Microsoft 'Ribbonizes' Windows 8 File Manager

CWmike writes "Microsoft said today it will 'ribbonize' the file manager in next year's Windows 8, adding Explorer to the short list of integrated applications that already sport the interface in Windows 7. Microsoft's Alex Simons, director of program management, released screenshots of the new ribbon interface planned for Explorer (scroll way down). 'We evaluated several different UI command affordances including expanded versions of the Vista/Windows 7 command bar, Windows 95/Windows XP style toolbars and menus, several entirely new UI approaches, and the Office style ribbon,' explained Simons. 'Of these, the ribbon approach offered benefits in line with our goals.' Plans by Microsoft and others to ribbonize applications have often met resistance. 'We knew that using a ribbon for Explorer would likely be met with skepticism by a set of power users, but there are clear benefits,' Simons said."

Comments

Paging Darth Vader

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nooooooooooooo!"

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[cayenne8]

Hmm...well, now I have a reason to never update to Win 8....geez, I don't know ANYONE that likes the fscking ribbon interface.

I'm guessing they won't have a 'classic' look and feel option?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[daver00]

I offer you a challenge then: Force yourself to use the ribbon interface until you become comfortable with it, then try and go back. After doing this tell me whether you still think the ribbon is a bad idea. Personally I believe almost everyone who bitches about the ribbon is actually complaining about change in general - so eliminate that from the equation.

The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the ribbon. It's been 4 years... How long is enough time to be comfortable with it?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I used office 2007 since beta.

I wish I could have those years back.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[avandesande]

From Animal House:

"Thank you sir may I have another?"

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[next_ghost]

Now let's take that challenge just one step further and add Bash (or some other popular UNIX shell). Force yourself to use it until you know filename/command substitutions like the back of your hand and eat regexps and loops for breakfast. Then try going back to whatever clicky file manager you like most. Personaly I believe almost everyone who bitches about command line being arcane and obsolete won't believe how they could live without it.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[arelas]

"Do Not Want!"

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[nmb3000]

The ribbon wouldn't be anywhere near so bad if it had a "quick search" feature. Either a box or some kind of keyboard focus capture where you can start typing a word and it would search all possible command names and descriptions, displaying the results in the ribbon. The number of commands is small enough that such a search could be extremely fast.

For example, search for "paste" and you get a ribbon bar with the options:

Paste | Paste Special | Paste as Text | Paste as HTML | Quick Paste | Paste as New Foo

I hate searching through all the ribbon panes to find a simple command. A good example another poster mentioned is where the "create zip archive" button is. A quick search for "zip" would make that painless.

Given the focus on searching in Windows Vista and 7 I can't fathom why they haven't done this yet.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Culture20]

Dude, you Prequeled an already bad scenario. Use Luke instead. "No! That's not true! That's impossible!"

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Riceballsan]

Ditto, I have used MS office in my job for years as well Generally after 2 years of getting used to it, I can find things almost 75% as quickly as I could in the menu interface. In general I know a few people that claim to be at roughly the same speed. I don't really think I've met anyone in person who likes it better. The one thing I don't get with MS, why not make it an optional style. In general if everyone wants to turn it off in a week, you know it's bad design. Also don't reffer to me as afraid of change, I started learning to type with dvorak about a month ago, I'm not quite up to my qwerty speed, but I can see clearly why it would be faster when I get used to it. Ribbon I just don't see an increase in speed, unless your computer is so slow that menus take 3 seconds to pop up after you mouse over them.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[IceNinjaNine]

The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.

And this is true why? Because you think so? Cite? Research?

See the post below about Bash.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcmonkey]

The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.

B.S. Even after I learn where the options are on the ribbon. Even after I learn the new short cut keys. Even after I move my most used functions to the quick access toolbar.

Even after I do all those things, the ribbon still keeps me from doing the thing I'm trying to do. It leaves less room for viewing my email, or my document, or my spreadsheet.

If I were to bitch that "ctrl-f" in Word is now "ctrl-h", I suppose that could just be complaining about change in general. There's no more effort, no more keystrokes between the two. Perhaps "ctrl-f" is a little more logical because 'Find' beings with 'f', but really, what's the difference?

But to take away screen space and say I just don't like change? 100% B.S.

It's like taking a pick-up truck and replacing it with a hatchback. For the folks that need and use the pick-up truck, having issues with the hatchback is not "complaining about change in general."

I actually need and use my email. As in, I need to see the message body of my email. Having "panes" popping out from every side of the screen with a thick ribbon across the top, leaving room for a few visible lines of message is not an improvement in user interface design.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[darkgrayknight]

I like it

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[UnknowingFool]

You're assuming that those if us who don't like the ribbon haven't really tried it. I've used it for a year now after my company switched to Office 2010. I don't like it. I understand the concept of moving the most used functions to more visible areas but it frustrates those like me who might have a use case beyond this most used functions. Now those functions are buried into the UI and getting to them takes more steps.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Culture20]

I use sh/bash/csh/tcsh/cmd/powershell, and I still use GUI file managers daily (when appropriate). Now Ribbon vs Menu? There is no appropriate time to use ribbon. It takes up more space, and is ordered haphazardly. I shouldn't need to refer to the help file every time to find stuff that could be logically organized (or is now just a stupid icon instead of a menu phrase).

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[djdanlib]

I agree. I issued myself the same challenge and it was exactly as you say. It's hard to break old habits but the new way actually does let you get complex things done faster.

You can also hide the ribbon when you're not using it, to get more usable screen space than previously possible. Do that by double-clicking the current "tab", and the 2010 version has a little chevron arrow you can click for the same effect.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[miknix]

you sir, just wrote the most insightful comment I saw today

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[home-electro.com]

So you think the ribbon is an improvement? It looks like a mess to me.
I'll offer you a counter-challenge: memorize all common keyboard shortcuts for the functions that you use the most in word and other applications that you use, until you don't have to think twice ctrl-what is "select all". Then see if you even need the freaking ribbon.

If anything, if the are really concerned about productivity, they should concentrate on forcing users to learn the keyboard shortcuts.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[PRMan]

It's faster because I can style a table in 5 seconds instead of clicking 180 times. I can make document styles, page numbering styles with headers and footers that include Heading 1 title headers with a single click.

Now, I can't think of anything in File Manager that could be sped up like that. Batch renames? Map Network drive with a dropdown of available drive letters?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[goombah99]

Hmm...well, now I have a reason to never update to Win 8....geez, I don't know ANYONE that likes the fscking ribbon interface.

I'm guessing they won't have a 'classic' look and feel option?

It's astonishing how bad the new microsoft office is. By bad I mean not only hard to use even in simple ways but hard to figure out how to use. It is utterly baffling to long time users. It's not intuitive to new ones.

I'm not talking about it requiring a little re-learning. I've tried. I put effort into it. I can't figure the fucking thing out. My pasted graphics get wrapped in these shit sandwich wrappers that defy manipulation.

I've just punted and bought a copy of Apple's Page.app. Now I just export and import into that. if there's a functionality I lack I'd rather not have it than be forced to use the Ribbon of doom.

That said, given a choice, I'd use MS word for compatibility reasons if it just had the old interface. I'd pay extra to have the old interface back.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mmcuh]

But if you do those things so often that they need to be fast, wouldn't you just learn the keyboard shortcuts after a couple of times and do it even faster without moving your hands from the keys?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Lokitoth]

Given that the ribbon replaces the menu and toolbars in Office, and the TopBar/BottomBar in explorer, you are not actually losing vertical real-estate. If you had at least three rows of toolbar in Outlook, you would actually be gaining a few pixels in the transition to ribbon. Moreover, since you can collapse the ribbon to the height of the menubar, I am not entirely sure where the real loss of space is.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.
- Jamie Zawinski

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[B1oodAnge1]

The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design

I disagree, I makes it harder to find seldom used functions since you can't quickly run your eye down a menu, and it puts commonly used functions (that would have previously been on the toolbar) on separate pages of "ribbon" intermixed with sundry others.

As far as your accusation of bitching about change, I have used Office 2007 more than 2003 at this point (I was forced to switch as soon as it came out because I happened to be taking a required freshman level office apps course that semester.)
I think it's safe to say that I'm quite familiar with the ribbon and dislike it based on its own merit at this point.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Digicrat]

+1. Or if it was a supplement to traditional menus (like the old toolbars were)

Old-style menus at least let you tab through them and were somewhat organized by sensible category and/or alphabetical order. In the Ribbon, if you don't know what the *icon* for the command you want looks like and where it is, your relegated to mousing-over icons arranged in seemingly random order. Old-style toolbars at least let you re-arrange icons to your liking and insert them wherever you want - the Ribbon has limited customizabiltiy options at best.

Yes, if you use the ribbon every day you'll quickly learn where all the important buttons are. But what about that arcane command you use at most once a year? What about those of us that use non-MS environments 90% of the time and on occasion need to do a quick task in the MS world?

Then again, MS does say this "approach offered benefits in line with our goals." Those goals likely being:

1) Profit
2) Re-arrange menus to ??? system
3) Sell training/support contracts (profit)
4) Minimize chance of users switching to competitive products via UI/Training Lock-in
5) Profit!!!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Kopiok]

Then wouldn't it not matter what the menu interface is, you're using the keyboard anyway?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[kiddygrinder]

that's the one good thing about the ribbon, it forced me to learn a shitload of keyboard shortcuts.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Anonymous Coward]

I changed to LibreOffice because of the fucking ribbon.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dgatwood]

How is haphazardly mixing multiple sizes of buttons with complex scrolling controls and text an improvement in UI design? My gosh, have you actually looked at this thing?

Putting commonly used features within easy reach is inarguably good UI. Making it customizable so that the definition of "commonly used" can be modified by the user, however, is also inarguably good UI. Doing this, by definition, necessitates something approaching standardization of icon sizes, layouts, etc. Instead, what we have here looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Let's look at what's wrong with this UI design, point by point:

• Tabbed navigation incorrectly used to select between banks of controls

  Tabbed navigation is assumed to affect the contents of the screen as a whole. It is a fundamental abuse of the metaphor to use it to choose between banks of controls.

  The need for tabs is a clear indication that you are bringing way too many controls to the forefront of the user's attention.

  Most users won't notice the tabs, and will be confused if they accidentally click on one because they won't know how to get back to the controls that they're used to. They will, in turn, file bugs or call tech support.

• Tabbed navigation shares a row with other information

  I'm guessing that the blob called "File" is not part of the navigation tabs, but it appears to be. While it might seem convenient to reduce the vertical spacing by placing unrelated information in a tab bar, it's extremely confusing. It looks to me like two different things are selected in a single tab bar, which is just plain wrong.

• Unhelpful grouping labels

  Although conceptual grouping of icons can be useful in terns of keeping related things together, it is generally not useful to label those groups. This wastes valuable vertical screen real estate and adds nothing to the user's understanding. Yes, in some way, burning a file to disc is conceptually similar to emailing it to someone, but a label called "send" doesn't add meaning, and is actually a bit confusing.

• Inconsistent levels of detail, and non-independent controls

  There are wildly different levels of detail between different features in this UI. You have simple tasks like "Print" that presumably open their own dialog boxes, and then you have things like sharing preferences in which lots of detail is crammed into a single section of the ribbon bar for no good reason. "Sharing options" could be a single icon in a button bar that brings up a modal sheet or dialog box, and no convenience would be lost.

  In general, UI elements should be independent unless you are in a dialog box or sheet. Clicking an item in a button bar or similar should cause either an action to occur or a dialog box to appear for getting more information. Items in button bars should absolutely not depend on other items in the bar for their behavior.

• Minor variations have separate buttons instead of a pop-up menu

  If there are several UI elements that conceptually do the same thing, then they should be combined into a single menu item with a pop-up menu to choose which specific variant action should be performed.

  Example 1: "Send" button: display a pop-up for email, burning, etc. (Note: compressing a file is *not* an equivalent action, and should *not* be listed with the rest of those.)

