pre-beta?

[xMrFishx]

Possibly it's pre-alpha and is just a hash of component parts in various dev builds. Who knows. Personally I'd call an alpha build the start of combining structures of the OS to aim for a workable beta build. For instance, any ARM stuff is probably kept completely out of the way for now and I'd hope eventually the ARM and x86 builds will combine into a single windows version (! one can hope - I hate the Basic/Premium/Business/Ult fragmentation as it is. Don't add an Arm variant to that too)

Re:Pre-beta?

[armanox]

I guess it should be called I development version. I don't think it's quite alpha yet.

Re:Pre-beta?

[Samantha Wright]

This has been distorted by poor educational materials, but an alpha is supposed to be the early versions which are built with the deliberate intent to test. What we're seeing now should be called a pre-alpha, and I believe Microsoft actually calls it that. Software enters the beta phase when no more features are planned.

Re:Pre-beta?

[man_of_mr_e]

That's old waterfall terminology and hasn't been valid for many years.

Nowadays, most developers use some form of iterative development. The product is in Alpha until the first iteration has been completed, then there are multiple "beta" iterations where new features are added to each iteration. One could consider the new features to be "alpha" for each iteration, but previous iterations features are "beta".

Gamma has been replaced with "Release Candidate".

Re:Pre-beta?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Because, as god himself, Steve Jobs has already trademarked the terms "alpha" and "omega" in relation to computers...

Immersive

[Nerdfest]

IE 6 was also an 'immersive' browser. It made me want to drown myself.

Re:In related news

[Anaerin]

So they're iterating the version number by 1 instead of 0.1 like Apple do with OSX. Big whup!

Genuine Advantage

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:

"Microsoft declined to verify the authenticity of the milestone release. "

Dang! Genuine Advantage strikes again!

immersive browser, like Win98?

[r00t]

Anybody else remember it?

Your desktop background was a browser.

You had a side panel with "channels".

Web sites were supposed to continuously push feed to you, just like TV.

Re:immersive browser, like Win98?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a bit ahead of the curve, since in Windows 98 days most people accessed the Internet via dialup modem.

Now that more houses have 24/7 connectivity you see underpinnings of this in active news widgets, weather widgets, twitter feeds, etc.

It's like they thought of the future, and it came to pass, man!

Re:immersive browser, like Win98?

[temcat]

...and I still turn all these things off whenever they are turned on by default. Nothing changed :-)

Re:immersive browser, like Win98?

[cbhacking]

To be fair, the Active Desktop idea was really cool, and arguably well ahead of its time; call them Gadgets or Widgets or Plasmoids or Applets, dynamically updating graphical background software has become fairly common on modern desktops, and a lot of it is either directly written or web development languages or is designed to pull data from the web (or both).

Mind you, the implementation of AD was absolutely terrible. It was a significant performance hit to enable, absurdly unstable, and had massive security holes (as IE in general did, back then). Also, that was before the general concept of web apps really took off; much of the web was still static content and a lot of the dynamic stuff that people like to see now, like Twitter feeds and Facebook games, didn't exist at all. Stock tickers, sports scores, and weather updates were about the extent of what I rmeember people doing with it back in the late 90s.

Re:immersive browser, like Win98?

[LordLimecat]

Its called active desktop, and its alive and well in XP (might have been removed recently). Viruses love to use it.

Re:immersive browser, like Win98?

[rgbscan]

Oh man, that brings back memories. I was supporting PointCast at the time when everyone thought push tech would change the world.

Re:immersive browser, like Win98?

[stewbacca]

Mind you, the implementation of AD was absolutely terrible.

You just summed up 20 years of Microsoft history. Good ideas (or blatantly stolen ideas) botched horrible implementation. If MS would start paying less attention to the bottom line and more attention to quality, they could be great.

Ribbons?

[sycodon]

Ribbons? RIBBONS?

The most useless POS interface ever.

Re:Ribbons?

[Anonymous Coward]

I could not agree more strongly. Ribbons suck mightily, but this shouldn't surprise us. MS has decided this is the next major step in trying to make a user interface that can be used by someone who's never seen a computer before (because, you know, the world is just FULL of those), even at the expense of everyone else.

Hopefully there will be a way to turn it off.

I guess we should have seen this coming. XP was decent, Vista was a flaming train wreck, Win7 fixed most (but certainly not all) of Vista's horrors, so they were due to release another abomination.

Re:Ribbons?

[definate]

The world IS full of those, if you're considering the WHOLE WORLD.

However, I still am not too much of a fan of ribbons, though I have found that once you get used to them, they really are quite good.

Re:Ribbons?

[xclr8r]

Ribbons in applications and O/S are not like tabs in browsers.

Browsers show the same functional tools regardless of what tab you are on (similar to a sheet in excel). On the other hand ribbons hide different tools behinds 6-8 separate ribbon sections that are usually clicked through where all the buttons have a similar background and 'icons' making it hard to search through as opposed to a File - menu - list with text that a person can scan through in about 2 seconds.

One can enable an overlay of key short cuts over the ribbon interface so you do not have to use the mouse however the search time still takes just as long unless you knew the key-binding shortcuts from previous versions.

Re:Ribbons?

[Missing.Matter]

File - menu - list with text that a person can scan through in about 2 seconds.

As long as the list is short. Applications like Word have gathered so many features that menus now have sub-menus of sub-menus that lead to a dialogue with multiple tabs. Often the feature you want to access is buried 5 layers deep. You can argue that some of these features should be trimmed, but then you have to decide which ones, and everyone of course will have a different opinion depending on how they use the program.

Ribbon brings 90% of the functionality of word within two clicks (one to select the appropriate ribbon, one to select the feature). For commonly used functions you still have the option of creating shortcuts, at least in office.

The ribbon even has benefits for smaller programs like paint, where the available shape tools can be displayed at once, for example.

Re:Ribbons?

[Luckyo]

Honestly, as long as I can easily revert back to whatever interface I want, it's viewable as just another potential UI alongside others.

Re:Ribbons?

[NoobixCube]

You must be new. Microsoft aren't big on the whole "choice" thing. Even in XP when you could ditch the Luna interface in favour of the "Classic" one, it didn't actually change anything. It made the colours more business-like, sure, but it was still XP's interface. If they make ribbons the default behaviour, and give you an option, nothing will actually behave like it does today. There'll be all manner of unexpected things happening, mostly in the form of menus not where they used to be, not containing the things they used to contain, and formerly easily accessible features not being where you expect them.

Not to say I'm opposed to new UIs or old ones, just that any time the option is available in a Microsoft OS or program, they inevitably ruin it for everyone.

Re:Ribbons?

[theArtificial]

Ribbons in applications and O/S are not like tabs in browsers.

Quite right! However they do roughly provide functionality similar to tabs and if you were to explain the ribbon interface to someone from 1998 or to a lay person the tab anology would be one effective way. I googled "tab navigation" and one of the first results provides a great example of what are commonly referred to as "tabs".

Browsers show the same functional tools regardless of what tab you are on (similar to a sheet in excel). On the other hand ribbons hide different tools behinds 6-8 separate ribbon sections that are usually clicked through where all the buttons have a similar background and 'icons' making it hard to search through as opposed to a File - menu - list with text that a person can scan through in about 2 seconds.

Browsers tabs feature a description (typically the meta title) much like the ribbon interface. The content area below the title area changes when different "tabs" are selected, this functionality is present in both UI. I appreciate your comparison and you're correct with many details yet you do not seem to recognize these interface elements as tabs. Another example: We still have the start menu dynamic from Windows 95 today in Windows 7 (and similar features found in several popular window managers) whose interaction and function have changed little. Bar at the bottom featuring a button, click the button and a menu pops up, select items etc.

One can enable an overlay of key short cuts over the ribbon interface so you do not have to use the mouse however the search time still takes just as long unless you knew the key-binding shortcuts from previous versions.

Change is hard. One is more productive with a tool one is familiar with... perhaps you're not the target audience for these largely superficial changes. It also is apparent you're familiar with efficient usage (keyboard shortcuts) and these largely superficial changes shouldn't be difficult to figure out.

Re:Ribbons?

[rve]

I could not disagree more strongly. Office 2007 was the first office suite that I didn't hate. Word et al. no longer have a clutter of shortcut bars that take up a quarter of your effective screen, no longer is there a series of pop up dialogs for every simple action, I think it's great. The features you actually use are now one or two clicks away. The UI even works on a laptop, with a much smaller screen. Just give it a try, once you get used to it, and unlearn the office 95 ways, it's quite good.

I have seen computers before by the way; I started programming them when I was about 10 yrs old, in the mid 80's.

Re:Ribbons?

[theArtificial]

Tabs are little things that display information in a concise way. See a filing cabinet or a website navigation for some common examples. I'm not a fan of the Ribbon interface but it's hard to not see the similarities between the two. Menus are also a graphical representation of a list, yet which is more accessible to the lay user? I find it hard to believe navigating multiple menu levels to be less of a pain in the ass and require less space. If menus are such paragons of accessing information why do keyboard shortcuts exist?

Re:Ribbons?

[ThunderBird89]

XP was decent, Vista was a flaming train wreck, Win7 fixed most (but certainly not all) of Vista's horrors, so they were due to release another abomination.

I agree with that wholeheartedly. XP+Office 2003 for me, never mind how many newer versions came out, the UI in ALL of those were shit.

Re:Ribbons?

[chrismcb]

Instead you have an enormous ribbon with less than half the features available to you, taking up more space. And it is nice to have most commands only two clicks away, it was much nicer when they were only a single click away like they were in previous versions. The ribbon is essentially a step backwards to a sticky menu.

Re:Ribbons?

[ThunderBird89]

And if I don't want to want to spend an extra $20 to make a program I use cut down on screen real estate? I'd rather have a fully skinnable program, whose interface I can customize, then you can have your ribbons and I can have my icons.

Re:Ribbons?