  Example 2: "Clipboard" button: for all of the various cut, copy, and paste options, show a hierarchical menu that pops up when you click the clipboard/pasteboard button.

  By making those two changes, you've turned basically two ribbon bar tabs into two or three buttons with a couple of simple pop-up menus and a simple modal sheet.

• Rarely used UI options are artificially elevated

  Most people don't add or remove columns in their views regularly. That's the sort of thing that you pretty much do once when you first get a computer, assuming

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[tftp]

The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.

It isn't, though it's a change indeed. The reason is that the menus and the ribbon use different methods to locate the necessary action.

Menus are static. The "Edit" menu is always where it was before, and you don't need to think when you open it. Similarly, items within that menu are static as well (except when the most stupid option is enabled to make it into a surprise.) As result, menus can be operated mechanistically, without thinking at all.

This is not the case with ribbons. Ribbons change all the time, and when you need a function you need to realize first what ribbon are you seeing right now - and then what ribbon to activate instead of this one. This requires stopping thinking about your document and starting thinking about the UI.

On top of that, ribbons are pictograms - images that need to be actively recognized to be usable. Menus are words that can be read much faster. Nobody in the USA argues for writing menu text in Chinese, but why do we allow that in ribbons? Those chicken scratches that they sell as ribbon buttons are less recognizable than many Chinese glyphs. Menus are instantly discoverable; ribbons are not - you can't figure out what the ribbon element is going to do just by seeing it.

This reminds me that people universally hated VI for its stateful interface. But now people laud ribbons that are just as stateful! Does it mean that pretty pictures are more important than usability?

Note also that not every human is equally adept in recognizing images. Some do it with ease, other can't do it if their life depends on that. Why does MS force me to play "Where is Waldo?" each time I need to insert a footnote in the document? Some people are specifically procedure-oriented; it's easier for them to click on "Insert" - "Reference" - "Footnote" than to stare at the ribbon in vain attempt to understand what they are seeing there. It doesn't help that ribbons are context-dependent and tabs get added or removed while you aren't looking.

Ribbons also take far more space on the screen. They can be minimized, though, at expense of another delay.

Ribbons have no hierarchy beyond the two levels. If you need "Edit" - "Table" - Insert Row" you can't do that. You have to have a ribbon for "Table" and within that ribbon you cram everything else.

What if you run out of space? Well, then there is another horrific feature of ribbons. You click on a teeny-weeny pixel in a corner of one specific ribbon button, and then it drops down to expand that button and perhaps list there the function that you are so desperately seeking. Wasn't the whole idea of ribbons to make it easy to click? How many people have eyesight sharp enough to see that little down arrow, and hands steady enough to click on that arrow?

IMO, ribbons add nothing to the user's experience. They are an improvement in the area that required no improvement. Worst of all, MS pushes ribbons as the only UI of their wares, regardless of your opinion. MS does that only because it can, because the customer is locked into their product. There are other software houses, like Autodesk, that took a more careful approach. Their Inventor, for example, comes with ribbons by default, but a single checkbox in settings reverts it back to the traditional menu system. This proves that UI can be customized, and it's not a rocket science - and MS would be the most qualified team to do it. They force ribbons upon us just because they can.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Marc Desrochers]

3 constants in every new version of MS 1: A new icon 2: A new name 3: A new location. Overall new functionality, near zero.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: LaTeX. When you're serious about typesetting, you'll know where to go.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Nadaka]

Except that the menu most likely tells you what the keyboard shortcut is, but the ribbon you have to wade through the MSDN library in order to figure out what the hell button you need to press.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an add-on to Office which lets you search the Ribbon. I was ripping my hair out before using it, but Office is much more bearable with that feature. It should definitely be baked-in to the product!

Looking at the new Explorer Ribbon, it doesn't look too bad IMO, but only because there aren't umpteen command tabs like with Office.

Windows 95/XP's file manager is the best I've used on any operating system.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mangu]

Let me see a GUI solve the following problem: I unpacked a zipped file in the wrong directory. Now I have hundred files spread through a directory that already contained many files and directories. Delete only the files that were in that zip file.

Bash solution:

1) unpack the zip file in a clean directory tmpdir
2) cd tmpdir; for f in *; do rm ../$f; done

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Tamran]

Noooooooooo!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[cjcela]

Well, I think the issue is that they keep reinventing the wheel, and the result is that instead of people being more productive with a tool they are familiar with, the changes in the UI keeps getting in the way. After all, the thing one wants to do when using a file manager (or a word processor) has nothing to do to keep relearning the same tool every couple of years. It is 2011 - these are trivial operations we all have been doing for decades, and these things should be fairly standardised by now, unless someone comes up with a new paradigm in how we organise information (i.e. not using files/folders). These changes only happens because software companies wants to sell the same users the same product, so they need to justify the 'upgrade'. Far from helping the end users, keeping changing the UI is aggravating if one just need to get the work done and has no time to spare in the new (and useless) eye candy.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Canazza]

Worst part of Office 2010?
CTRL+SHIFT+S is no longer "Save As..."
fucking muscle memory still hasn't gone away.

Nothing to do with the ribbon though. Ribbon's not that bad, honestly, even though I don't use office all that much. Only real gripes I have with it is some of the Document Review options could be more clearly labelled.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Bucky24]

I used to read this and think "yes, yes they are right". Then I spent two years developing perl. Now I can't imagine a situation (a programming situation) that couldn't be improved by using regular expressions. I think Zawinski just didn't use regex that much.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Belial6]

Absolute BS. What makes the ribbon the ribbon does not speed anything up. The ribbon is just a crappy version of the menu bar where the structure has been decimated under the misguided idea that the buttons you use most should be the biggest. Any reduction in the number of clicks has nothing to do with the random structuring that the ribbon brings. If you can style a table in 5 seconds instead of clicking 180 times, that isn't because the classic menu bar is a poor design. It is because the buttons you press are not properly placed in the menu bar. You could have gotten the exact same speedup by just putting a "Most Used" entry after "Help".

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Twinbee]

Finally, someone's suggesting something close to what I've been championing all along.

Want to change a particular Windows pref? Forget the registry, control panel or other such rubbish, and have them in a unified million-entry metadata tagged database, where a quick search for say, "mouse" will return all fields responding to 'mouse' (speed, cursor picture, double click speed), with the most promising entries at the top.

Want to find that Visual Studio class GUI component property? Again, a search will condense the hundreds listed to just a few (foregoing the need to scroll through what is often a VERY long list). Things like 'location' will be metatagged with 'position', or 'x' to help the search be more relevant.

Want to find that file quickly? Again, a metadata filesystem with a single folder containing all files is the way to go.

Such an approach not only makes it easier and quicker for the user to locate a file or property, but reduces the need for the programmer to painfully create positions for the GUI icons and buttons, and obviously the whole hierarchy of windows inside windows mess becomes a relic of the past. Like you say, why this has not been done already is pretty astonishing.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Belial6]

Absolute BS. This is the same garbage that Apple fanboys spout. "Oh, it's because you resist change! You only hate it because it's different and your stuck in a rut!". I have use just about every UI that has been available since my first computer the Commodore KIM. I have enjoyed the steady improvement that we have seen through the decades. I have welcomed change, and look forward to new improvements when they come. The ribbon is not one of those.

Sure, I can learn to use it. In fact I can guarantee that I will "get used to it". That doesn't mean it is good. I don't see anyone complaining about Windows 7's snap to the boarder feature. That is new, but it is also a good improvement. I didn't hear anyone complain when quick launch buttons were added to the task bar. In fact, I didn't hear anyone complain about the task bar at all when it was added. These were good IMPROVEMENTS to the UI, so while they were different, no one complained.

The ribbon is bad UI, and the sooner MS admits it, the sooner we can start moving in a positive direction.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[hairyfeet]

Now that ain't exactly fair Dave and you know it. I personally think the Windows 7 UI is the best damned thing since sliced bread, and when I have to work on an XP box it makes me feel like I'm dealing with Win95 again. the most wonderful thing IMHO is that it doesn't hamstring power users while still making it friendly for the clueless like my dad. Integrated search, jumplists, breadcrumbs, those all are great for everyone.

But for those of us that have used Office since 97 or earlier we already know where shit is thanks anyway Dave, and the ribbon just puts a big ass brake on muscle memory. In my office 2K I don't even have to think about where what I want is I already know to the point i can zip right to it. The ribbon takes that experience and pulls a Goatse with it, throwing it all into a deep nasty hole and leaving us as slow as the noob.

So why not be fair and simply give us choice? With Office 2K7 it is trivial to kill the ribbon and customize your own "mini bar" UI, which IMHO makes it actually BETTER than even my beloved Office 2K, simply because I can put what I need on the mini bar and you can put what you need on yours. So I'd say it isn't about not liking change, i love the new UI of Win 7, it is about not throwing away years of experience to start over from scratch. So as long as there is a way (and there is ALWAYS a way, either by MSFT themselves or a third party hack) to switch back to the Win 7 two pane I'll be a happy camper. I live in the two pane explorer and I NEEDS my breadcrumbs!

Don't make me hunt and peck when I already know what I want, is that too much to ask?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Belial6]

There is also no reason that the most used functions can't be moved to a more visible area of a classic menu bar. The % used excuse just doesn't fly as a valid reason to have the ribbon.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Kopiok]

Pressing 'alt' shows all the keyboard shortcuts (for the items shown) and walks you through selecting them.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[guppysap13]

I have also noticed a 'Hide the Ribbon' option, but it just reduces the Ribbon to a bunch of small images, whose meanings I need to figure out by slowly hovering over them so the tooltip tells me what it is. Pictures can be helpful, but not everything is the logical choice to everyone (much like the old menu system, I guess).

Now that people have mentioned it, I really should look into memorizing some of the keyboard shortcuts. It's just annoying, because I use LibreOffice/OpenOffice on my personal computer and know the menu system very well. I'm stuck using Office 2010 at work.

It looks like either way we need to memorize something new...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Belial6]

No. It doesn't. There is nothing about having a hodge podge of different UI elements slapped on the screen that makes the tasks faster. You are probably confusing the horrible ribbon with the idea of putting more frequently used commands closer to the top of the menu.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[rtb61]

The single biggest fail of that fugly ribbon, is that a menu structure must be as small as possible whilst retaining clarity so as to provide as much room for content as possible. This easily allows multiple windows open on the screen at the same time, all readily accessible and easily tiled, with lots of content clearly visible and not buried by menus.

File managing is largely, irregular layout handling, more routine file handling shifting and deleting, and most often searching. Should be largely driven by mouse gestures, appropriate right click localised menus, and simple keyboard entries.

Clearly this change is all lock in, copyrights and patent driven. Here's betting an after market file manager ends up dominating the window marketplace,

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[AmiMoJo]

It is utterly baffling to long time users

I have been using word processors since Display Write for DOS and didn't find it "baffling". It is basically the same as the old menus but with icons instead of just a list. People sort of knew this was a good idea back in the Windows 95 days when toolbars were first introduced to save you digging through menus for common tasks like changing the font or printing. The ribbon is just a toolbar with tabs.

The ribbon is nice because the icons actually show you what you get if you click on them and are better organised. Finding things is no harder than going through the various menus was in previous versions, except that now you can do it quicker because the brain can recognise pictures faster than it can recognise words.

It does take about five minutes to get used to and isn't necessarily appropriate for every app, but as a programmer who occasionally uses MS Office for documentation and the like I much prefer it. Previous versions fumbled around trying to be helpful with idiocy like Clippy, "personalised" menus and toolbars that only appear when you click on an image or a table, but now everything is on the ribbon and properly organised.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Anubis IV]

Same story for me, pretty much. I've had a death grip on my old copy of Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, but with Lion removing support for PowerPC apps and Office 2004 lacking Intel support, I finally decided to make the move over to iWork rather than pick up a more recent version of Office with the ribbon interface. I still can't stand Numbers (though I'm very slowly warming up to it), but Pages is tolerable enough, and Keynote is generations ahead of PowerPoint.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[tomhudson]

Click on the header to sort by date/time, then delete the most recent?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[scamper_22]

I've just patented your idea:
Method of displaying menu commands in a ribbonized bar based on dynamic user search input.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DAldredge]

I like it, really what is so horribly wrong with it?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[PwnzerDragoon]

Don't forget the link.

"Nooooooooooooo!"

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[im_thatoneguy]

If you "minimize" the ribbon it doesn't take up any extra screen real-estate.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Anonymous Coward]

A good GUI would have the steps 1) click Edit menu (or whatever the second one over is), 2) click Undo.

Unfortunately file system managers ain't there yet. They're the only program without an easy Undo button. It's idiotic. What does it take, really?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[imthesponge]

Because you actually used the ribbon interface, instead of just looking at it (or not even that) and parroting the "Everything M$ does is terrible" line.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Z80xxc!]

This exists for Microsoft Office; it's called Search Commands and is available as a free add-on. It works pretty well, and does exactly what you describe: you type in a search box, and it shows relevant actions. The addon is made by Microsoft, so obviously they do have this idea and are considering its applications.

I was excited when I found this product, since I've been thinking something like this would be nice ever since the ribbon was introduced. But you know what? I never use it. I find it much quicker to just use things where they're built in. Once you get used to it, everything in the ribbon is actually pretty well laid out and easy to find. One nice feature of the Search Commands addon is that it'll tell you how to get to the tool normally. It's a good way to figure out how to get places, but once you know where things are, it's much faster to go straight there.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[KJSwartz]

That's MADAM to you!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jo42]

I'm still using Orifice 2003, so I haven't lost those years just yet...

I'm actually at the point that when my Windows XP/Office 2003 system goes by-by, I'm going 110% Apple since I absolutely can not stand any of Microsoft's crap since Vista.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[nilbog]

If you need a search box for your set of "quick options" you're doing it wrong.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[vux984]

Then I spent two years developing perl. Now I can't imagine a situation (a programming situation) that couldn't be improved by using regular expressions.

There's one of the reasons perl code is considered unmaintainable.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[syousef]

The ribbon is a frustrating waste, and I like others here have been using it for years. It is not a good idea. It is not a design improvement. It is a poorly organized screen space wasting pile of excrement. A menu system is MUCH better. Customizable toolbars are much better. Hell a text interface is better.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[lgw]

Most users won't notice the tabs, and will be confused if they accidentally click on one because they won't know how to get back to the controls that they're used to. They will, in turn, file bugs or call tech support.

Oh, it's far worse than that - you can accidentally change the selected tab with the scroll wheel which is first confusing and then infuriating.

The bottom line of all of this is that the entire set of tabs could be replaced by a single bar containing full-size icons, and that doing so would improve discoverability, would make it easier to learn the interface, and would reduce the number of clicks for most common tasks (because you wouldn't need to change to a different tab).

In the pre-ribbon Word, I could create my own damn hotbar buttons (not to mention keybindings) for my favorite documents styles or whatever. Now I can't even figure out how to do that. Blarg.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[vux984]

Let me see a GUI solve the following problem

Ok

I unpacked a zipped file in the wrong directory

Right click, extract, it defaults to a new folder in the current directory that doesn't already exist with a name based on the zip file. How did you botch this up in the first place? Oh right... you were using the command line. ;)

Now I have hundred files spread through a directory that already contained many files and directories. Delete only the files that were in that zip file.

Did the zip folder contain any files with the same name as files that were in the folder? When prompted for overwrite I presume you click no.

Bash solution:

1) unpack the zip file in a clean directory tmpdir
2) cd tmpdir; for f in *; do rm ../$f; done

Oops. You just trashed any original files with conflicting names.

Probably should have sorted by date modified, and just deleted the ones made in that unzipping burst, something that can be done in decent gui's easily enough.

But here's a case GUIs blow command lines away, and its something I've done frequently...

Your mom wants pictures of the camping trip, and your daughters birthday burnt to a DVD so they can take it home with them.

The picture folder you just recently copied from an SD card onto your PC... you've got a folder of the last dump... file: 1004245.JPG down to 1007223.JPG; 3 months worth of pics...

In the GUI, you set it to a thumbnail view, scroll down until you see camping pics, click the first, control click the last one, ah but you went to a car show in the middle of the trip, she won't want those, so you control click around that batch, and then individually... control click out a few bad shots, along with the candid shot you grabbed of your wife sunbathing, and take the jumbled highlighted set, right click, send to DVD, the burn data disc window pops up, and your done.

What's the bash solution?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[syousef]

Then wouldn't it not matter what the menu interface is, you're using the keyboard anyway?

So what you're saying is the ribbon is faster, unless you happen to do it often (the only time speed matters!) in which case shortcuts are faster anyway.

There are exactly 2 problems with the ribbon:

1) They are poorly organized. The equivalent menu would be just as poorly organized. The menus from Office 2003 translated directly to equivalent tool bars (roughly 1 per menu category) would be better.
2) They waste screen real-estate - you need full sized buttons and mini-menus which take up more space. Get rid of the icons....oops that would leave you with a wait for it...MENU.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Thing 1]

[...] now you can do it quicker because the brain can recognise pictures faster than it can recognise words.

What, you work for Microsoft? Do you understand the difference in difficulty of learning to read English, versus learning to read Chinese? Sure, the brain might recognize the pictures faster, but that brain must necessarily have gone through extensive training in order to winnow out the meaning of each of those pictures...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[syousef]

You can also hide the ribbon when you're not using it, to get more usable screen space than previously possible. Do that by double-clicking the current "tab", and the 2010 version has a little chevron arrow you can click for the same effect.

Thanks. That was actually a really useful tip. I still think the ribbon sucks, but I had missed this. Now it just looks like a menu for the mentally delayed - worse than a proper menu system - but still better than an always on ribbon.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Thing 1]

Er, you mean, "wouldn't you just re-learn the fucking changed keyboard shortcuts yet again?" And then, "wouldn't you prefer software that did not change merely to increase training revenue?"

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[similar_name]

I never cared for Windows file manager anyway. Q-dir and free-commander aren't perfect either but after downloading them to try something else I find myself using them more often than the Windows one. At any rate, 90% of people don't seem to use the file manager beyond opening My Documents or My Whatever and double clicking a file.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Qzukk]

You have to create a custom ribbon. It gets added to the ribbons that are already there so you have to choose it from the menu at the top. I had to do this for Office, since I couldn't find any other way to edit an email that I had received to add notes without having to forward it to myself as a new message.

And I actually discovered the scrollwheel thing today, on accident. I think someone over there was thinking "well, if your mouse was already where the button was going to appear, rather than moving the mouse up to the menu and clicking on the right ribbon, then moving back, you can just use the scrollwheel and click the button without moving so far" without thinking "gee, is anyone going to know where the buttons they can't see are?"

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mangu]

Right click, extract, it defaults to a new folder in the current directory that doesn't already exist with a name based on the zip file

So what you're saying is that your GUI won't let me merge a set of files from a zip file into an existing directory? Let's say Larry sent me a bunch of files that should go into the December 2007 folder and Susan put those in the November 2007 folder by mistake.

Or are you saying no one can make mistakes on a GUI? It's much, much easier to click a wrong link, a tiny slip of the mouse, than typing something wrong that makes sense. Type Fecember instead of December, no big deal, click November instead of December, "Oh, shit!!!".

Did the zip folder contain any files with the same name as files that were in the folder?

No, it didn't. So what? Or maybe someone clicked "overwrite all" automatically, without thinking. When GUIs present nag pop-ups all the time one develops a tendency to always click automatically some default buttons.

Now, don't get me wrong, GUIs are fine for searching visually among a set of images. I do use GUIs for their appropriate uses. The problem is people who do not know how to use the best tool for each job. When the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail, I'm sure you've heard that one.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ninetyninebottles]

The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.

I've worked in the field of usability testing and computer-human interfaces. My understanding is that the ribbon was based on a fairly interesting research project into interface design, one that might yet prove to be a significant improvement. MS, however, was unable to get it to work as designed and settled for a more classic interface that was superficially similar in appearance to the research project. I've seen absolutely zero scientific support for it being a more usable UI.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mangu]

Unfortunately file system managers ain't there yet

And that's all GUI applications intrinsic weakness. The person who develops them has to magically guess which operations people will want to do and consider every possible combination of actions. Even if it were possible to do so, the result would be huge menus, that's where the whole 'ribbonizing' idea comes from.

The big idea in Unix was that users would be able to combine at random the applications they had. Pipe the result of one program to the input of another. That's what Unix does that's so wonderful, that's absolutely impossible for a GUI to emulate.

If it were possible to redirect the "Undo" option from one application's menu to another option in another application's menu then GUIs would be as powerful as the Unix shell. The problem is that every action performed by every option in any menu must be previously designed and coded by the developer who created the application. If the developer never thought of something you need then there's no way to do it.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[countertrolling]

You gonna love Office for Mac 2011

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Bucky24]

I can understand why some people would think so (and why some code would be considered so), but I've seen perl code that is amazingly easy to understand and maintain (not my code :P, but someone else who used to work for the same company)

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Taty'sEyes]

Does it also pop-up a clippy informing you of what you really want to do?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[VanGarrett]

Ribbon I just don't see an increase in speed, unless your computer is so slow that menus take 3 seconds to pop up after you mouse over them.

I would argue that if your computer has trouble handling the classic menus and toolbars, then it's just going to choke and die on that damn ribbon. I suppose I could be wrong though, as I've never used the ribbon in Microsoft Office. I've used it in a number of other applications, though, and I've found that switching tabs takes a ridiculous amount of resources, especially when there are a lot of tabs. I really can't say I've encountered anything good out of the ribbons I've used-- with this UI interface, Microsoft has managed to turn a nice, clean and organized collection of menus, and turn it into a cluttered mess of an oversized toolbar.

Sometimes I wonder if Word in particular needs to be broken up into other programs. Microsoft has crammed so much functionality into the application that they've had to design a shoddy new UI to make it accessible. The trouble is that with all of the functions getting in eachothers' way, sure, there's a lot you can do with the software, but it's not really very good at anything.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[danlip]

It's not regular expressions that make Perl hard to read - it's everything else about the language.
(I couldn't live without Perl, but I hate the syntax)

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ChatHuant]

I unpacked a zipped file in the wrong directory. Now I have hundred files spread through a directory that already contained many files and directories

very easy, using Total Commander, which Microsoft should have bought and included as the default file manager long ago (it's available at http://www.ghisler.com/ ). Open your folder in pane 1, open the zip file in pane 2, Shift+F2 (or click "Compare" in the Mark menu), Num * (or "Invert Selection" in Mark menu), press Del, confirm, done.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[salesgeek]

Challenge rejected. There is a difference between complaining about change and complaining about the addition of the suck feature.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[salesgeek]

If your GUI is so cryptic you need a search box, you've failed as a GUI designer.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[geminidomino]

Oops. You just trashed any original files with conflicting names.

You already did that when you overwrote them with the ones from the archive.

Probably should have sorted by date modified, and just deleted the ones made in that unzipping burst, something that can be done in decent gui's easily enough.

In my experience (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD), oftentimes the filestamp will be maintained from what was in the archive, so that doesn't buy you anything.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[KahabutDieDrake]

What about change is good in this case? Is the ribbon a better interface? I use it at work and I use office 2k3 at home (no ribbon). At work some things are really easy. Great. At home, all my menus are arranged in the exact order I like them because I've been using Excel for a LONG time. Even better. The ribbon makes page layout really easy, but fucks up text editing. The bottom line is that even if you don't have a problem with change, the ribbon isn't really an improvement, it's just DIFFERENT. Which is fine, some day it might turn out to be an improvement. But in the meantime, that means that MS office applications, and file explorer use an ENTIRELY different menu system than pretty much everything else on earth.