[QilessQi]

Ah, but you're forgetting the idiocy with which Microsoft has implemented the ribbon. Because in certain cases, not all those 5-levels-deep options could be collapsed to fit on a particular ribbon, so some ribbons sport a "More..." option. Which is no different than the deeply-nested menus.

Oh, wait -- there is ONE difference. The menus required the eye to scan for items in one direction: down. The ribbon requires you to sweep your eyes left-to-right across the various "fields" of the ribbon, and then around each field until you find what you're looking for.

Re:Ribbons?

[Z34107]

ribbons hide different tools behinds 6-8 separate ribbon sections that are usually clicked through where all the buttons have a similar background and 'icons' making it hard to search through as opposed to a File - menu - list with text that a person can scan through in about 2 seconds.

Let's take a look at Excel 2010's ribbon, and then at Excel 2000's menus. I can't believe an Excel user would find File/View/Data menus intuitive, yet File/View/Data tabs incomprehensible.

But, for the sake of argument, let's accept as a given that finding what you want in a menu (and its submenus) is easy because it's "text" you can scan in "about 2 seconds." Taking the "wouldn't recognize a stop sign if it wasn't labeled" demographic into account, they labeled every one of the icons.

This is why it's a major improvement over the toolbar, which was dozens of tiny (unlabeled) icons, almost entirely hidden behind chevrons so they wouldn't take up half your screen. It's also the only significant "improvement" they've made to the Office UI since 1994. It really shouldn't be incomprehensible.

Re:Ribbons?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Funny enough. I agree with you and the parent.

the ribbon does suck. And yet it's a huge improvement on the office 95 ui concept. Using the ribbon in firefox 4 and ie showed me the ribbon works as a ui element.

The problem you and the parent are running into is that perhaps simple word processing isn't simple anymore and nothing will succinctly untangle the ui mess that office style productivity suites present.

Re:Ribbons?

[msclrhd]

Word ... sure, ribbons can be seen as an improvement
Excel ... very likely
Publisher ... I don't think so
Write ... what's the point other than bringing it closer to Word 2007/2010
Paint ... more confusing and harder to use

It all depends on the application.

Re:Ribbons?

[Totenglocke]

First, you can hide and unhide the ribbon, though it's easier to do in Office 2010 than 2007.

Secondly, while those features may have been "a single click" away, they were a click and several drags away. I've used every incarnation of Word from I believe 5.0 on windows 3.1 on up. The ribbon is godsend for people who don't want to waste hours of their life learning where everything is buried. If I want to insert something, I go under "insert" and then click on what I want to insert (header, picture, whatever). I've done all of this in pre-2007 versions of Office of course, but it was always a pain and took time to figure out where that damn thing was that you only use 1% of the time again. That doesn't exist with the ribbon.

Re:Ribbons?

[whereiswaldo]

Yes, the ribbon interface needs to die. It can bring an otherwise knowledgeable user to the brink of tears and pulling their hair out. If Microsoft really must continue with this interface, then it has to absolutely have a search capability built-in (there's an MS Office addon that provides this).

Re:Ribbons?

[coastwalker]

This is the release we have to skip because the thirteen year olds designed the user interface isnt it? Ribbons are a market differentiation weapon and have completely fucked Microsoft Office and the youngsters who will have to learn a proper interface latter.

Re:Ribbons?

[thegarbz]

So what feature was removed in Word 2007? Seriously. Between the Ribbon and a right click I have yet to come across a single feature that is missing, be it a simple font change, or a complicated mail merge. What is it you can't find?

Re:Ribbons?

[gmhowell]

The world IS full of those, if you're considering the WHOLE WORLD.

However, I still am not too much of a fan of ribbons, though I have found that once you get used to them, they really are quite good.

While that may be the case, those who have not yet seen a computer do not have money. Microsoft is not interested in those people.

Re:Ribbons?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I find for common tasks, the Ribbon is a goddamned godsend. However, for less common tasks, the Ribbon makes life pretty much difficult. It was hard enough to find some obscure feature before, now things are a little harder.

Re:Ribbons?

[dwywit]

Serious? What was hard about customising the pre-ribbon toolbars? View, toolbars, customise, drag off the buttons you never or rarely use, drag on (or leave in place) the buttons you use frequently. You could even assign a new button and a keyboard shortcut to your own macros. Can't remember where that 1% feature is? Press F1 and type a keyword.
 
Once I had the toolbar customised for my needs, it was fine. Features I only use rarely, well, I don't mind spending a little time in a hunt-and-click exercise, it doesn't affect my productivity all that much.
 
Hiding the ribbon makes it all look better but it has to be unhidden to use features, or you have to assign frequently-used features to the quick access toolbar. Everyone's different, of course, but I want maximum workspace and minimum intrusion by toolbars and pallettes - the ribbon looks ugly and clumsy to me.

Re:Ribbons?

[marcello_dl]

MS has decided this is the next major step in trying to make a user interface different from the one adopted by mac and linux users, hoping that the current advantage in OEM installs and games will create a new class of win users that consider mac and linux too unfamiliar.
FTFY

It may not succeed because phone interfaces might teach users there is more than one way to perform a task, but it will do enough damage.

Re:Ribbons?

[man_of_mr_e]

I feel the opposite. I've discovered more features in Office than I never knew existed since the Ribbon interface.

Re:Ribbons?

[gbjbaanb]

The ribbon is godsend for people who don't want to waste hours of their life learning where everything is buried.

which only works as a statement of fact for people after they've learned where everything is buried.

I still smart over the Print button.. find that on the bloody ribbon

Re:Ribbons?

[gbjbaanb]

The ribbon has all the same functions that were available before

like Print?

Re:Ribbons?

[BasilBrush]

You can argue that some of these features should be trimmed, but then you have to decide which ones, and everyone of course will have a different opinion depending on how they use the program.

That's easy. Rather than a single monolithic application that tries to do everything imaginable with text, you have specialist lean and mean apps for different professions/markets/preferences.

For example scriptwriters use Final Draft. Everything is set up to produce exactly the formats that are standard in the profession, the features make it very easy to do things for scripts that would be complex in Word, and there isn't a lot of stuff there that you don't need that is complicating the UI.

Final Draft is far from perfect - like Microsoft they are too fond of proprietary file format lock-in - even their new XML format is crippled. But it does serve as an example of specialist word processors being more useful than Word.

Re:Ribbons?

[jonamous]

File > Print

Re:Ribbons?

[Buggz]

Ctrl+P

Re:Ribbons?

[erroneus]

I'm sorry they have been ribbon you the wrong way. I think they know what people think of the interface and this 'unofficial pre-release' is more of a joke than anything else. Can't you see they are just ribbon you?

Re:Ribbons?

[drinkypoo]

You must be new. Microsoft aren't big on the whole "choice" thing. Even in XP when you could ditch the Luna interface in favour of the "Classic" one, it didn't actually change anything. It made the colours more business-like, sure, but it was still XP's interface.

By definition, if it's an interface in Windows XP, it's XP's interface. Maybe you want to try a little harder to say what you're trying to say. As far as I can tell, the "classic" interface does not have an associated theme, which would make it pretty much by definition different from Luna.

Re:Ribbons?

[master_p]

You are wrong on all of your points.

Word et al. no longer have a clutter of shortcut bars that take up a quarter of your effective screen

The problem of effective screen real estate minimized by toolbars can easily be handled by having visible only those toolbars that are important (and by getting a larger screen).

Hiding the options behind tabs is not a good solution, because it increases the number of clicks it takes to move from one state of the ribbon to another.

no longer is there a series of pop up dialogs for every simple action

That was never the case. Microsoft Office had popup dialogs for the most complex tasks only, not for the simple tasks as you mention, and most popup dialogs remain the same in Office 2007.

The features you actually use are now one or two clicks away.

Except if you have clicked in another ribbon tab, in which case you should add another click to your list. Combine all those extra clicks, and suddenly you realize you have to push your mouse button more times than with the previous UI.

The UI even works on a laptop, with a much smaller screen.

No, it does not. The ribbon, in its default state (i.e. expanded), takes some serious space. It takes more space than a single menu bar and two tool bars with most Word options.

Re:Ribbons?

[master_p]

Wow. Even in those two pictures you posted, the difference is quite visible: the Excel 2000's menu is so much better, because it takes so much less space and it is much less cluttered.

Re:Ribbons?

[SeanAD]

I've used Word since the DOS days (I kid you not) and I find the ribbon to be the most painful UI ever. It's more painful than OS/2's TCP/IP setup. I installed it at the behest of a co-worker who insisted it was just that good. I tried it for a month and found it lacking in intuitiveness (which may be relative, since some weird minority of you people seem to like it ;). So, I thought, "Let go of preconceptions; treat it as if you've never seen a UI before and this is all brand new. Intuitively, where would you find X?" and you know... it never worked. It's just bad. So now I'm back to Office 2003. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I have no idea how you (or anyone else) could think ribbons are a good thing.

Cheers

Re:Ribbons?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I feel like both situations are just as valid. I've discovered a few things in Excel I hadn't before using '10.

I think the problem is, is that either Office does way too much, or the UI needs to be consolidated somehow.

Either way, I don't think the Ribbon was the solution.

Re:Ribbons?

[fallen1]

I fully agree with you. There is NOTHING intuitive about the ribbon interface. I could easily find any command I wanted under the older, dropdown style interfaces that Microsoft Office used. There was an ordering of things. They were not perfect, by any means, but at least I didn't have to waste 3 days trying to figure out where things were.

The ribbon is just a dressed up piece of shite that Microsoft wants to push for proprietary reasons. The current file system and GUI works just fine and is analogous to concepts that everyone had already been introduced to - filing cabinets, drawers, files, folders, and so on. The ribbon is a Mobius strip of smoke and mirrors in desperate need of an off-ramp.

Re:Ribbons?

[LynnwoodRooster]

The problem of effective screen real estate minimized by toolbars can easily be handled by having visible only those toolbars that are important... Hiding the options behind tabs is not a good solution, because it increases the number of clicks it takes to move from one state of the ribbon to another.

Except to have access to the same number of functions/actions with the toolbars, I need many more toolbars and lots more real-estate. Tabbed interfaces take care of that - you have the same real-estate shared among logical groups.

And of course I can create my own custom tabs, with functionality that I predominantly use so I do not need to switch between different tabs at all.

(and by getting a larger screen)

Great! How can I upgrade the screen on my laptop?

The UI even works on a laptop, with a much smaller screen.

No, it does not. The ribbon, in its default state (i.e. expanded), takes some serious space. It takes more space than a single menu bar and two tool bars with most Word options.

Yes, because <ctrl>+F1 is so hard to do... Try it, it toggles the visible status of the ribbon.

Re:Ribbons?

[AmiMoJo]

I have come to like the ribbon too. Rather than just single line text descriptions in menus the ribbon gives you a visual cue, a bit like the old toolbars but much neater and better laid out. Finding the right function is easier now as you get a descent sized image describing what it does rather than you having to figure out what sub-menu section to look under.

Yeah, at first it is annoying because they moved everything from its familiar place, but after half an hour of using it you realise it actually is better.

The only thing I am not keen on is the new file/printing window. It takes you away from the document view, which makes some sense for say printing as it can then give you a preview of the output, but for saving and preferences it seems a bit over the top. It would be better if they made more use of it, say by having a file tree in it instead of opening a separate file selection window.

Re:Ribbons?

[LynnwoodRooster]

+F1 is really good at hiding/showing the ribbon...

Re:Ribbons?

[darkgrayknight]

You can easily add the print button to the quick launch bar above the ribbon via the customize dropdown.

Re:Ribbons?

[jedidiah]

This is retarded. If someone is worried about the fact that a useful option is buried then why don't they let the user "bookmark" it or some such?

Throw in some "history" in there too for good measure.

Ultimately, this is a problem of programs becoming too large complex and monolithic.

Re:Ribbons?

[Compaqt]

Yeah.

If the "Fluent user interface" were really so intuitive, why would Microsoft need a page that starts off with
"Wondering where your favorite Office 2003 commands are located in the new 2007 Office system interface?"

Where did that command go?

Re:Ribbons?

[FredFredrickson]

I'm a .net developer, you'd think I'd be pretty well acquainted with something as simple as word processing... But it still takes me time (and causes frustration) to find what used to be on the Format menu. Come on now!

Re:Ribbons?

[master_p]

Except to have access to the same number of functions/actions with the toolbars, I need many more toolbars and lots more real-estate. Tabbed interfaces take care of that - you have the same real-estate shared among logical groups.

But you don't have access to the same functions/actions with the toolbars! you only have access to ONE tab at a time. You have to select another tab in order to have access to other functions/actions.

Furthermore, the size of the ribbon is so big that it easily has room for toolbars for the most used functions/actions.

And of course I can create my own custom tabs, with functionality that I predominantly use so I do not need to switch between different tabs at all.

You can do that with toolbars as well. I have always customized Word, for example, and put most of the functions I use in two toolbars.

Great! How can I upgrade the screen on my laptop?

Buy a new one.

Yes, because +F1 is so hard to do... Try it, it toggles the visible status of the ribbon.

But in its minimized state, the ribbon is as useless as a menu: when I click on the document, the ribbon is closed.

Re:Ribbons?

[Patch86]

If I want to insert something, I go under "insert" and then click on what I want to insert (header, picture, whatever).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but under the previous UI, were the steps not to click Insert > click on name of what you want to insert (picture, header, etc.)?

So, essentially, the same number of steps. The only difference being that different categories of "thing" I can do are arranged as a collection of easy to understand words, tucked away neatly along the top of my screen, with all the options appearing as a dropdown menu when clicked.

I find the "ribbon" frustrating, as it is essentially an arbitrarily new way of doing the same thing, with no perceivable benefit. I'm computer savvy, and can figure it out in due course; but for one why should I be needing to "figure out" anything when the tasks are so easy and should be so intuitive after all these years, and for two I can't imagine the hassle of training less confident users the new set-up, or manning the tech support lines during roll-out.

Re:Ribbons?

[Totenglocke]

Having to know where the fuck it is to create your custom toolbar defeats the whole point of "it's easy to find things that you don't know where they are". That's what you don't understand. Yes, I get it, you use Word 99% of your day every day and you've memorized the exact location of every pixel - good for you. The rest of the world is busy doing something productive and as such needs an intuitive interface so that they don't have to waste countless hours memorizing everything.

Hiding the ribbon makes it all look better but it has to be unhidden to use features, or you have to assign frequently-used features to the quick access toolbar

Thus proving that you've never actually used it. When it's hidden it pops up and disappears almost exactly like setting your taskbar to auto-hide. I use this in OneNote all the time while taking notes so that it doesn't interfere with my screen space.

Re:Ribbons?

[Totenglocke]

Actually it's not - I counted once and it's an additional one to two steps to do it under the old menu system than with the ribbon (other things can take even more additional steps to do in the old system). It also puts the different options (insert picture, file, etc) RIGHT THERE so you don't have to skim through everything.

I'm sorry, but I don't get what there is to "figure out". It's tabs to change the context of the menu based on what you're doing. If you're inserting items into a document, you click "insert" and the menu shows you only things related to insert. If you want to do the "typical" things such as change font, alignment, font color, etc you click on "home".Want to change how the document is displayed on the screen / how you view the document? Click on "view". I think your problem is that you're so used to it being a clusterfuck for decades that now that it's intuitive your brain is giving you a BSOD.

Re:Ribbons?

[aepurniet]

actually ribbons are a very good way to present information on what a function will do without the user hunting through menus and trying every option. however on windows explorer they are probably misplaced. that screen real estate could be used much better.

Re:Ribbons?

[aepurniet]

They were not perfect, by any means, but at least I didn't have to waste 3 days trying to figure out where things were.

yes you did, when you first learned it.

Re:Ribbons?

[Doctor Faustus]

Use Word 2007 for real work for two weeks (like 8 hr/day) and then tell me if it sucks.

I've been using it at work for almost four years now (with a couple 1-3 week bursts of heavy tech writing). It sucks.

The new interface is still not as big a problem as Word pretending it doesn't work by WordPerfect-style codes, but there was nothing that got better.

Granted, I'm not their target market. I saw interviews talking about how people couldn't find the new features in the last couple of versions, and I don't think I've ever used a non-VBA Word feature that wasn't in Word 95.

Re:Ribbons?

[jwegman]

Absolutely!

Re:Ribbons?

[jwegman]

Yes and leave it to Microsoft to break with the age old standard that any key combination containing F1 provides online help, not access to the navigation system.

Re:Ribbons?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I've known that F1 is for help, but many programs use +F1 for things other than help. Like AutoCAD (where it launches the LISP interface). Linux uses ++F1 to switch to the first terminal session. Windows - since XP - has used +F1 to select the popup menu for the currently selected control (Gnome uses +F1 for the same feature) And on and on. I've never heard of this age-old "standard", and it looks like Linux and Windows have ignored the "standard' for at least the last 10 years...

Re:Ribbons?

[bored]

Word et al. no longer have a clutter of shortcut bars that take up a quarter of your effective screen,

Hmm weird, last I checked the ribbon was basically just a tabbed button bar that takes up a 1/4 of my screen.

Re:Ribbons?

[whereiswaldo]

Off-topic, the blog you linked to is deep! Fun to think about stuff like that.

Re:Ribbons?

[man_of_mr_e]

Being a bit too literal, are we? Print functionality is in the quick bar, or in the file tab.

Re:Ribbons?

[dwywit]

If you're not going to take advantage of the ability to customise EITHER system, then you're going to push sh!t uphill. You accuse me of failing to understand - yet I managed to understand how to customise a pre-ribbon environment to meet my needs, where all my frequently-used features were within one click (they were buttons I'd dragged onto the toolbar, or buttons assigned to my own macros). This worked for a variety of document types - standard correspondence, multi-chapter procedure manuals and system documentation, annual reports, scripts and screenplays, etc.
 
It's simple, really - the pre-ribbon environment met my needs and didn't hinder my productivity. Despite using the ribbon for >2 months, and attempting to customise it, it doesn't meet my needs, it's hindering my productivity, and it's large and intrusive - so I went back to the 2003 version. The ribbon works for you? Great, I wish you well.
 
And as for actually using it, I'm one of those weird people who read the "What's new" files, and who seeks advice at places like mvps.org. I weathered changes from Wordstar to Wordperfect (anyone remember that pos WP6 for DOS and Windows?), to Word 6, Office 97, 2000, and 2003 - none of those gave my brain a BSOD

Re:Ribbons?

[Tacvek]

The big problem with the ribbon is that there are many commands I know Microsoft Word or Excel has, but they are hard as fuck to find. These are commands that were in a logical place in the menu interface, and were stuck seemingly haphazard on one of the ribbon tabs. Not to mention that a fair number of commands were present in Office 2007, but could only be accessed by adding them to the "Quick Access Toolbar", since Office 2007 ribbons were not editable.

I frequently end up resorting to using the help feature to find out where a command has been hidden.

Re:Ribbons?

[Patch86]

I'm still unconvinced. From the MS Office 2003 help page:

Insert a picture from a file

        Click where you want to insert the picture.
        On the Insert menu, point to Picture, and then click From File.
        Locate the picture you want to insert.
        Double-click the picture you want to insert.

So, 3 clicks, plus locating the file location.

For 2010:

Click where you want to insert the picture in your document.
        On the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, click Picture.
        Locate the picture that you want to insert. For example, you might have a picture file located in My Documents.
        Double-click the picture that you want to insert.

2 clicks, plus locating the file. And just as much skimming through menus/buttons to find the command the first time.

Re:Ribbons?

[Billly Gates]

What Flamebaitish.

Why was this modded +5? If I posted the same about Gnome-Shell being most useless POS interface ever I would be modded down faster than goatse.cx. Zealots

Re:Ribbons?