Used to be, you could swap back and forth through document editors (word, wordperfect, wordstar, etcetcetc) and the menus were all pretty much the same. Sure some stuff moved around a bit, but it was rational. If you wanted to save, you went to file. If you wanted to change fonts, you went to "format". The menus all worked the same, so they were easy to adjust to. Now Office has this ribbon thing and if you aren't a regular user you are pretty much going to look at it, and call it what it is, bullshit, where the fuck is the menu? What do you mean there isn't one? WTF?

The ribbon is a paradigm shift, but is it an improvement? That remains to be seen. It's not as if MS has a good track record innovating...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[JMJimmy]

I know so many offices which tried the upgrade to Office 2007 and reverted to 2003 due to the ongoing productivity loss.

Ribbons don't make sense because the human brain likes patterns. The 2003 style was a clear pattern, each button was the same size, groupings of similar typed commands where closely grouped with spaces on each side and the most commonly used buttons were on either end of the interface. Ribbons are various colours/shapes/sizes in each program and have little to no patterning other than the buttons they think you'll use the most are big.

Ribbons just look like jumbled clutter to me - they get closed immediately.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[salesgeek]

Wait until they ribbonize the task bar.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Rootkit]

I have to agree. I find it much faster to open a terminal (with a keybind), type mv $FILE $NEWFILE, close the terminal with another keybind, and go back to my business. The less I use the mouse the faster I am. I don't use Windows, but just by looking at that cluttered UI (seriously its a file manager not a airplane control panel) I am put off.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[daver00]

Ironically I use bash a lot and I do all my documents in Latex using vim.

And yet I still defend the ribbon.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[daver00]

Because features are not obfuscated into nested drop-down menus for one, they are prominently displayed. For another, more common features are easier to access because they occupy a larger area of the UI, in drop-down menus the most obscure and little used feature has the same level of exposure to the user as those features which are used frequently.

Disclaimer: I do 100% of my document writing in Latex using vim. I work on a helpdesk so I have to know Office and help people with it, Office 2007 is significantly easier to use from the point of view of a computer illiterate than Office 2003 by my observations.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[FooAtWFU]

Helloo, computer.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[daver00]

As a Latex user I was not aware that there even existed Office power users who are also geeks. Either way I figured you would just use the keyboard, right? Keyboard shortcuts are unhindered and unchanged by the ribbon.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[TonTonKill]

The article shows that: 1) There is more space, even with the Ribbon, than in Windows 7's Explorer and 2) You can hide the Ribbon

But don't let the facts get in the way of a rant

The Windows 7 explorer configuration they are comparing it to includes the Details Pane, which I have to assume is turned off by anyone who cares about vertical space and is running Vista or 7. Hiding that pane makes the Vista/7 explorer window take up much less space than the ribbon UI and without any loss in functionality (unlike hiding the ribbon).

There are only two things that make me hopeful about this new explorer format: using the Quick Access Toolbar with minimized ribbon (still a PITA that you have to configure it all yourself), and the return of the parent directory button (what they call the "up arrow").

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[bored]

Yah, its lame because the ribbon is just a fancy button bar, funny enough, word, etc allowed you to put anything you want to on the button bar. Which means the ribbon is what? Make-work for UI developers? And M$ wonders why apple is eating market share every-time they release a new OS...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Belial6]

Unfortunately, they have already started breaking the UI of the task bar. Not having text to let you know what the icons are, just isn't helpful. I assume they were copying OSX on the pretty but functionally poor UI design.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Rubinstien]

Eh, Sorry. I've used tons of interfaces over the last 32 years; I am quite capable of dealing with change. So far, the only way I have found to deal comfortably with the 'ribbon' is to eliminate its use. I hide it completely, and learn the keyboard equivalents for even the most obscure commands, in software I rarely use (like Word and Excel). It just takes too damned long to "discover" where they've hidden the feature I need, even though I know it exists. It is faster to Google for the keyboard equivalent than to find it in the ribbon. I also cannot stand how much space it takes up. I'm a certified toolbar-hater because of the space they consume, I turn them off and do not use them; I do not like having this toolbar/menu mashup forced on me as my only option. It is pretty bad when 'Ctrl+Shift+5' has more meaning than anything I can quickly find on my screen.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dudpixel]

I offer you a challenge then: Force yourself to use the ribbon interface until you become comfortable with it, then try and go back. After doing this tell me whether you still think the ribbon is a bad idea. Personally I believe almost everyone who bitches about the ribbon is actually complaining about change in general - so eliminate that from the equation.

The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.

um, those of us who complain about it, only complain because we've actually used it. This isn't some complaint based on hearsay or the like.

I've tried using Word with the ribbon interface and I still cant use it well. So many things are not in a logical grouping that it just gets frustrating.
At some point you have to completely ignore what the interface is telling you and just go on a hide-and-seek search for the option, through every toolbar you can find, even when it doesn't make sense.
Find me the old "Page Setup" screen? well, you can't because its all spread out all over the place - yet the "page setup" window was largely unchanged. I worked out that if you go "margins->custom" or something like that you could get to it.

Claiming it is better design is just ridiculous. They just changed the UI for the sake of change - it forces people to upgrade for no reason. If you believe anything else then you dont know how Microsoft works.

They always start with something terrible so they can sell you new versions that make things better. Whether its by design or just the fact they just cant get it right, I dont know.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dudpixel]

Then wouldn't it not matter what the menu interface is, you're using the keyboard anyway?

yes, it would matter for the people who DONT do it often.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[KiloByte]

I have a better idea: what about grouping similar commands in a hierarchical structure, based on their meaning rather than name?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dudpixel]

If you didn't have the damn ribbon interface (like it used to be) you wouldn't need to minimize it.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jeff4747]

So what you're saying is that your GUI won't let me merge a set of files from a zip file into an existing directory?

So what you're saying is you're not familiar with the concept of "Default setting"?

It's much, much easier to click a wrong link, a tiny slip of the mouse, than typing something wrong that makes sense.

And the GUI gives an "Are you sure?" before you do something really stupid. OTOH, rm -rf / foo will run just fine...hope you noticed the space you accidentally typed between / and foo.

In fact, it's an error so common they changed rm. That wouldn't be necessary if the command line was as error free as you claim.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[GigaplexNZ]

You can hide the ribbon and add a custom toolbar that behaves somewhat similarly to Explorer from XP.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Stupendoussteve]

Interestingly, Office Mac 2011 includes a variation of the ribbon, but still includes the menues as well. Apple's built in help system also includes a quick search, so even if you don't know which menu an item is in, you can find it pretty quickly. To me this is really the best of both worlds, and an example of what Microsoft should have done with the Windows version, because nobody's workflow is needlessly interrupted.

On Windows Office, assuming I have to do anything nonstandard, I spend more time looking for and searching online due to the ribbon than I do actually working on the project.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Stupendoussteve]

The ribbon on the Mac is not nearly as bad as on Windows, specifically because the menues are still there and you are not forced to use the ribbon for every single thing you want to accomplish.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[cavebison]

TFA: "Provides keyboard shortcuts for every command in the ribbon, something many people have been asking for."

Seriously, I never thought I'd see the day when Microsoft deemed keyboard shortcuts an afterthought. Something went very wrong there.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[smi.james.th]

Something that was missing from the explorer in Vista / 7 was a nice big "Delete" button... and I'm seeing one in the ribbon in the screenshots from TFA.

I approve.

For what it's worth, I like the ribbon, I generally hate using office software in general, so I didn't really learn the "old" one very well, and I'm finding that when I do need to do something it's generally quite easy to find, the tabs in the ribbon are quite logically labelled and the pictures are nice. Overall I'm fairly impressed.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[geminidomino]

Didn't someone else above mention changing the shortcut for "Find" from Ctrl-F to Ctrl-H? Or was that just a hypothetical?

Genuine question. I moved to admittedly inferior-in-many-ways OO.o rather than deal with the ribbon crap. The set of capable operation I lost in doing that was smaller than the set of operations that became a painful PITA with the damn ribbon.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jeff4747]

It does take about five minutes to get used to

Clearly, you don't make complicated documents.

The problem with the ribbon isn't the common stuff (which I use hotkeys for anyway). It's the uncommon stuff that is completely buried in tabs that are not organized in a remotely intuitive manner.

Let me put it this way....to add a footnote using an unusual numbering format starting from the beginning of the current section will take me 2 menu commands in their old UI.

I still can't find how to do it in their new UI. So I waste the tech writer's time doing it for me.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[LordLimecat]

Takes up more space

You should actually check the pictures. They way they are doing it makes a lot of sense, and actually results in 2 more lines worth of space in "details" view.

The fact that theyre adding "command prompt here" to the default install is also really sweet-- i know its a simple reg hack, but this means that fixing friends' computers is now even easier/

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[LordLimecat]

But at least the solution will be really really cool, and you might end up blowing some minds in the process.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[LordLimecat]

It leaves less room for viewing my email, or my document, or my spreadsheet.

Whether or not you like ribbon is a personal opinion; this statement, however, is NOT, and in the case of explorer, it does NOT leave you with less space. If you read the article / view the pics, youll note that they specifically address this and have done "ribbon" in a way that results in more viewing area.

So If you hate ribbon and wont upgrade, fine, thats really a personal choice. But dont make false claims about what issues it has.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[LordLimecat]

You may have some points about icon size etc; but I take issue with a few of your statements:

Tabbed navigation is assumed to affect the contents of the screen as a whole. It is a fundamental abuse of the metaphor to use it to choose between banks of controls.

Says who? The point of the ribbon was that they were trying to be innovative and change the way we do things. We got to "tabbed controls" by "violating the single document per window" paradigm. Yet noone seems to mind that today.

You can argue that its confusing and doesnt accomplish its task, but youre setting forth some rule as universal here and I dont think that holds water.

Although conceptual grouping of icons can be useful in terns of keeping related things together, it is generally not useful to label those groups. This wastes valuable vertical screen real estate and adds nothing to the user's understanding

Youre making a number of statements here; do you have usability studies that you can reference regarding the labels "doing nothing"? I would assume MS did SOME usability studies (certainly theyre using telemetry data), which would put some onus on you to come up with more relevant data if youre going to claim that their data is wrong.

Most people don't add or remove columns in their views regularly

Once again, the article references how they used "millions of instances of telemetry data" to determine what UI elements were most relevant. Are you claiming that their data is flawed, or that they did NOT use the data in their design (as is strongly implied)? Do you have any concrete data to back this up, or are you just going off of anecdotal evidence?

Again, im not going to defend the ribbon on technical merits; I happen to like it and find it intuitive, but I am by no means a UI expert. However your statements need a heck of a lot more substance to them than "I declare this UI usage to be bad".

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mdielmann]

The ribbon wouldn't be anywhere near so bad if it had a "quick search" feature. Either a box or some kind of keyboard focus capture where you can start typing a word and it would search all possible command names and descriptions, displaying the results in the ribbon. The number of commands is small enough that such a search could be extremely fast.

For example, search for "paste" and you get a ribbon bar with the options:

Paste | Paste Special | Paste as Text | Paste as HTML | Quick Paste | Paste as New Foo

I hate searching through all the ribbon panes to find a simple command. A good example another poster mentioned is where the "create zip archive" button is. A quick search for "zip" would make that painless.

Given the focus on searching in Windows Vista and 7 I can't fathom why they haven't done this yet.

Well, I'll do what I can to make sure that idea never happens. So, what you're saying is, what the ribbon needs more of is a command line? Gotcha.

I think it's a good idea, but they've been doing everything they can do to get rid of typing anything but content. So I really don't see it happening.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Walt Dismal]

Plus the UI is inconsistent. Specifics: sometimes an icon has accompanying text - and sometimes an icon is small, with barely discernable details and no text label, and it's is hard to know its function. And sometimes, functionality is not even present on the ribbon but instead must be accessed by multiple clicks required to drill down several layers. I found that the ribbon in Word, in many common cases I need to use, adds extra steps and slows me down compared to the straightforward Office 2003 menus. Not just me, some of my clients complain how more difficult it is to do anything not common now. The ribbon is dumbed down UI, not improved UI.

Further, some tasks like 'insertion' are now scattered around through several tabs. They eliminated a clear top menu and replaced it with chow mein. For example, the actions of inserting a page break and inserting a cross-reference and inserting an image are now under different tabs. So you have to rethink your need from 'action-first' (verb first) to 'class of what is acted on-first' (noun-first). I maintain that is not how people think. We think 'I want to do THIS to THIS'. We don't think "I want the car to drive' but 'I want to drive the car'. The Ribbon appears to inconsistently implement the UI, sometimes using a reverse polish notation and sometimes not, which is an idea horrlble. :) That is a key UI semantic issue with this damned Ribbon.

Microsoft has actually caused me more labor in common activities, and may their trendy designers and marketing managers rot in zombie hell for it.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[daver00]

Ctrl-F is find, Ctrl-H is find and replace. You seriously moved to open office rather than just learn how to use the ribbon? Everything I do in Word is made faster by the ribbon (not a hotkey user). The equation editor in Word2007 is enough reason for me to use it. If I need to write a proper document with references, formulae, etc. I use the right tool: Latex.

So many people complaining about the ribbon, I see no examples of why it is less useful than nested drop-down menus? Can you provide some specific usage scenarios which illustrate why you hate it? Genuine question.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

The space argument is the most stupid argument ever. It takes up *EXACTLY* the same amount of space that Word or Excel used for toolbars and menus before. And, it has a feature you can't do in the old version, make the buttons disappear with a single keystroke. (not the same as fullscreen, which is still there as well).

Try this next time you use Word 2007/10, Ctrl-F1.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mgblst]

I used to hate it, forced myself to use it, and did start to see the advantages. For a power user it is great, I did dislike having to use the few functions I used, but once I new where they were, it was a lot easier.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

But then I don't get the one row of icons I actually use. The ones that tell me what the font is, whether it's bold or not, etc.

Are you an idiot? There's a popup menu that does that whenever you highlight anything. It even gets out of you way if you are just doing something like cut and paste.

Besides, you should be using styles instead.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

It's a button bar that resizes itself to whatever size the window is. It's a button bar that adapts contextually to what you're doing. It's a button bar that makes the most used items larger, and thus easier to hit. It's a button bar that gets out of your way with a single keystroke if you don't want it there....

Really, the number of ways that the ribbon is not "just a buttonbar" is tiring to have to educate you about.

The "Ribbon" comprises more than just the buttons, it's the behavior and the design as well.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[grrrl]

The bottom line of all of this is that the entire set of tabs could be replaced by a single bar containing full-size icons, and that doing so would improve discoverability, would make it easier to learn the interface, and would reduce the number of clicks for most common tasks (because you wouldn't need to change to a different tab). If you think you need to elevate that many "commonly used" controls to the user's attention, you're doing it wrong.

but then it would look like OS X...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

That's odd, since clearly Insert Page Break and Insert Picture or Clip Art are on the same tab in both office 2007 and 2010.

Cross-references are... wait for it.. references. So if you're doing references, chances are you're already on the references tab.

As for your arguments about text label consistency... *EVERY* icon in the UI has a text label, with the exception of the Font and Paragraph icons, and those are so well known (due to being commonly used buttons in toolbars) that they felt it was unnecessary, and a waste of space to provide text for buttons everyone already knows.

But hey, don't let me take the wind out of your "inconsistency" argument.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Cinder6]

I don't think the ribbon is as bad as many feel, but I do have one gripe: the Home tab. If it acted as an aggregator and had duplicate entries for the most common tasks while also leaving the buttons in their appropriate spots, it would be fine. Instead, it actually takes functions away from their logical categories, which results in a lot of tab switching in some situations, and at other times it can be hard to tell if what you want will be under Home or something else. I don't have to use Office very much at my work, so it hasn't quite become automatic yet.

The more annoying issue for me is, as another poster mentioned, the removal of Ctrl+Shift+S as "Save As..." I often have to save new versions of documents, and having to click my way through it when I didn't have to before is annoying.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[grrrl]

as a means of coping with excel I tend to record shitloads of macros, which do the changing ribbons and clicking boxes for me. I recommend it. (though excel is often not smart enough to deal with minimally changing the input data to the macros and they just don't work, but recording a new macro on occasion is still better than death by 1000 clicks every. single. time.)

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Umm.. no. Hiding the ribbon makes it go away completely (other than the tab selectors). It does not change the size of the buttons in any way.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Walt Dismal]

I have to say I would not buy a car whose dashboard constantly changed the position and size of controls. I do not want to play a videogame, I want to drive. Likewise, I don't want to have to adapt myself to a constantly shifting word processor interface. Microsoft would have been well advised to give users the added option of having a frozen and static interface. It might not be trendy but it would be less frustrating for many to use.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Ctrl-F1 also works. As well as the chevron in the tab bar on office 2010.

Really, this feature is present in virtually any demo, and most of the descriptions of the ribbon. It's kind of hard to miss it, unless you'd rather just complain.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcavic]

My neural interface is on backorder, and typing with the mouse is cumbersome. So yes, I use the keyboard.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcavic]

Changing something just for the sake of changing it is bullshit. It has to be proven to be better first. You need specific reasons. But yes, reducing screen space without adding significant functionality is very bad, too.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcavic]

It's cluttered, it takes up lots of screen space, and it doesn't add any functionality that wasn't already available.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Wow, virtually everything you've said is flat out wrong for anyone other than a power user. Seriously.

Most users don't even understand what that little arrow next to a toolbar button means, they don't realize it means there are more options. Combining cut/paste/delete into a single button would confuse most people, and make them not even know you could do those things.

Hell, most people who use Word don't even know you can hide the ribbon by clicking the visible arrow to do so (nearly everyone that complains about the ribbon puts "taking up too much space" as their primary complaint).

By removing the group labels, you add confusion as to why things are grouped the way they are, which makes it harder to cognitively remember them. Knowing that some functions are grouped allows you to find similar groups.. but only when you cognitively make the jump as to HOW they are grouped.

A number of your complaints are specific to this layout (which is still under development and they say it will likely change). I agree that Zip isn't exactly "sharing", but the average person tends to only use it when they're going to send stuff to other people, or get stuff from other people.

Power users use file compression for more purposes, but most people simply would see no other purpose. Besides, some things just don't fit anywhere else..

Rarely used features are more important to make visible, not less visible.. because people don't know they're there otherwise. You'd be surprised how few people know you can sort by clicking on the header, or even that clicking on it twice sorts it the other way. Most people just don't get this stuff.

The File "blob" as you call it was a compromise. Originally, in office 2007, they made the file menu an "orb" above the tabs and out of the way, but too many people didn't even know it was there. This was put in there at the request of the users.

Remember, the ribbon is not for power users. It's for regular people, just as the Vista and 7 UI's were. Power users use keyboard shorcuts and context menus.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dgatwood]

The point of the ribbon was that they were trying to be innovative and change the way we do things. We got to "tabbed controls" by "violating the single document per window" paradigm. Yet noone seems to mind that today.

Actually, statistically, a sizable percentage of users never open a second tab, so I wouldn't go so far as to say nobody minds. This is true across all browsers, BTW. (That particular study used a small sample size that didn't demonstrate this, but there are other studies on the subject.) Having multiple things in a single window is really not a good fit for most people's mental models.

Many folks use tabs because they find it handy to see the names of pages rather than cycling through the windows until they get to the right one. In the end, the experience doesn't really differ that much, though, except for users who do everything with a mouse. Power-users who are used to keyboard navigation usually don't really see the benefit to tabs over windows, and naive users don't understand how tabs work at all. So they basically only provide a tangible benefit for people in a fairly narrow band in the middle somewhere—people who are both experienced computer users and who have not yet discovered the joys of carpal tunnel syndrome from mousing too much....

...do you have usability studies that you can reference regarding the labels "doing nothing"?

Do I have usability studies on a prerelease mock-up of an interface? Of course not.

Is it obvious that putting "Zip" (compress) under a "Send" label is remarkably confusing? Of course.

Don't get me wrong, labels on individual buttons are very useful. Labels on segmented controls and similar are also useful. Labels on groups of loosely related buttons... not so much.

... or that they did NOT use the data in their design...

Probably this, but it's also possible that some other aspect of the experience is broken, so people do tasks frequently that they shouldn't have to do frequently. In general, if you're doing the same thing over and over, that's usually an indication that the application is failing to store some preference that it should be storing. I don't personally run Windows, so I can't say which.

The overarching problem here is that you shouldn't need nearly that many controls to do 90% of your work. If you have more than a dozen buttons, there's something very fundamentally wrong, and it's probably not just the buttons, but rather the entire way you're looking at the problem that you are trying to solve....

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Dude. Right click taskbar, choose properties, change the option of Taskbar buttons to: "Combine when taskbar is full" or "Never combine".

But if you'd rather just complain...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[syousef]

Ctrl-F1 also works. As well as the chevron in the tab bar on office 2010.

Really, this feature is present in virtually any demo, and most of the descriptions of the ribbon. It's kind of hard to miss it, unless you'd rather just complain.

Well all I can do is tell you that I've not seen it in a demo, nor seen any of my colleagues use it. And I work with some pretty switched on people. You can believe that or not - that is your choice.

I think there is good reason to complain about the Ribbon, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate information on how to best use it since I'm stuck with it.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[trickyD1ck]

Ctrl+Z works in Explorer

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dgatwood]

You're basically trying to bring back the menu, turning the most common operations into multiple-click, semi-hidden operations. Wrong.

Not at all. I'm talking about a menu button for nearly identical choices (multiple variations of "copy", for example). It's a button that when you click it, a menu pops up. Choosing a selection from such a menu takes exactly the same number of clicks (1) as it does to choose that selection from individual buttons, yet reduces clutter in the user interface. Further, if that reduction in clutter prevented you from having to change tabs to get to the option, it takes two fewer clicks than having it as a separate button.

In fact, nearly every single suggestion I made provably does not add any clicks even in the worst case, and in most cases, requires fewer clicks to do the same thing.

Removing 'Add Columns' gains nothing, that space wouldn't be doing anything else. It's not used a lot, but when it is, it's nice to have it there.

It's a lot easier to click "choose columns" and click checkboxes by the ones you want in a sheet, then dismiss the sheet. Assuming that you typically stay on the main tab, then in the ribbon design, it takes one click to get to the View tab, a second click to choose the column to add or remove, plus a third click to get back to the main tab.

It similarly takes three clicks to do it with a sheet, but you get the nice, clean UI of getting to see all of the options all at once in a neatly laid out grid, which opens up the possibility for showing far more columns than are feasible in a linear list. It also means that it's a lot less clumsy to add or hide more than one column at a time.

A one-click auto-size is useful, this is pointless complaining.

The default behavior should be to auto-size the columns that are most likely to be relevant (the name being the obvious one), use ellipses in the middle of names when that isn't possible, and scale the rest. 99.99% of the time, that's what you want, and the rest of the time, auto-size isn't going to work any better than changing the window size. In effect, an auto-size button is a "fix the brokenness" button. Good UI design should not require such hacks.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

The ribbon was created not just to help people figure things out easier. It was created to address the fact that there were literally HUNDREDS of functions, and just throwing them on more and more menus was not scaling.

The ribbon was designed to deal with scale, as well as ease of use.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

You might try this link, it's really slick (requires silverlight or moonlight though):

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/learn-where-menu-and-toolbar-commands-are-in-office-2010-and-related-products-HA101794130.aspx

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Belial6]

I have to give you a thank you. The lack of text labels was my single biggest complaint with Windows 7.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

You might be interested in "God Mode" On Windows 7.