[gbjbaanb]

yes, and you've just described why the new UI is a bad thing. The old ways worked, people learned file menu had new, open, print on it and they would always be there. Simples!

Fast forward to today and we have a funny orb that pretends to be a sort of master properties menu, and on there is a button that is print, with different ways of setting properties than you've ever seen. At least MS 'fixed' it by changing the orb to a big orange file menu... in other words, fixing what didn't really need to be fixed.

Now I like the ribbon, but a replacement menu bar it isn't. As a replacement for a toolbar - yes, its great at that.

Re:Ribbons?

[FredFredrickson]

Thanks, WIW, It's my own work- I'm currently writing a book on that topic! I know I haven't updated in a while, but it's still a very live project, please stay in contact! explaingod@gmail.com (don't be distracted, I'm atheist, but these topics usually touch on religion)

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[stms]

For sure look at OSX they haven't changed the UI (except to add new features or effects) since at least 10.3 I wish they would just get it right and stick with it.

Re:Why post this here?

[Anthelme]

About the same reason a new person should be wary of posting asking for help on a linux system. There trolls, they just dont want to be called trolls.

Re:Why post this here?

[RobbieThe1st]

See, that's the thing: Geeks want to adapt if the new paradidgm is /better/ than the old one. If it's the same or worse, geeks will simply go 'why bother?', or 'I have to /pay/ for something /less/ useful? get real!'
This is why Android tablets have taken off among the geeks: The new paradidgm is better than the old one(for some things).
With Linux, you're at least gaining a load of programming tools, free software(as in beer), and the gui interface isn't that much different from XP.

As far as office goes, it's a matter of the old version doing just as well with less resources on top of not needing to learn a new version. Why upgrade for no appreciable benefit?

Re:In related news

[node 3]

Yeah, it's weird how some people expect you to pay them to make things.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[no-body]

File search feature in W7 does not work well on network drives, if at all. Workaround is to use virtual XP under W7 to get some work done.

Then - how often does one undo the automatic (by default) snap/all screen window hog feature in W7? Ridiculous!

Not sure who has those ideas? Maybe trying to cut into Apple's pie.

Just bought a WXP SP2 for Eur 15.-

People like what they know ...at first

[artor3]

The ribbon is a marked improvement over the old style file menus. People just didn't like it at first because it meant they needed to re-learn the locations of the commands they use. I'm having to relearn where to find certain things on the new Firefox GUI, but that doesn't make it bad.

If someone had been brought up using the ribbon, and you showed them an old-style menu, they'd think it was designed by amateurs. Where do you change settings.... edit>preferences, or tools>options? Find is under edit, not view? And print preview is under file, instead of view? Why is print a file command at all? And why is import, when paste is under edit? Come on, towards the end they were just cramming in new commands wherever they'd fit.

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[EvanED]

I don't want to dispute your overall point, but I do think that 'print' and 'print preview' being in the file menu make fine sense. What are you printing? The file. I don't have an older version of Word installed, but OpenOffice's menus are File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Table, Tools, Window, and Help. The only one besides 'file' that even remotely makes sense is 'tools', and that's pretty far out. So 'print' in the 'file' menu is fine I think.

As for 'print preview', if features lived in isolation, then yes, 'print preview' in the 'view' menu would make sense. Unfortunately, they don't, and it is more important that 'print' and 'print preview' are next to each other than 'print preview' is in the most logical spot on its own.

And the fact that 'print' is under 'file' in almost every other program under the sun means that moving both commands to the 'view' menu is the wrong move.

If you want to pick on one of those, it's that the 'page setup' dialog, where you go to do things like format the margins, is under 'file' instead of 'format'.

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[Nutria]

People just didn't like it at first because it meant they needed to re-learn the locations of the commands they use.

"Needs retraining" is the drum that MS beats when companies start talking about moving to Linux...

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[Undead Waffle]

The ribbon is a marked improvement over the old style file menus.

Nope. The ribbon is just plain worse.

What you're describing at the end there is how Microsoft has always had poor menu organization in their applications. With the ribbon they tried to throw all of the features into just a few top level ribbons so they didn't have to worry about that as much anymore. They should have addressed the root problem and re-thought their menu organization.

The biggest problem with the ribbon is the options are different sizes and not laid out in a consistent flow. It's not like a menu where you have a list of text you can quickly scan through for the option you want. You have to look all over this thing at many different sizes of buttons to find the one option you're looking for, which takes significantly more effort. So even though everything is right in front of your face it is still harder to find. And as other people have mentioned it tries to be "smart" if it can't fit everything and is not consistent about what it makes disappear. Even if it takes me an extra button click I'll take a consistent and easy to read menu over this garbage. For tasks I use all the time I'll learn the keystrokes anyway.

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[blincoln]

"Where do you change settings.... edit>preferences, or tools>options?"

On Windows and other sanely-laid-out operating systems it's supposed to always be under Tools -> Options, because changing settings has nothing to do with editing the file. That was something that bugged me about MacOS even back in the olden days before there was a Windows or Linux.

"Find is under edit, not view?"

Find is under Edit, because Find is a subset of Find/Replace, which is an editing operation. It doesn't make any more sense to put them both under View, because Replace is an editing command.

"And print preview is under file, instead of view? Why is print a file command at all?"

Because printing the file is a file I/O operation, not interacting with it or viewing it. It makes sense to group the printing commands together, and Print Preview is the only one that could sort of be argued to be a View-type operation.

"And why is import, when paste is under edit?"

Import is another file I/O operation, whereas Paste is not. Clipboard operations (like Paste) are all under the Edit menu, because they're related to editing the current document. That would be true whether there were an OS-level clipboard or one that's just confined to the application.

"Come on, towards the end they were just cramming in new commands wherever they'd fit."

No, they really weren't.

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[jez9999]

I'm having to relearn where to find certain things on the new Firefox GUI, but that doesn't make it bad.

No, but it IS bad.

I developed a Firefox 3 theme to make FF4 look bearable again, re-enabled the toolbar and made the icons big. New theme isn't worth shit.

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[man_of_mr_e]

Other than basic format icons, which have been pretty standard for 20 years, every item in the ribbon has a text label. You can look for text or icons as you see fit. Whatever works for you. It confuses the hell out of me how people like yourself bitch about having to find things by icon when the text is plainly visible.

Menus do even worse in confined spaces. You either have to scroll, or you have to make them stack up. And don't even get started on the submenus, and sub-sub-menus and sub-sub-sub-menus. Plus, once you click an item, they have to disappear so you can see your work again. If you need to do the action again, you have to find it again in the menu, possibly several levels deep. Or if you need a similar action, you have to do the same thing. With the ribbon, the item is there with a single click.

Menus have so many flaws. The more functions you add, the harder they are to navigate. They're difficult for people with poor dexterity to use. And it's a sea of text that you're lucky if it has an icon next to the command to help you pick it out.

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[drinkypoo]

On Windows and other sanely-laid-out operating systems it's supposed to always be under Tools -> Options

Uh what? Vastly more apps don't have a menu called "Tools" than do. The simple truth is that there is no standard on windows NOR on the macintosh as to where that shall be. And even if there were, Apple themselves likely wouldn't follow it; they have famously thrown their HIG out the window and they have at least three widget sets in any version of OSX after 10.1. Even one Apple app doesn't look like the next.

printing the file is a file I/O operation, not interacting with it or viewing it.

That's not true at all. It's a memory I/O operation, it works with the contents of the document in memory, not the file on disk. You can't print a file on disk, you have to load it into memory. This is technically true even in the case of spewing a postscript file at a postscript printer, and this is the least common case for the end user, so I think it's safe to say that this is NOT a file operation.

Import is another file I/O operation, whereas Paste is not.

To the user it's an edit operation, even if it does involve a file.

"Come on, towards the end they were just cramming in new commands wherever they'd fit."

No, they really weren't.

Yes, they really were, where "they" is defined as "everyone".

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[stewbacca]

Good points. I'd like to add the Mac switchers to your example. Many people switch to Mac OSX for one reason or another and many hate it because, well, it's not windows. Of course if you take away all pre-conceived notions, most usability experts will lean to OSX as the better UI (citation need, yes, I know), but that doesn't make OSX bad because some poor sod who has been beat down by the Microsoft way since 1995 has just learned there's another way of doing things.

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[stewbacca]

I like the inconsistency of the ribbon. Unlike long file menus, the inconsistency of the ribbon sections make them memorable at a quick glance. With file menus, you have to go through each horizontal word, then all the vertical options, then any of the suboptions in there. We tend to memorize the string of words we had to cycle through to get to the function.

With the ribbon, the horizontal menu is the words, but all the sub menu options look like tools, with unique properties, that are easy to differentiate from each other, which helps you remember where they were easier than a long string of sub menu words.

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[stewbacca]

On Windows and other sanely-laid-out operating systems it's supposed to always be under Tools -> Options, because changing settings has nothing to do with editing the file.

I for one am glad you are an outlier and UI designs are not based on your, um, special way of thinking.

If everything is "supposed" to go where you want it because of your interpretation of a word, then I don't think you and I would have very similar operating systems.

Re:People like what they know ...at first

[Darinbob]

I upgraded Firefox at home, but left it alone at work. So I use both daily. The old version is MUCH nicer to use. The new version appears to just have been changed for the sake of change.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[bruno.fatia]

Because the development of a OS isn't something that can be done within a year. Windows 8 won't be here soon, and they probably started working on it at the same time Windows 7 was RTM.

Apple famous in what way?

[SuperKendall]

I'm not saying Apple never added features some people didn't like, but I can't really think of any as things that were "shoved down the users throats" to near-universal dislike.

What features did you have in mind?

Re:Apple famous in what way?

[LynnwoodRooster]

iTunes.

Re:Apple famous in what way?

[FredFredrickson]

Lack of maximize. Accelerated mouse cursors (switching from PC, it's impossible to get used to). They finally added a second mouse button, so I'll give them credit there.

Re:Apple famous in what way?