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-10423985-285/understanding-windows-7s-godmode/

And there is a search add-on that Microsoft made, as well as a nifty silverlight app that lets you choose things in an Office 2003 interface and it shows you how to get to it in 2007/10

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[tokul]

For example, search for "paste"

Why do I have to search for paste, if I know where it is? Get over your google/search-for-everything mentality and stop typing domain names in google search form.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Belial6]

Oops. I accedently thanked the anonymous cowered when I should have thanked you. No, I wouldn't rather complain. That solves my single biggest complaint with Windows 7. Yes. That really was my biggest complain with Windows 7.

Now I can go back to complaining that Windows 7 Home doesn't come with VirtualPC and Remote Desktop by default.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dgatwood]

Most users don't even understand what that little arrow next to a toolbar button means, they don't realize it means there are more options.

That doesn't mean it's a bad interface. It's a highly discoverable interface. The first time they click it, they see the menu pop up. Now they know that there are more options. The hard part is naming the button so that they understand what options are likely to be in it. Assuming you choose which options to group in this way correctly, even this aspect should not be all that hard. If it is, the mistake is not in using a button with a menu, but rather in your naming and/or grouping. (Okay, in extreme cases, this could mean that using it was a mistake if the right number of things to group together happened to be "none of them", but you know what I mean.)

By removing the group labels, you add confusion as to why things are grouped the way they are, which makes it harder to cognitively remember them.

In my experience, if you need labels on groups of buttons, it generally means that you didn't pick good enough labels or icons for the buttons within the group. Things that are conceptually similar should have names that sound conceptually similar, and their icons should be visually distinct such that even those dividers are unnecessary, much less named labels on groups of icons.

Further, if those labels are useful, that means that the user doesn't actually understand what those buttons do, and this typically indicates that the user in question should not have been exposed to those controls in the first place.

Rarely used features are more important to make visible, not less visible.. because people don't know they're there otherwise.

That's wrong at a fairly fundamental level. The goal of a user interface is not to show off every feature of an app. The goal of a user interface is to make it as easy as possible for users to discover the things they need in order to do their job. In other words, its main purpose is to get out of the way of the user. If a user interface is trying to highlight obscure features that the user probably will not need, the UI is an epic fail. Finding rarely used features is what help systems are for, not to mention the ability to search through menus by words in the name. (Or is that just a Mac OS X thing?)

Remember, the ribbon is not for power users. It's for regular people, just as the Vista and 7 UI's were. Power users use keyboard shorcuts and context menus.

If it's for regular users, then the ribbon for something like this should have roughly four buttons:

• Cut
• Copy
• Paste
• Share

At most, add one more button for "preferences". That's it. Everything else there is unnecessary and confusing for regular people. What I'm seeing here is not designed for ordinary users. It is designed to try to show those ordinary users everything that power users might potentially want to do, which quite frankly is just about the worst offense you can possibly commit as a UI designer short of making all your controls hot pink on neon green....

Put another way, I think this blog post sums it all up nicely.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

"Completely buried".

Seriously? There are 8 tabs in the Word ribbon. 8! Compared to 9 toplevel menus in Office 2003, and dozens of submenus and submenus of submenus, some of which opened dialogs with tabs. You could literally get down 10 or more levels.

The ribbon has 8 top level tabs, and a few advanced dialogs (with tabs, but all of those dialogs were there in 2003 as well), and a few options with dropdowns for variations.

I can't fathom how you can consider the ribbon to "bury" anything but find menus to be "revealing". It takes all of 3 seconds for me to scan through each tab if i'm doing so sequentially, and up to a couple minutes to scan through the menus of 2003. AND, office 2007 and 2010 have about 30% more functions than Office 2003.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[SomeStupidNickName12]

Spot on, people on /. hate change!

I am convinced that if we were all around during the invention and adoption of the light bulb the /. equivalent of the time would be complaining how much better the candle is.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[bemymonkey]

The problem is, IMO, that they changed the keyboard shortcuts along with the menus - ALT + letter + letter now has other letter combos for doing the same thing as before...

If all we're talking about is the actual graphical part of the interface, then yeah... clear winner with the Ribbon.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Soul-Burn666]

This has already been done to a great extent using the search box in the Start menu.
Want to start some application? Just write its name.
Want to reach some obscure Control Panel applet? Just write something that has to do with it.

Adding such functionality to controls and menu options can be awesome :)

Ultimately, what you get is an assisted command line interface - quick and expressive.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[maxwell demon]

wouldn't you just learn the keyboard shortcuts after a couple of times and do it even faster without moving your hands from the keys?

People still use keyboards?

It's still the best available method to enter text.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[hairyfeet]

The problem is they changed those around too Dave. Take for example ctrl-alt-s which before was save, now frankly i don't know WTF it does, page break?

And keyboard shortcuts are fine and dandy for the things you do every day, but what about the once a week stuff? Once or twice a month? that is why we have that nice red X on the right side of ALL applications, it is so muscle memory makes it trivial to hit. I've known folks that used Office since Office 97 and they knew by memory where every single thing they used with ANY frequency was. We are talking more than 40 keyboard shortcuts to remember if they tried to go strictly keyboard, that is a PITA.

Like I said to me the saving grace of the 2K7 ribbon is the quick access toolbar. With it I can kill the damned ribbon and just put the things I use the most on that teeny tiny strip. since it is at the top i can slam my mouse up and hit what I want, it doesn't suck up real estate like the ribbon (those of us with widescreens don't have as much vertical you know) and most importantly it lets me make the Office 2K7 UI MY way, with what I USE right where I need it.

Sadly I would consider the ribbon a classic example of the Ballmer fucked up way of doing things. Gates was an engineer, Ballmer a salesman. While Gates was toolbar and menu heavy he was all about giving the USER options. Ballmer is all about focus groups and PPTs and ripping off Apple. hell have you SEEN the Win 8 UI? What a clusterfuck! And he is gonna put Win 8 on ARM as well as x86? WTF? yeah good way to burn your customers when they buy that Win 8 ARM netbook and none of their Windows software works. I predict i'll be seeing a shitload of ARM windows devices dirt cheap on Craigslist.

If the ribbon does it for you? i'm happy for you, I truly am. But Gates would have given us the choice of going back if we wished, Ballmer think "Jobs doesn't give choices, we should be like Steve" and cocks it up. Would it REALLY be so horrible to let BOTH of us have what we want?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[RogerWilco]

I've used various flavours of Unix and Linux since 1994, but for a lot of tasks I would not use the commandline. Why? My main reason is that on the commandline you can only use the commands you know by heart. For some things the commandline is faster, but if you sit at the prompt and are wondering if there is a command to do X, there is no reliable way to discover it. Sure you can google if you're online, read lot's of man pages (if installed), or randomly try everything in /usr/bin, but that would miss built-in commands of your shell and probably other things. With a lot of commands being 2-4 characters long, there is no clue from the name alone about what it does.
Next to that there are subtle differences between the various flavours of Unix, even in basic commands like ls, top, uname.
Thirdly, the idea of Unix of having a lot of small tools that each do one small task well is often nice. But I find it breaks down at a certain level. For example I find that using a good IDE is miles ahead of the menagery of tools you need to have work together if you use the GNU commandline tools.

The commandline used to be great for scripting, but I find that nowadays I do most of that in Python. It still is great if you need to pipe things together.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Pascal Sartoretti]

I offer you a challenge then: Force yourself to use the ribbon interface until you become comfortable with it, then try and go back. After doing this tell me whether you still think the ribbon is a bad idea.

At first I hated it. After two years of ribbon usage, I only dislike it very much.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[FaxeTheCat]

>these are trivial operations we all have been doing for decades

Actually, no. My kids have not even lived for decades.

Improving GUI is not about making it simpler for BOFs like me and you. It is more about making it simpler for those who are not comfortable pulling down every menu to find the correct entry.

And by the way: I actually like the ribbon...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[FaxeTheCat]

>Given the focus on searching in Windows Vista and 7 I can't fathom why they haven't done this yet.

That was the single most constructive comment in this entire discussion (of which I have only read a little, but I extrapolate...)

The single most useful feature in Vista/7 is the start menu search. Menu/function search in Office would be brilliant! I want it. NOW!!!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Many cars today now ship with in-dash control systems that typically change things around depending on the mode their in. This is called making the best use of a small amount of space.

In-dash GPS's, and other information systems are often terribly designed in fact.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[RogerWilco]

If you're on Apple, then MS Office quite often isn't compatible with MS Office. I've used Office 2004, 2008 and 2011. Especially 2004 was very bad in compatibility with Office 2003, even though it claimed to use the same format. But even 2008 and 2011 mess up every now and then.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ocularsinister]

I used the bloody ribbon in Outlook until I just couldn't stand it any more. Its the Exchange web interface for me now, which has the added advantage, in chrome at least, of using *much* less memory than Outlook.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[neokushan]

Not to mention the "copy path" button they've added. I found that a utility that did this ended up being one of the first things I installed on a new PC so I welcome this development.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[neokushan]

Extract the file to a temp folder, copy all of the files into the first folder and a good GUI will leave each file highlighted for you to delete.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[beowulfcluster]

In Total Commander (easily my favourite Windows application, never mind file manager) you can do Mark > Compare Directories to mark files in one dir that aren't in the other (the zip file is treated as a directory). Then invert selection and delete. No need for a clean tmpdir.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[backwardMechanic]

Well, I don't like ribbons, but I'm not afraid of change. It wasn't just the ribbons, but they certainly helped. I finally changed my work PC to Linux.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ocularsinister]

Ummmm... no, they've cheated in that screen shot by removing the (admittedly pointless) header above the list of files to compensate for the extra space taken up by the ribbon bar. We don't know whether the header is gone completely or if they changed a configuration option, but either way this is not a like-for-like comparison: there is less available space for the application.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

Find is, and always has been, Control+F.

Control+H is, and always has been, the shortcut for Replace.

Your shortcut keys haven't changed, save for a few exceptions which nearly no one used. I promise that you didn't either.

Then they added all of the Alt+Letter shortcut keys so that EVERY command on the ribbon now has a shortcut.

As for height, unless you've eliminated all but one row of toolbar icons, the Ribbon is no taller than what we had before with menus and toolbars.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

No. You hover over ANY ribbon icon and the pop-up tells you:
    1) The name of the icon
    2) Its shortcut key (if there is one)
    3) What it does
    4) A picture of what it does (for some features)

Try it next time you're in MS Word 2007/2010.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

How is running your eye "down a menu" any different than running your eye "across a ribbon"?

And if you tell me that the Ribbon has multiple tabs, may I remind you that most UIs have multiple menus?

And if you prefer a toolbar over both, then may I suggest the Quick Access Toolbar which is easily customized in Office 2007/2010?

Common functions may be on different ribbon tabs, but 95% of what most users do is on the Home tab. This is supported by telemetry evidence. Add to that that the rest of the commands are organized by task, and you end up with less mouse-clicking than before.

Add to that the ease of discovery of new features due to the ribbon, and you get a lot of happy users.

It's my profession to train people on Microsoft Office. People who attend my classes on Office 2007/2010 accomplish more than those who attend Office 2003 classes because of the improved interface.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

Surely you know that the Ribbon is more consistent in feature locations than the old menu and toolbars were in prior versions of Office.

For example, to insert a page header in Word 2003 you would use the View menu, then Header/Footer. In Excel, you would use the File menu, then Page Setup. In Word 2007 and Excel 2007, you go to Insert, then Header/Footer.

And how does it "fuck up text editing"?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[beowulfcluster]

How does the ribbon scale, in a way that the menu does not?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Several ways. The most important of which is context sensitivity. It simply doesn't show items that are not available in the current context.

For example, it doesn't show the photo manipulation tools unless you actually have a photo selected. Those would have to be in the toolbar, but disabled in the 2003 menu system.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

There exists precisely what you're describing as a free add-on, by Microsoft.

You click into the text box (which is added to the ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar), start typing, and the entire ribbon starts to filter based on your typing. It even understands synonyms for commands, too (typing "search" will show you the Find command).

And, it also shows you where that command was hiding, and its shortcut key, in case you want to find it directly later.