[SuperKendall]

Lack of maximize

There is a maximize button. It just works better than what you are used to since it only makes the window full screen if the content can go full screen.

Accelerated mouse cursors

That's not anything like the level of Clippy though. And you can easily adjust it with a third party tool.

They finally added a second mouse button

They've supported two mouse buttons since OSX 10.1, and in every laptop since then as well. That is the most tired busted argument against Macs EVER MADE and seriously marks you as someone who has not actually used a mac longer than ten seconds.

Re:Apple famous in what way?

[doccus]

"Shoved down user's throats' ? well, maybe not features per se.. but how about the package as a whole ? Snow leopard introduced NOTHING, but took away tons of features.. ie breaking toms of apps.. and as far as 'shoving down the throat' well.. doesn't forced obsolescence fall into that category i have several apps that arbitrarily require SL 10.6.6 as a minimum OS, even though they were released before 10.6 even came out.. IMHO.. SL is an absolute disgrace.. and is SOO slow that i multiboot into vista most of the time, on my imac, because *Vista* is four times as fast as SnowLeopard on a core2 duo iMac...

Re:Apple famous in what way?

[FredFredrickson]

Ok, I admit- the second mouse button thing was digging. But the maximize, I just can't deal with that. I maximize for one reason: Focus. I don't want to see other stuff on the screen it's distracting. If I want to see other things on screen, I wouldn't maximize.

I understand it's preference, not a real issue. But that being said, it's not even an option and that's (believe it or not) the biggest barrier for me on macs. And yes, I have the third party tool for the mouse acceleration, but I don't qualify that as a merit of the system.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[Missing.Matter]

People didn't migrate to Windows 7? Is that why it runs on over 30% of PCs worldwide, and is the most used OS in the United States?

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[Missing.Matter]

Then - how often does one undo the automatic (by default) snap/all screen window hog feature in W7? Ridiculous!

Aero snap is one of my favorite features in Windows 7; I use it constantly. When I use XP, I'm constantly dragging my windows to the edge of the screen to no avail.

If you want to turn it off, just search for "snap." The first result should be "Turn off automatic window rearrangement," Just select it and click the check box.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[c0lo]

new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow down users moving to windows 8.

Just what they'll move towards?

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[CorporateDrew]

You're missing the point. By introducing the ribbon UI to the Windows Explorer shell, it makes the UI more touch friendly, ala TABLETS. MS has had a tablet debacle on its hands for years now, and this iPad thing is shifting the market and killing a cash cow. They have to get into the tablet market, but they can't do it with a different OS.

That's why Windows Professional on ARM is so exciting to some (for app compat reasons) but the user experience with using a stylus on a Windows tablet still sucks balls if you ask the consumer buying public. To fix the UI, they've got to make the Windows Explorer shell touch friendly. They've spent a boat load of money on the ribbon, and the corpoate space is somewhat used to it, regardless of what many /. readers think of it. So, they're going to go with it.

I still love my iPad, it's the perfect couch top. But no Flash and certain vertical market websites used within my business make it hard for my company to adopt them as a laptop replacement for some user groups. If MS can kill the stylus and make a touch UI on top of the Windows Explorer shell that doesn't suck, they could have something. The harder part will be wowing over the consumer market, which seems to be driving tablets to the workplace in the first place. It's all about getting a Windows tablet on ARM that people wil want... We'll see if Windows 8 is that product or not.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[unity100]

xp is 42.9%, 7 is 34.1% even circa march 2011 according to below stats :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows

considering most of the presence of new windows versions would come from windows being forcibly bundled by newly sold pcs, and not xp, it easily can be said that people did not MIGRATE to windows 7. even with this forced pushing, its share is still lower than its predecessor.

'most used os in united states' -> who gives a fuck. world is a 7 billion crowded place.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[unity100]

your shitty mouth does not deserve a response, but, still for the sake of those who read :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows

is it because people did migrate that windows xp still has 43% of share, whereas win 7 only has 34%, despite being pushed out by every new pc/laptop sold ?

next time you are going to cuss and spit shit, at least do it about something you at least know a little about.

Re:Why post this here?

[wierd_w]

Because the ribbon interface hides things from you in more aggressive ways than did the dropdown menu interface? Because the ribbon interface in office broke shortcut keys that required otherwise incompetent finance and HR people to re-build their cheat sheets, and resulted in months of hassle as IT people the world over got called incessantly on "How do you do Mail Merge again?" type problems, when there were more pressing matters to attend with?

Because the whole reason that Microsoft implemented the ribbon UI was because of turtleneck wearing LA majors in silicon valley saying "It looks ugly, I don't like it." while drinking a double latte from starbucks, while posting from a Macbook air?

Seriously, I absolutly HATE the new UIs in windows vista and windows 7. Hated the "Aqua" UI in XP too-- First thing I do on XP machines is enable the "Classic UI". Cant even do that now on win7.

Here's an idea, just because something is new, does not mean it is better. Likewise, if something isn't broken, don't fix it.

These ideals are why you will see real power users and real computer geeks extolling the virtues of the CLI. (An interface that has been around for more than 30 years.)

The beef isn't that "Your computer illiterate fiance cannot figure it out"-- it is that if the UI isnt broken, then there is no reason to fix it. You can give the overall appearance a facelift, but dont change the core functionality with something untested and unproven without a means of reverting it to the more tried and true method.

Guess what I will do on windows8 systems? (If microsoft lets me that is...)

You guessed it. Classic Interface.

Re:A package manager finally?

[blackpaw]

+5 Mod points. The awesomeness of apt-get (or one of its gui equivalents) on (k)ubuntu and the immense repositories is one of its biggest draw cards for me. Once I realised how it worked I just couldn't go back to windows.

Windows 8 My Homework

[dccase]

Your dog has been automated.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[Gadget_Guy]

considering most of the presence of new windows versions would come from windows being forcibly bundled by newly sold pcs, and not xp, it easily can be said that people did not MIGRATE to windows 7. even with this forced pushing, its share is still lower than its predecessor.

Buying a new computer is the easiest and most cost effective way to get the new Windows. I am sure that for a lot of people the benefit of getting the latest OS was one of the reasons for upgrading their computer. I am sure that the same thing happens on the Mac (which also bundles the OS with the hardware).

Anyway, if the trends continue as they are going then I predict that Windows 7 will pass XP marketshare before the end of the year.

Re:Immersive Browser

[symbolset]

This one does that. It just does it whether you want it to or not.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[no-body]

I have a 3200 x 1200 dual screen using multi-language new installs on different test environments (Job) and W7 Aero snap not just plain sucks, it interferes - bang! spreadsheet with one line snapped full screen and one has to fiddle to get it undone - I sure know how to turn it off and have done it x-times up to nausea in all kinds of languages. Every new install does it by default. I use virtual dimension with 20 desktops under W7 with multiple remote connections and Aero turned to nil. One runs XP to do network file searches by wildcards

- not a friend of this kind of eye candy at all...

If you love it, go to bed with it! Does not turn me on at all.

Ribbon Interface

[mark_reh]

Why on earth, when screens are getting wider, do they keep using up more and more of the vertical real estate for mostly useless menus? Office's displayed work area has shrunk to where you can barely see a paragraph at a time because the screen is full of ribbons. Why not push that crap to one side of the screen and let the document occupy the full height of the screen? If they absolutely must put ribbons on the screen, why not make them autohide like the task bar?

Re:Ribbon Interface

[BradleyUffner]

If they absolutely must put ribbons on the screen, why not make them autohide like the task bar?

Try double clicking the category headers.

Re:Ribbon Interface

[exomondo]

Office's displayed work area has shrunk to where you can barely see a paragraph at a time because the screen is full of ribbons.

That sounds like bullshit, how is your screen 'full of ribbons'?

Re:Ribbon Interface

[Missing.Matter]

You do know that you can minimize the ribbon, right? ctrl+F1. Regardless after you add all the toolbars you need in Office 2003, by converting to the ribbon you're only losing about 10px of vertical space. I don't know how that translates to only seeing a paragraph at a time unless you're running at 640x480.

Re:Ribbon Interface

[stewbacca]

Ctrl+f1 pretty much says it all. Because THAT'S such an obvious key combination...

Re:Ribbon Interface

[Missing.Matter]

Or double click one of the ribbon tabs. Or right click on the ribbon and click "minimize ribbon." Or if you're using Office 2010 there's a little carrot pointing up on the ribbon bar which minimizes it. Or if you can't figure out any of these ways, they're all detailed if you search for "Minimize ribbon" in the help.

Re:Ribbon Interface

[stewbacca]

Notice I didn't complain about any of the other methods you mention, because I don't have a problem with right click + minimize, because that's an expected behavior. Random modifier key plus random function key is not.

Re:Ribbon Interface

[Missing.Matter]

Then I'm confused as to what exactly your complaint is. When you said "it pretty much says it all" I took it as a comment of the discoverability of the feature... namely no one would ever think to press ctrl+f1 in order to minimize the ribbon. To counter this point, I present a number of ways users could discover this.

I used ctrl+f1 before because it is easier than saying "click on that little triangle next to the help button as long as you're running Office 2010" or "right click somewhere on the ribbon that isn't a text box or expandable menu and select minimize ribbon"

If that's not your complaint, then I don't think Ctrl+f1 really doesn't say it all, and you have to elaborate. After all, it doesn't matter if the key combination is obscure as long as I'm telling him exactly what it is.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[EvanED]

If MS can kill the stylus and make a touch UI on top of the Windows Explorer shell that doesn't suck, they could have something.

The sad thing to me about that statement is you're probably right... I have a convertible tablet with a stylus now, and I love it. I use OneNote for note taking, and it's one of the only pieces of software that I use that I actually mostly like using. (I hate most software.) Take away the stylus and you take away most of the reason I have a tablet.

Re:But does it run Linux?

[WorBlux]

Maybe an ENTFS (Even Newer Technolocy File System)

Re:A package manager finally?