Unfortunately, the plug-in's name escapes me at the moment. But I'm sure you could find it at office.microsoft.com.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[boethius78]

FTFA:

we investigated a number of options for using widescreen formats more effectively with the goal that the total vertical space available for content was the same after we added the ribbon as it had been in Windows 7. We removed the header at the top of the main view and moved the Details pane to the right side (and also did a visual revamp of the pane) while keeping a one-line status bar at the bottom of the window where we show you critical information.

I don't like the ribbon layout, as it makes it hard to find less frequently used features than a menu system, but you can hide the ribbon if you want to. As far as I'm concerned, if they leave the context menu alone, I can cope with it...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

In the References tab, you click on the Footnotes dialog button. It's the little arrow right next to the word "Footnotes".

Granted it's not as prominent as the giant "Insert Footnote" button, but 90% of users don't need funky footnotes.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[johnsnails]

I use linux as my primary os, but I do concede that the ribbon has made regular users 'power users', insofar as formatting and bringing visual appeal to their documents. Its no coincidence that today when some1 sends you a document you can quickly tell that it was made with Microsoft office (in a good way)! If the ribbon can be used in the file manager to make users able/aware of different features/possibilities than the overall affect is going to be positive! And perhaps it will provide an interface for accomplishing things the seasoned linux user takes for granted in his/her terminal. God forbid the same thing can be done by your grandma in a few mouse clicks *GASP* And your back to turning your desktop into a cube to impress your friends.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[JasterBobaMereel]

..Space that they took away in the previous version by adding the *$$%$ Ribbon ...!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[JasterBobaMereel]

The Menu took very little space, the default toolbar took a second line ... where was all the other space taken up ...?

I turned off the folding menus that hid little used items, because it made the used items appear in places i was not expecting, and hid items I might use but forgot about because they were hidden. The Ribbon hides most items so they do not get used .... is this MS's way of getting rid of the little used features they have added over the years?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[cbhacking]

Why the <REDACTED> do people keep spamming this "takes up screen real-estate" BS? Ever since the beta versions of Office 2007, it's been possible to hide the ribbon by double-clicking on the tab. You can show it again for one action by single-clicking a tab, or "pin" it again by double-clicking one. Once you do that, it takes no more space than the menu bar used to (and less than menu bar + even a single toolbar).

Apparently that wasn't discoverable enough, though - in Office 2010 they added a little arrow on the left side that you could click on to hide (or show) the ribbon. I guess even that wasn't enough, though...

Also, I hear there's this amazing thing called the World Wide Web, and it contains so much information that almost anything you could want to know that might reasonably be known by more than a few people is posted there. To help you find it, there are these nifty things called "search engines". I typed "How do I hide the ribbon?" into a few of them, and got lots and lots of helpful links!
*ROLLS EYES*

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[JasterBobaMereel]

People generally complain about the ribbon, because it is a bad design, some people like it (love it even), some people cannot get on with it, looking at the comments above some people who use it every day and have done so for prolonged periods, still do not like it ...

This should tell you it is not people who decided in 5 minutes they did not like it and never used it again, these are people forced to use it, who still hate it 5 years later

I disliked that MS kept moving things around the menus with each new version, I disliked the folding menus, I disliked the ribbon, I still dislike the ribbon, I use it because I cannot turn it off ... When I use software without the ribbon, I mostly don't notice because it is easy... When I use anything with the Ribbon I notice because it gets in my way, Still, after 5 years of using it on a daily basis ...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[icebrain]

I don't want an interface that "contextually adapts" to what it thinks I'm doing. I don't want a button bar that makes me have to dig for commands so that it can make the things it thinks I use most bigger--maybe that would be good for my grandmother (who uses the phones with the super-large buttons) but I still have 20:15 vision.

If a button doesn't apply in a given situation, gray it out. That way I know it can't be used. Don't hide it somewhere and leave me spending five minutes wondering "where the hell did it go?" Leave all of my commands up on the screen so that they're in the same place every time I need them and don't have to dig through tabs or menus or anything to find them. And make the interface consistent, with everything in neat rows and about the same size instead of haphazardly shotgunned onto a menu bar.

I still run Office 2003 at home and at work, something I'm thankful for every day.

I'm getting really tired of interfaces (Office, Firefox, and now Explorer) that decide to move commands around and reduce them to the "grandma functions" and making it tedious (if even possible at all) to get the old interface back.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Gen_Music]

But if they change all the keyboard shortcuts, like they did before, you can't minimise the ribbon. You see what MS has done there??

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Anonymous Coward]

"Improving GUI is not about making it simpler for BOFs like me and you. It is more about making it simpler for those who are not comfortable pulling down every menu to find the correct entry."

"And by the way: I actually like the ribbon"

Now there's a surprise!

In that case, you're an idiot, like the other tiny minority of idiots who like the Ribbon. The Ribbon is an epic fail, and it's a million times worse because the tossers at Microsoft (i.e. Jensen Harris and his crew of latte sipping, ponytail wearing tossers) FORCE you to use it, and in turn, hundreds of millions of workers are FORCED by their employers to use this crap, even though it's costing their employers hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted time.

Jensen Harris and the idiots at Microsoft's 'user interface design' department are simply trying to justify their own existence, by wasting time on more and more stupid and ludicrous 'improvements' to the Windows user interface, and instead they are pissing off their customers. Who is the moron who hired Jensen Harris, and why is he paying him money for making Microsoft's customers hate them?

If you want to know what sort of user interface customers want, ASK them, and GIVE THEM CHOICES.

Of course, there is no way on earth that the tossers in Jensen Harris's team will give us the CHOICE to use the old menu system, because then - boo hoo - poor Jensen would be sacked because 95% of the users would get rid of the Ribbon immediately and do things the proper way - with pull down menus.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[gbjbaanb]

actually, I complain about the snap-to-border feature. If I want to see a lot of the app I'm working in, I maximise it. Simple. What the snap-to thing did for me was the half-maximise an app when I was moving it out of the way of something else.

I didn't see much need for it all in all, so I disabled it under the 'accessibility' options. (on W7, Ease of access centre, 'make the mouse easier to use', 'prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to edge of screen' checkbox).

I find the Ribbon to be a mixed bag. If I use an app that I hardly use, then it makes sense - big icons I can browse through to find what I'm looking for. For apps that i know how to use, then its a bit of a retrograde thing. I guess MS is all for the 'n00b' users nowadays - of at least that's probably who their HCI teams are looking at.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Maury Markowitz]

> It leaves less room for viewing my email, or my document, or my spreadsheet

I known everyone will start yelling "fanboy", but that's fine - it's precisely this issue that made Lion completely change the way I use my computer. In the past I found the whole "Spaces" thing too much trouble to use, and had a bunch of windows open on the screen. Since it's a laptop things would get messy, so I'd close windows to clean up. Invariably that's the window I wanted.

Under Lion, Spaces are super-easy to get around in because of the swiping. I put everything I can into full screen mode and can fly between them - faster than looking for the window in a single screen. Better yet, when you're in full screen, all the extraneous stuff is hidden - the menu bar, content within the windows, scroll bars, etc. It's not much on a desktop, but seriously, on my laptop the difference is huge.

That MS is missing this, and introducing a feature that's really just a marketing tool, says everything you need to know about the now irrelevant company. Normally it's not that their stuff is bad, just meh. But now they can't even get that right.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[quetwo]

For me, it's not about change, it's about not being able to see all the options in one shot, and generally poor organization. For example, if you want to make some text bold in Word, where do you go? First assumption would be the Formatting tab. Page Layout? Oh, that's right -- they stuck it in Home. How about adding text to the footer? Home? Nope. Page Layout? Nope. Formatting? Nope. Insert?! Yeah. Oh, and the best one. Where do you set the tab stops? Home? Page Layout? View? Nowhere. You have to click a little (as in 10x10px) square in the lower right corner of the Paragraph section of Home, look at the dialog box and click on the Tabs button. Something that was on a toolbar since Word for DOS is now three clicks away, hidden and very obsecure.

At least when we had menus things were somewhat organized. Now it's a matter of hunting and pecking as to where "they" decided to put it in the ribbon. It's not like I can really move things around to work around how I work (like with toolbars), but I have to learn how their UI guys think I work (they never meet me).

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[AmiMoJo]

Ribbons change all the time, and when you need a function you need to realize first what ribbon are you seeing right now - and then what ribbon to activate instead of this one.

Menus constantly change too because they are contextual, e.g. menu styling options are greyed out when the text cursor is not in a table. At least with a ribbon you switch to the right tab once and then everything is in front of you. Moving the cursor enables and disables icons visibly rather than you having to switch back and forth between the cursor and the menu.

Menus are words that can be read much faster.

Wrong. The human brain recognises pictures faster than words. In fact when reading we tend to recognise words based on shape and context, and only drill down to actual character recognition if that fails. One of the advantages of Chinese is that it can be read very very quickly due to using pictures. Chinese is also less prone to dyslexia. Icons also pack a lot more information into a given space. That is why everything is going pictographic now.

Ribbons also take far more space on the screen. They can be minimized, though, at expense of another delay.

Unlike menus which cover much of the screen when you open them because there are so many entries and which force you to waste time clicking on them to navigate to the option you want? With a ribbon everything is right in front of you and instantly visible, or at most a single click of a tab away. Since you tend to do several related tasks at once (e.g. setting the font, the point size and then the colour) that maximum one click on a tab saves several clicks through menus. Compared to menus ribbons are more compact when you actually use them.

Ribbons have no hierarchy beyond the two levels. If you need "Edit" - "Table" - Insert Row" you can't do that. You have to have a ribbon for "Table" and within that ribbon you cram everything else.

Have you even looked at the Office 2010 ribbons? They group related tasks with borders and panes, much like how related tasks are grouped on menus with separators. As I said above, once you have the Table tab selected everything is one click away, where as with a menu it is at least two.

What if you run out of space? Well, then there is another horrific feature of ribbons

What if you run out of space? Well, then there is another horrific feature of menus. Multiple columns, sub-menus, sub-windows full of tabs.

Ribbons in Office work really well. No more hunting through menus, no more having to display each and every toolbar you need one at a time because there is no way to layer them.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Arrow_Raider]

Here's a protip: Double click on a ribbon tab and watch it collapse, saving your precious vertical space.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[AP31R0N]

Love the ribbons. Once i saw the pattern it made the interface shallower (less clicks to get to what i want).

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Chicken04GTO]

"Generally after 2 years of getting used to it, I can find things almost 75% as quickly as I could in the menu interface"

Two years later and still not as fast as you used to be. I call that UI design failure.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Maury Markowitz]

> throwing it all into a deep nasty hole and leaving us as slow as the noob

The irony of this, of course, is that MS pushed ribbons because their research showed that it sped up the learning curve for noobs.

In 2008? Is there a big pile of the planet that hasn't already used Office 2003? One so worth impressing that you're willing to piss off the rest of the planet to get their money?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[AmiMoJo]

Spot on. I know that I have been resistant to change in the past, but sometimes it's worth the small amount of effort required.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Ol Olsoc]

This is only one data point. I have used both the ribbon and the traditional style interface in Office. The ribbon interface is a good bit slower. I can simply work faster in the old interface.

Keyboard commands are still there, but the more you use, the longer it takes to get used to the ribbon. I use them, and much of the time in the old menu system, I'd use them to jog my memory. That was quick. not so now.

As for your personal beliefs about people resisting change. Sure, some do. I don't think this is one of those cases though. The menu interface has been around for a long time, and it simply works. It's like the controls on a car. They work, and all drivers are familiar with them.

We don't see many other programs using the ribbon - maybe there is a reason for that. Change? The ribbon severely reeks of change just for the sake of change. Were people complaining about the menu system? Was there something in the old system that didn't work? As fo an improvement in user design, what other software gets you calls from frustrated users asking "How do I open a file?", and you answer "See that little ball in the upper left hand corner?". Many times the response has been "You gotta be kidding!"