[symbolset]

Apt-url is especially awesome. No more long involved postings about how to get some complex piece of software installed. Just click here to install Blender - try it, you'll like it.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[spongman]

yeah, they should stick to weaving textiles by hand, dammit.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[uofitorn]

By chance, did your great-grandfather happen to build horse-drawn carriages around the time Henry Ford introduced the Model T? It might go a long way to understanding your reluctance to accept change.

Re:Bad idea

[qubezz]

Mod: Retarded Coward. Windows 7 was basically done two years ago. You expect that Microsoft isn't always working on the next OS?

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[ZosX]

I routinely search across network shares from windows 7. I haven't tried indexing across network shares (sounds painful), but you can certainly search for filenames. Are you just trolling or what?

Hater

[poptones]

I hate them all. Microsoft office, open office - I hate them all. The closest I came to liking one was abiword, and it is too buggy and crash prone for me. I almost always end up using gedit or something similar because I hate looking through all those goddamn menus for simple formatting commands.

HTML used to be such a simple markup language, and it would do about 90% of all anyone needed to do. A "word processor" that uses markup language without being so strict (html doesn't recognize cr/lf for example) would be ideal.

Is it really so hard to learn new menus? Yes. I've been using linux so long my last experience with windows was win2k. So I am utterly lost in Vista and 7. Friends still ask me about doing things in windows, and I have nothing to tell them except ask someone who uses windows, or use linux and I can help.

I think it interesting no one has actually seen a screencap of this here, yet everyone seems hung up on the "ribbon" business. I'm more puzzled by the "immersive browser." WTF is an "immersive browser?"

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[no-body]

You have to index and tweak what else have you to make it functional. It's a pain. The claim "greatly enhanced search features" is bull from a different reality.

look there:

http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/windows-7-file-search-indexing-options/

search for "Windows 7 Search does not work with net" on that page and read on.

I've tried to get something similar to XP CTL-F, enter file name wildcard and transverse a network tree. W7 gives me all kinds of crap options - media files and what have you if you want to implement something similar. Clearly consumer oriented stuff.

My way on new installs is to get a virtual XP going and use it to search for files on networks - case closed.
Consider it trolling or religious war, I don't care.
If you are happy with what you use and have - go enjoy it!

MSoft has been left-handed in many ways - just look at updates - reboot happy upto the wazooo. My Linux does 1700+ download/updates without reboot so it's doable but apparently not of interest in other realities.

Re:In related news

[Vegeta99]

Sorry, gotta bite on the troll too. I must admit, my Linux HTPC crashes MUCH more often than my Win7 laptop. Of course, the laptop never has to play 1080p video, but when it crashes, it's usually from overheating, not a Windows bug. That goddamned HTPC crashes so often because X freezes and the only way to fix it is to ssh in or reboot - that's a crash. Bleh.

Ubuntu 10.10 on a Zotac ION ITX mobo combo, running XBMC 10.1 stable rendering with VDPAU, broadcast video handled by MythTV and a Hauppauge HVR-1950, if anyone cares. All the hardware's on the "thumbs up for the penguin" lists, but it's about to get a windows media center treatment, damnit.

Huh

[JerryLindenburg]

So does this mean that future versions of windows are going to be as difficult and cumbersome to use as present incarnations of office? I'm not looking forward to this.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[Gadget_Guy]

You have to admit, your situation (3200 x 1200 dual screen) is pretty unusual. Most people live with a single monitor and lower resolution of 1280x1024 or 1680x1050. It is not a bad feature merely because it does not work well for you at the extreme ends of the resolution spectrum.

And you say you know how to turn this off, but you get sick of doing it so many times on your multi-language setup. Once again, that is not the usual way of using Windows for the majority of people. The average punter uses their stock Windows install for years until they screw up something and then go out and buy a new computer.

As for file searching... well you are right there. I have a Windows 98 system sitting next to me that I use for file searches because every version of Windows since 98/2000 has made file searching worse in some respect.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[0123456]

I am sure that for a lot of people the benefit of getting the latest OS was one of the reasons for upgrading their computer.

My experience is that most people only upgrade their Windows PC when the old one is so infested with malware that they can't get it to do anything useful anymore. They don't really care what version of Windows is on there so long as it's not Vista or ME.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[dhavleak]

The world isn't going to stand still for you. Come along for the ride or get left behind. That certainly doesn't mean that you need to install Win7. It does mean that you should get your head out of the sand and stop pretending that it failed.

Re:Bad idea

[0123456]

Do you seriously think that Microsoft have a good reason to release a 'new OS' rather than patches to the current one, other than to try to convince people to pay the Upgrade Tax?

Re:Why post this here?

[shutdown -p now]

It's all good, but "better" can be very subjective, especially when it comes to usability. It's understandable why a geek would not want to update to ribbon, but most users of Office aren't geeks.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[dhavleak]

http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-7-finally-overtakes-windows-xps-marketshare-in-the-us Stats can prove anything. Bottom line -- Win7 is healthy, thriving, well-received, and rock solid. Get your head out of the sand my friend. It's just an OS. No need to get so worked up over it. Use what you like -- Linux and OS-X (or whatever) are perfectly good choices and in any case, to each their own. If other people can respect your choice, why can't you respect other people's choices? Why the need to prove that a perfectly good OS is a flop?

Re:Windows 8 ?

[dhavleak]

'most used os in united states' -> who gives a fuck

Strong words for someone who got real agitated when someone else replied to you with cuss words earlier. Chill dude. Windows is just an OS. Use whatever you want -- nobody can force you to use Windows. Just go easy on the hate. Life is too short.

Re:Bad idea

[dhavleak]

They're constantly releasing patches for the current one. Second tuesday of each month, to be specific. In fact, they released a Service Pack a little over a month ago. What's more, they still release patches (and service packs) for the version that preceded the current OS. They issued 3 service packs and they still issue security updates for the version before that, and will continue to do so until 2014, a full 13 years after it was released.

Re:Bad idea

[exomondo]

A new OS so soon after 7 is a bad idea.

This isn't Windows 8 being released, it's still a long way off. You think 3 years is too short of a release cycle?

Why would they think it is a good idea to add a PDF reader and webcam software.

Yeah they should can those ideas and rip out their bitmap and text file viewers while they're at it.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[Gadget_Guy]

My experience is that most people only upgrade their Windows PC when the old one is so infested with malware that they can't get it to do anything useful anymore.

It doesn't even have to be malware. I have seen people who had bought a new computer to fix a problem that would have been fairly easy to repair. If they find computers too daunting, then getting a replacement is 1) easier and 2) a lot of fun with accompanying bragging rights.

They don't really care what version of Windows is on there so long as it's not Vista or ME.

I do not think that is true. When Vista came out, I found a couple of people who said that they had purchased the upgrade for their system. When I asked what they thought of it both said (independantly) that they had not installed it. I never asked about it again because I knew that they would ask me to install it for them. But I do wonder whether those upgrades are still sitting on a shelf somewhere.

The thing is, they knew a new Windows was out and they wanted it. But it would have been better for them just to buy a new computer with the OS pre-installed. It doesn't just stop with versions of Windows though. One of the managers at my work upgraded his laptop from Windows 7 Home Premium to the Ultimate edition. He doesn't use any of the extra features, but he just wanted the best. He is an idiot, but it does goes to show that people are aware of the operating system and they do have a desire to have the latest version - even if they do not know why.

Re:Why post this here?

[temcat]

First thing I do on XP machines is enable the "Classic UI". Cant even do that now on win7.

You can - sort of. I did it on my friend's PC. But its "classicness" is even shallower than in Vista.

Re:A package manager finally?

[techno-vampire]

I use Linux so I clicked on your link to see what happened. Firefox gave me an error message because it didn't have an application linked to apt. Of course, I use Fedora, which doesn't use apt-get. Just another example of how, in the Linux world, there's not One True Way to do things. (FYI, in Fedora the equivalent is yum.)

Bill's Law

[melchoir55]

Tech sites should probably be ignoring win8 altogether. In accordance with Bill's law(1), win8 will be an abomination of an OS purchased only by those who have it forced upon them with a new computer.

(1) Bill's Law:
Every 2nd iteration of the Windows operating system will be so terrible as to be nigh unusable.

Bill's law is a pattern which surfaces as a side effect of Microsoft's business strategy. Rather than properly beta-test and develop an OS, Microsoft releases first a beta version of that OS as a full-fledged operating system. They then receive copious feedback regarding their awful OS which is incorporated into the actual release of that OS as a new iteration of the software. The cycle then repeats.

The set of major windows OS iterations (last decade) as Evidence:
    [... win98SE=) -> winMillenium=( -> winXP =) -> winVista =( -> win7=) ...]

Re:Bill's Law

[man_of_mr_e]

Hey, that makes sense.. except that you forgot several releases to make your argument hold water.

It was more like Win95->NT4->Win98->Win98SE->Windows 2000->WinME->XP->XPSP2->Vista->7

Of those, NT4 was pretty solid, as were both Windows 98's. WIndows 2000 was very solid, and WinME was only a stopgap (it was never planned to exist, but they had to release a newer OS to OEM's to support more recent hardware. They had originally planned for Win2000 to replace 98SE, but that didn't happen. XP SP2 was basically a complete overhaul of the OS, certainly a lot more of a change than 98SE was from 98. It was several years worth of work, and it pushed Vista back significantly because of the resources it took to get it out.

Windows 95 was also a pretty good release, compared to Windows 3.1 it replaced.

So basically, all you have is WinME and Vista as crappy OS releases (although NT 3.1 might count as well) out of 10 major OS releases..

Re:Bill's Law

[Corporate Troll]

It was nothing like that... Basically, it was:

Win 3.xx -> Win 95 -> Win 98 --> Win ME, where the line dies. In parallel the NT line looked like this NT 3.xx -> NT 4 -> Win 2000 -> Win XP -> Win Vista -> Win 7.

That's the operating system family history. From the consumer point of view, the "next version" from Win 98/ME was Windows XP, and that's where the "professional" and "consumer" lines merge. The period around Windows 98/ME/2000 was pretty interesting. There were plenty of consumers that didn't want ME, and asked for 98 or 2000 instead. Yes, consumers went with 2000, I've seen many specifically asking for it. Even Dell sold consumer PCs with 2000 as an option. So reality was more like that the users from 95 (plenty of people still ran 95 in that time), 98, ME and 2000 migrated in roughly the same period to XP.

Since this brings up Windows 2000. Windows 2000 was, in my opinion, their best system hands-down. It simply got neglected and was a bit too early to incorporate Wireless. The two "big" things that are missing from 2000 versus XP are wireless support out of the box and fast user switching (for the home user). You can get wireless to run on a 2000 machine, but you have to use the horrible, horrible applications that wireless card manufacturers make. With Windows XP, you usually can avoid those. (but alas, they are still in existence... why is completely beyond to me as the standard interface does everything well)

Re:Bill's Law

[Corporate Troll]

Aaagh... Scrap my comment, this wasn't about the different Windows lines, but about Bills Law. Now I understand why you included WinXP-SP2. I should avoid posting on slashdot while having a headache.

Re:Bill's Law

[stewbacca]

I've always considered Win 98 SE to be the best MS OS. Win7 will probably take that spot for me.

Going against the grain here

[caywen]

I'm going to go against the obvious grain here, where all the scathing comments earn obligatory karma.

I think the move to Metro looks promising. If they can clean up the visual design, it will be a very striking UI.

I think the tablet UI might have a lot of potential as it represents a break away from trying to shoehorn the Windows desktop onto a form factor that doesn't match.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see this performing quite well on the tablet hardware slated for mid-2011. They've given demos of Win7 on ARM running quite smoothly, and Qualcomm has already announced their next Snapdragon, which is supposed to be (relatively) blisteringly fast.

Finally, IE's new graphics acceleration should match quite well with tablet hardware, so I expect the sluggishness to disappear.

All in all, I'm actually pretty optimistic it'll be a pretty great Windows release. I think with Win7, they've ironed out a lot of crap in the Vista underpinnings and are spending a lot less time fixing and more time implementing new things.

Have at it.

Re:Going against the grain here

[1s44c]

All in all, I'm actually pretty optimistic it'll be a pretty great Windows release. I think with Win7, they've ironed out a lot of crap in the Vista underpinnings and are spending a lot less time fixing and more time implementing new things.

Have at it.

You would be quite optimistic since you are a MS marketer. The rest of us have seen plenty of MS releases each and every one dangerously insecure and well behind the state of the art.

Re:Going against the grain here

[zombiechan]

Some one is paranoid.. not everyone who says something good about a MS product isn't working for MS. He could just be a big fan...

Re:Going against the grain here

[1s44c]

Some one is paranoid.. not everyone who says something good about a MS product isn't working for MS. He could just be a big fan...

Read what you just typed.

Lots of people here have experienced every windows release since 3.1. Windows has been behind the state of the art, insecure, and lacking stability on every single release. It's never been secure enough to connect to any public network even with good firewalls in the way.

Re:Going against the grain here

[caywen]

How does stating a positive opinion about something make one a marketer of it? That's quite an accusation, I'm happy to prove you wrong in any reasonable fashion you see fit. But I suspect you're just quick to pull the trigger on it without actually stopping to address the points.

Why is Copyright Infringement Accepted for Win?

[Daengbo]

M1 and M2 were leaked everywhere and writers admitted with no shame that they had downloaded "from the usual places" in order to run and test. Reviewers from major mags that would crush bloggers over using part of an article (or even deep linking, in some cases) post stuff about software they've downloaded without permission. Why doesn't anyone seem to care? If I downloaded a leaked game or something, it would be a big deal. As a publisher for a large mag, I certainly wouldn't take the chance of publishing knowingly and obviously infringing material.

Re:In related news

[node 3]

I'm fairly certain Windows works. It's not my first choice in OS, but it does work well enough to be something worth paying money for.

I'd make a jab about Linux being free, but it's actually worth paying for as well, although for most people, Windows is the better value of the two, even at their current prices.

Re:Why post this here?

[Skywolfblue]

The more time you spend learning one method, the more comfortable you'll be with that method. The comfortable familiar trumps the slightly faster new method. To that extent, there is a downright massive section of the "geek" community that looks down on change.

Re:A package manager finally?

[symbolset]

You're holding it wrong.

Pre pre pre alpha?

[miffo.swe]

Why do i have the feeling this is just a pre alpha concept that needs tons of work before it will even be considered for use? If Microsoft had enormous problems getting Vista out the door and had to ditch almost all improvements on the way id sure would like to know what has happened with their arcane build process that makes it possible to do radical stuff like this within a five year timespan.

I hereby predict that Duke Nukem Forever will be released before Windows 8.

Re:How many people really care?

[miffo.swe]

I have a really hard time caring about Windows 7. XP does what i want and i cant find any compelling reason to switch to Win7. Windows 8 would have to be orders of magnitudes better for me to care, and with 100% backwards compability. Something that seriously collides with the ARM support talk from Microsoft. Either MS is about to ditch win32, emulate win32 or Windows 8 is in reality a number of different operating systems with the same name slapped onto them.

Windows $NEXT_VERSION will floor all comers

[David Gerard]

Guest post by Mary-Jo Enderle

I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION Milestone $MOCKUP.

I tried it on a low-end laptop with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.

WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like "FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! — the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved Ribbon user interface from Office $HATED_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint!

The controversial Digital Rights Management system in $CURRENT_VERSION has been worked over, with user-downloadable "tilt bits," which you can configure to your own liking. It'll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that's only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.

A public beta should be released by the end of this year. There's just no way that Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on $CURRENT_VERSION release day — the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets — in the shade.

I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.

Also, there'll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It'll be awesome!

I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.

Re:Windows $NEXT_VERSION will floor all comers

[David Gerard]

I remember most of these, particularly the last couple of paragraphs, for every Windows version since 3.0. They've been touting Bill's dream of the "database file system" how long?

Native support for disc images

[Malc]

Adobe reader? Phht! Windows is crying out for native support for disc images. It's frustrating that it has no support for directly mounting ISO images, even though MSDN has been distributing them on and off for years.

Re:Native support for disc images

[man_of_mr_e]

Actually, Windows does have native support for disk images, just not ISO's. It natively supports VHD images.

Re:Native support for disc images

[garethjrowlands]

Yup, that's an obvious missing feature. I think there's quite a good chance it'll be in Windows 8.

Re:Native support for disc images

[drinkypoo]

While it seems particularly pathetic that windows won't mount anything but a VHD out of the box (and that only in Vista and up) it's not like it's hard to come up with Daemon Tools. Microsoft intends you to burn that image to a disc in the off chance that you will keep the disc and not have to redownload, saving them some bandwidth.

Re:Native support for disc images

[leromarinvit]

While it seems particularly pathetic that windows won't mount anything but a VHD out of the box (and that only in Vista and up) it's not like it's hard to come up with Daemon Tools. Microsoft intends you to burn that image to a disc in the off chance that you will keep the disc and not have to redownload, saving them some bandwidth.

Who deletes anything nowadays, when you can get 2TB hard drives for less than $100? CDs and DVDs are horribly expensive in comparison, and the cheap ones are utterly unreliable too.

Re:Native support for disc images

[drinkypoo]

I'm not sure DVDs are expensive by comparison. You can regularly get a 50-stack of single layer of a reputable brand for about ten bucks. 47GB for ten bucks ain't bad. Call it thirty bucks if you're buying a drive, too.

I have two 1TB disks I bought for $120 a piece, they're externals and list was about $169 each when I bought them so it was a good deal, street was about 130-140 typically. But one is just a mirror of the other (on another machine, on another filesystem, on a related but different OS, on another circuit, on another power strip... as close as I get to offsite backup for now... I guess I should put it in the other available building, but I'd have to run network.) I'm starting to run out of disk space and my boondocks internet access is eating up all my computing budget.

Luckily my WISP is merging with (read: being eaten by) a slightly larger, slightly less local WISP which uses CDMA instead of WiFi, so I'm getting my speed upgraded so long as I don't use bittorrent which apparently wreaks havok on their network equipment, or more to the point, I can get the same grade of service for less. So maybe I'll buy myself another pair of disks here soon.

Re:Native support for disc images

[tgd]

Including, for the benefit of the GP poster, booting from them. No need to dick around with partitions, just boot straight from another VHD if you want a test environment.

Windows has lots of things people don't know is there. Apple's Time Machine? Its been in NTFS for almost a decade, just very few people knew it was there. Mountable disk images? As you said Win7 has them.

Of course, two minutes of Bing searching would've told the GP that... so clearly he didn't want it that badly.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[howardd21]

I had to scroll back to the top and see what the article was about. What you said applies to EVERY new piece of software, especially an OS.

new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow down users moving to windows 8.

New interface pieces hard to learn...check.

Some places are still stuck on XP and are moving to 7 now and now 8 is on the way with a new GUI?

Some parts upgraded and others parts left the same...check

also what software / hardware that works in XP / 7 will windows 8 not work with?

New OS means old hardware may not work. need to buy something else new...check.

Make sure you save this post for reuse in the future for EVERY new piece of software. Saves time.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[arndawg]

Every new install does it by default..

Damn you Micorsoft. You should default to random!

Re:In related news

[man_of_mr_e]

No, Windows 8 is not the official name (yet), and it's version number is 6.2 (7 was 6.1).

It's more like how Chrome increments version numbers.

Re:But does it run Linux?

[man_of_mr_e]

Where did you get the idea that Windows can only read FAT and NTFS? I've been able to read CD's and DVD's for year, and they use filesystems like CDFS and UFS. I've been able to access network shares over SMB and CIFS.

Re:verb

[TaoPhoenix]

You sure it isn't "Corrupt (for your protection)? Cancel or Allow?"

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[gbjbaanb]

thank you for that "search for snap" is the new Microsoft UI I find - type something into the search bar and hope you get the right link to properties :)

Too soon.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the ribbon is a bad idea.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[gbjbaanb]

the trouble with that concept is that the Ribbon is even more tiny/fiddly than the old menus it replaces. Look at Word, see the big squares that contain the options, then look at the little corner piece that opens the 'advanced options'.

I can see a ribbon UI where each square is a start-point, click it to open a sub-ribbon of large finger-friendly squares, but that's not really the ribbon we all know and love. That's a boat load of huge buttons that expand in a cascade like .... a menu. It shows that a) nothing sensible ever goes out of fashion, b) the more things change, the more they stay the same :)

Re:Windows 8 ?

[unity100]

i only reply to cuss words if they are mixed with ignorance unawares.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[unity100]

everyone is forced. in most countries there are laws prohibiting sales of computers without an operating system on it. and therefore most computers come with windows. you dont have a choice. you need to be tech savvy enough to ask for one with linux, and then do whatever you want to do with it. most users, have no idea what these are, most salespeople/companies do not want to hassle with after-sale support of a linux loaded computer to a non tech savvy person, and they just push windows even if it is an oem pc they are selling.

of course anything would do extremely well if you just buy out laws to force your operating system onto people by buying laws.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[unity100]

"market share in the u.s."

Re:Why post this here?

[RobbieThe1st]

But the parent was talking about geeks in particular. And yes, it is subjective, which is why someone who likes it goes 'WTF? How come you /don't/ like the Ribbon?", and I go "WTF? The command line's the best thing ever!". It's all subjective.

So, why not do what autodesk does for autocad: Provide configuration options and multiple UIs. Want to use a command line? Go ahead. Want a custom ribbon or menu system? Easy. Then allow saving/importing of custom profiles, so when you upgrade to the latest and greatest you don't /have/ to change!
Oh, wait. That would be smart.

Re:Why post this here?

[RobbieThe1st]

That is true. But the new method could also be slower, for what you want to do.

Re:Why post this here?

[Ksevio]

[quote]You guessed it. Classic Interface.[/quote] That just shows that you don't care about any UI improvements, you're just stuck with what you know. Without even having tried a different interface, you've already rejected it for something you're familiar with.

Re:Windows 6.2?

[jones_supa]

6.22.

Re:In related news

[oakgrove]

If your Linux box is hanging regularly, you have a hardware problem. Putting Windows on there is not going to change that.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[asdf7890]

Searching for filenames is not the be all and end all of searching though. I often want to search for specific content.

Even the XP search doesn't do this right without some kicking (by default it won't find anything in HTML or XML files for instance and you have to use a registry tweak to get it to treat them as files it can search for text in), and there are other annoyances that I forget right now. Basically if you are searching by name or by file data or size it works fine but searching for content is broken even with full indexing turned on.

The first thing I do on any new Windows setup is install Agent Ransack (http://www.mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?type=agentransack&page=home) which unlike the XP+ file search actually works and also has extra features like boolean search (files containing X and Y, and so on) that I find very useful from time to time.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[asdf7890]

My way on new installs is to get a virtual XP going and use it to search for files on networks - case closed.

A less heavy alternative is to install a 3rd party app like Agent Ransack (free, bit not OSS), then you don't have a whole VM running (or how-ever the vXP is implemented) just to be able to search properly.

Pretty Ribbons!

[tunapez]

Oh my, would it be asking too much for more widgets, too? How about even more candy-coated themes for my optical delight? These are the issues we should all be concerned about. F those nits like security, spying and speed, I just want to pay $100+ for a NEW* OS with more dynamic libraries I won't use or another insecure security center that further obfuscates the network components needed to fix my machine when Help & Support clarifies how the computer should indeed function without any solutions. I really, really, really hope they add more layers of security services so the crackers can be entertained for a couple months.
 
*NEW is their label, not mine...I'm guessing NT/XP/Vista SP8 would be less profitable.

The one to Ignore

[tycoex]

Who cares about Windows 8? I thought you were always supposed to ignore every other iteration of Windows.

Win98 = Good, WinME = bad.
Win XP = Good, Win Vista = bad.
Win 7 = Good, Win 8 = bad?

I'll be sure to check it out in 2020...

[gosand]

That's probably when my employer will force me to use it. I work for a very large company, and I just got a new laptop this year (we get a new one every 3). It came with XP on it becuase it's the standard OS. Thank goodness they haven't moved to Win7 yet as the standard (I think they are skipping Vista all together.. *phew*)

The comments here really make much sense to me. It makes me a little sad because I like to keep up on technology. But in a way, kind of like when people yammer on about phone apps and Facebook, I am glad I ignore some technology out there. I'd much rather hear about the latest version of Linux coming on the horizon.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[dhavleak]

That's correct. It's an important market.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[dhavleak]

But you cuss anytime you feel like it? Tolerance, my friend..

Re:Windows 8 ?

[dhavleak]

In no country is there a law prohibiting the sale of an OS on it. There is especially no law stating that computers be sold with Windows on them. Microsoft tires to convince all OEMs to sell computers with Windows on them to minimize piracy -- but they are powerless to do anything but "ask nicely". If they try any dirty tactics, they will land straight in antitrust court. You absolutely do have a choice -- you can (1) buy a mac (2) buy an ipad (3) buy a computer with linux preinstalled (4) buy an android tablet. These choices absolutely *do* exist. What you describe ablout tech-savviness, OEMs not wanting to hassle with Linux etc. -- this is not the same as "force". These are market efficiencies that exist for any incumbent in any market, and inefficiencies that need to be overcome by any new entrant trying to break into any new market. Linux so far has not been able to make a compelling case on the desktop -- else the market would have gravitated there naturally and MS would have been powerless to do anything. Take smartphones for example -- linux (android) is making a compelling case there, so the market is responding. Nothing the incumbent (Apple or Blackberry) could do to stop it. Lastly -- the fact that people don't know better or don't care enough to ask for alternatives means that the OS of choice is not an issue for them. For you it is an issue, but you are trying to make your issue everyone else's issue. You should be happy with the OS of your choice -- but you should stop trying to make your bias everyone else's bias.

Re:Windows 8 ?

[dhavleak]

Forgot to mention (5) buy a computer with no OS installed. That choice absolutely does exist as well. In many countries you even have (6) buy a computer with a pirated OS installed. When given that choice, guess which OS comes installed? In this case, the cost of the pirated OS is free no matter which one you choose -- and yet people seem to prefer Windows.

Can someone explain this ribbon thing to me?

[Slutticus]

I haven't seen such intense hatred for anything since that asshole Clippy, and the general search I did seems to suggest something pretty innocuous in terms of what this ribbon is or does. I haven't used anything windows beyond XP. Can someone distill the hate down so that I may partake as well?

Re:Can someone explain this ribbon thing to me?

[tachin1]

I can explain why I hate sometihng, but this will not translate that same hate to you, so you will probably not understand.

Microsoft wants to catch up with Apple.

[tachin1]

I'm thinking Microsoft just wants to put new systems out there till they get to X. Just putting it out there.

Re:new user-interface is a bad idea and may slow d

[stewbacca]

Aerosnap is great for me at home (single 24" widescreen monitor), where i can pin two full sized documents side by side. At work, though, it's a disaster. How exactly do you use areosnap to position two windows side by side in a dual monitor setup. The edge of the screen that bleeds into the second screen doesn't snap. Oh well, nice thought, MS, poor execution.

Who cares?

[Marine1]

It's a UI change. The first thing Windows users catch from Linux users upon complaining about the CLI part of Linux is a comment about how they should adapt to it and how Windows is for the lazy. Now MS changes the UI and people have heart attacks.

Bouncing dock icons?

[Slutticus]

How annoying is that? And yes, i know it can be disabled through modifying preferences, but that isn't available to anyone who doesn't know how to use the 'Defaults' command in Terminal. Not having a simple checkbox to disable this seems like shoving to me. Watching someone's icons bouncing uncontrollably during a meeting presentation embarrasses me as a mac user.
They've also taken away features to near-universal dislike: like the removal of the energy saver presets from the menu bar.
But that is all I can come up with.
If they ever take Spotlight away or build a walled garden for OS X (ala iOS) I will kill myself.

Stole another idea from Apple

[stewbacca]

"Metro". Srsly?

Re:Why post this here?

[wierd_w]

On the contrary. I tried the new UIs in Vista and win7. I found that they treated me like I knew nothing about how the computer works, and that I knew nothing about ACLs, local volume security, user credentials and accounts-- and hid vital functionality from me for the sake of being "Friendly" to people that genuinely do not know about such things.

Since I am not one of those people, there is no reason, and no excuse for hiding that functionality from me, when I want, or even have legitimate need, to enable it.

On vista and windows 7, I have to use CLI tools to brute force creation of user groups and to assign custom access control lists to them. I know. I have had to do it. This is especially true on anything other than "Ultimate" flavors of those OSes, which nearly nobody has legitimately on their home PCs. It makes the tasks of "Can you give junior a limited access account, and can you prevent him from seeing my porn collection?" much more difficult for me, when friends and family ask it.

Other times I would need or want access to such features are when I am trying to remove a multi-part worm that constantly regenerates, and tries to use filesystem and group policy security against me.

My beefs against the new UIs are legitimate. They have burned me many times. I no longer want to play. Leave my tools alone, they are not broken.

They've been quoted as saying something like that

[MillerHighLife21]

Something to the effect of "we declare a system unhackable and the hackers find all the holes for us."

Prediction

[neminem]

The backend will likely continue to have bugfixes to it (either that or they'll scrap everything and make another unuseable mess, like Vista, but assuming they don't). The UI will continue to get uglier and less useable, and once the OS is forced upon us... I'll continue to not use basically any part of it, the same way I run 7 at home now and don't ever have to see 95% of its UI. It's a sad day when I have to work to remove as much of the UI of an OS as possible because it stinks, but... that day has already arrived. So if their next release makes it even worse, who cares? I'm not using it anyway.