It's pretty hard to argue that an interface where you can't figure out how to open a file is better. It's not an improvement. And you'll notice that it wasn't implemented on the Mac side of office. One of the benefits of a later release cycle is that they got to hear the howls of dismay.

And what kind of paternalism is it to make a product, users complain, and they are just "resisting change." The problem is, there are alternatives. MS doesn't have quite the monopoly they used to. So the Luddites can have a functioning Office suite without a ribbon interface. They can either not update, use a free Office suite, switch over to a different OS, or even other commercial solutions. As for me, I use Office for Mac or Open Office on the PC side. Three years of futzing with the ribbon have convinced me that my initial reaction was correct.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ConceptJunkie]

Only because they got rid of a bunch of space-wasting crap that shouldn't have been there in the first place... stuff that any sane user would have immediately turned off to begin with.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jeff4747]

Because when it's "buried" in the menus, there's a trail of breadcrumbs to find it. "I want to do something with a table, so it's probably under the table menu...." and so on.

When it's "buried" in the ribbon, you have to mouse over a lot of pictures to find the one you want, because the ribbon's tabs are poorly organized.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Clsid]

The issue here is that Ribbon is for newbies and experts hate it. I honestly believe that somebody with zero experience in previous Microsoft suites will find Ribbon easier to work with. Ribbon is the new toolbar in a way. Experts tend to learn keyboard shortcuts in any case so this way they can cater to both worlds so it is ok I think.

Also as somebody said before, changing an application you are familiar with, just for the sake of adding Ribbon can be pretty annoying but hardly a showstopper.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ConceptJunkie]

Yeah... the whole ribbon vs. menu argument is really kind of moot because either way, you're still using Office, and that's a whole lot of DEEP HURTING regardless of the UI.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ConceptJunkie]

I don't see anyone complaining about Windows 7's snap to the boarder feature.

I am. I hate it. Snapping to the border isn't so bad, but it always resizes the window to an amazingly unuseful size. I'm constantly having to fight with the thing when I want to arrange a couple of windows so I can see them both at the same time.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[cjcela]

You have to assume a degree of proficiency and knowledge to use a computer. And that takes some effort, which is a good thing, because you grow while learning it. Most people in my generation can adapt to pretty much any user interface (i.e. I use Window, Linux, and OS X with close to equal proficiency in all of them, although I tend to prefer unices), have a quite detailed understanding of the underlying hardware, and if needed can learn a new programming language in less than a week (ok, at least a new imperative programming language). Newer generations have been progressively dumbed down into oblivion, and by making it simpler for them, we are not doing them any favor. You can certainly choose to make the world more comfortable to your children, by removing obstacles that would force them to adapt. But in my opinion, by doing so, you are contributing to the problem.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mvdwege]

How is running your eye "down a menu" any different than running your eye "across a ribbon"?

If it isn't any different, then what is the justification for the ribbon?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ConceptJunkie]

That happens to me a lot. Inevitably, when Microsoft makes the UI "smart" enough to "know" what I'm trying to do, it is almost always wrong... at least for me. I just wish they could come up with UI improvements (or at least what they think are improvements) that don't make things worse for people who actually have a little experience.

Functionally, Explorer hasn't gotten any better since Windows 2000, IMO. At least crashes less than it used to, but I always thought it was the weakest and most poorly designed part of Windows, at with every new release it never gets better.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ConceptJunkie]

You know I find it ironic that disabling this so-called usability feature is in a section called "Make the mouse easier to use".

It's not often they are so upfront about admitting their mistakes.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ConceptJunkie]

Like I said elsewhere, ribbon or menu, you're still using Word and there's no UI that could make that steaming pile worth using.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[micahjc]

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[djdanlib]

No need to defend yourself, I think. Being helpful is good, and thanking someone else for help is good. Glad to be of assistance!

The Ctrl-F1 tip was new to me as well. I wish he'd stopped there, it would have been fine.

The chevron is only in Office 2010 so far. It isn't in 2007, which was the chief offender to most of us. It isn't immediately obvious in the normal GUI nor was the hiding functionality shown or mentioned in any demo I ever saw... and I saw quite a few when MS was developing the technology... so I don't know which demo that poster saw, but apparently there was no overlap among the demos we've seen.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[daid303]

I've seen VB6 code that's pretty and maintainable. Doesn't mean it's not very easy to produce a stinking pile of shit with it. Same with Perl. I've only had the "honor" to debug a perl script once, and it made sure I never ever wanted to touch it again.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[b0bby]

I don't have any strong feelings about the ribbon one way or another - my uses for Word and Excel are pretty basic usually. I can say, however, that the general "I don't know anything about computers" users here prefer the ribbon & don't like to go back to a machine with 2003 on it.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Why do you have to mouse over anything? All icons have text labels except for the Font and Paragraph icons

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcmonkey]

Why the <REDACTED> do people keep spamming this "takes up screen real-estate" BS? Ever since the beta versions of Office 2007, it's been possible to hide the ribbon by double-clicking on the tab. You can show it again for one action by single-clicking a tab, or "pin" it again by double-clicking one. Once you do that, it takes no more space than the menu bar used to (and less than menu bar + even a single toolbar).

You're making my point.

What if I told you my poo didn't stink? What if I took a big dump right in the middle of your kitchen table, and told you it didn't have a single odor?

You might argue that point, and insist my poo does in fact stink. And then I'd retort, well, if I take my poo outside, you won't smell it in your kitchen any more. Therefor, my poo does not stink.

I hope the logical flaw in that argument is obvious. If my poo didn't stink, I wouldn't need to remove it to remove the smell.

So if the ribbon doesn't take up a lot of space, or any more space than the previous menus and icons, why would I need to minimize it?

In fact, one of the first things I figured out with Office 2010 was how to minimize the ribbon to reclaim that space. I'm not saying this space on my screen is gone and never coming back (at least for the ribbon; there are other display elements which are not hid so easily). I'm saying, the utility of the old menu system is gone.

With the old menu/icon bars, I could resize. I could choose which icons display. Someone in another post said the ribbon is same size as 3 rows of icons in the old system. Which again, is making my point.

3 rows of icons in the old system was too much for me. For most Office apps I had 1 row of icons, maybe 2. Call me crazy, but I like to see the document I'm working on, not the application.

I'm new to Office 2010, still learning, but I haven't found a way to customize the ribbon to that extant. It's either all or nothing. So I go with nothing.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

There's two sides to that "disabled" story. If you gray out functions that can't be used, then people have no idea how to enable them. It's right there, why can i' use the damn thing!

Good UI design dictates that you hide things that are not enabled.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Killjoy_NL]

Oh please, there is no pleasing some people.
This is the way they are going with the interface and from my personal experience of not liking the ribbon in the beginning I gave it a fair chance and by now I work faster with the ribbon than with the old style menus.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Politburo]

I call it PEBKAC. 2 years? Cmon. The ribbon isn't perfect, sure, but the flaws are for the most part minor and any real confusion is cleared up in 5 minutes via google.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[LordLimecat]

Actually, statistically, a sizable percentage of users [noahmasterson.com] never open a second tab,

Thats 15% of a badly sampled group of 46 users. No matter how you look at it, it is neither "statistically significant" (as it doesnt really qualify as a good sampling) nor is it a major percentage. He also interprets his data badly and injects his own bias: I believe the participants who use tabs “some of the time” probably veer closer to “never” than “always.” What is his grounds for that statement?

In other words, nothing about that conclusion is trustworthy.

Is it obvious that putting "Zip" (compress) under a "Send" label is remarkably confusing? Of course.
Don't get me wrong, labels on individual buttons are very useful. Labels on segmented controls and similar are also useful. Labels on groups of loosely related buttons... not so much.

Once again you have no data to back up your statements. They may be true in YOUR opinion, but to declare them true for large populations of users is just not a valid statement without some kind of evidence.

Probably this, but it's also possible that some other aspect of the experience is broken, so people do tasks frequently that they shouldn't have to do frequently. In general, if you're doing the same thing over and over, that's usually an indication that the application is failing to store some preference that it should be storing.

Im going to disagree. You may cut and paste several thousand times while attempting to sort out a music library; but to say that explorer is supposed to be smart enough to figure out how to arrange my files the way I want is ridiculous. Explorer is a file manager, not a guessing machine. Its supposed to show me my files and enable me to work with them, not try to automate tasks.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[ginbot462]

I'm worried our future generations won't know the proper hate for the prequels. All should watch the Plinket reviews.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[tibit]

?! Ctrl-S was save. I don't even know what Ctrl-Alt-S was. Obviously my days of using MS Office ended a decade ago. Now I only install it once in a while on someone's machine.

If remembering 40 keyboard shortcuts is "hard" to someone, maybe they should revisit how they approach their work and mastery of their tools. A computer with software running on it is a tool. If you can't be bothered to learn to use the software efficiently, you're a lazy bummer that I have no respect for. I'm pretty sure I can recall more than 100 shortcuts -- that includes ones for WordStar/NewWord/joe, some vi commands, MS Office/Windows shortcuts, Apple OS X shortcuts, Visual Studio shortcuts, Qt Creator shortcuts (love those!), shortcuts in the project I work on, LyX shortcuts... And that's without trying particularly hard on my end -- I consider myself somewhat lazy.

I don't think Ballmer has much in the way of input into any UI design. He sees the demos, makes a comment here and there, and that's it. Because, as you said, he's not Gates. DUH.

I don't think that Office toolbars are very useful at all. When I recently installed Office 2010 and checked it out on a sample document, I didn't even touch the mouse. That confirmed, in my mind, that people have a rather irrational fear of new stuff, and they overblow their concerns. If you're a mouse-driving person, it shouldn't take longer than a day to become fully proficient in Office's ribbon bar. It's not rocket science, you just have to know how to learn stuff. Over the last decade I went through 4 processor architectures in my designs, every one required relearning everything as their peripherals, organization, programming languages and idiomatic approaches to common problems (patterns) were all different.

PS. Yep, I used NewWord on Memotech MTX 512 and Morrow MD-3. At one point I got it to run on ABC 80, and then ABC 802.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[LordLimecat]

I mostly agree but...

I don't like the ribbon layout, as it makes it hard to find less frequently used features than a menu system,

WHAT "less frequently used features"? Theres like a grand total of 20 things you can do in a file manager; its not like you have to hunt for mail merge or something.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcmonkey]

Find is, and always has been, Control+F.

Control+H is, and always has been, the shortcut for Replace.

Your shortcut keys haven't changed, save for a few exceptions which nearly no one used. I promise that you didn't either.

Then they added all of the Alt+Letter shortcut keys so that EVERY command on the ribbon now has a shortcut.

As for height, unless you've eliminated all but one row of toolbar icons, the Ribbon is no taller than what we had before with menus and toolbars.

I did not know that. I had always done Control+F to bring up the Find window and click over to the Replace tab. Now I have Control+H. I'm not afraid to learn new things.

But to say Control+F hasn't changed is false. Where it used to open that little window with the Find/Replace/Go To tabs, Control+F now opens up a pane on the left running the height of the document window.

What in FSM's name is MS doing with all these panes? Is there something wrong with me being able to see the document I'm working on?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[gweihir]

The ribbon hogs vertical screen-space. That is an absolute faux-pas and can only be attributed to beginner-level understanding of UI design. It also contradicts the way people find functional elements. True, if you use only a moron-level subset of the interface, the ribbon is better. But there are quite a few people that are not morons and are actually forced to use MS products despite their better judgment. To these, the ribbon adds insult to injury.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[gweihir]

This reminds me that people universally hated VI for its stateful interface. But now people laud ribbons that are just as stateful! Does it mean that pretty pictures are more important than usability?

No that just means Windows users a way more easy to manipulate than UNIX users. No surprise here. Mode in UI is a bad idea, unless you can stay long stretches (~hours) in one. With the ribbon you end up switching all the time. Why can't MS admit they messed up here? Why do they force this unpleasant and inefficient UI on everybody? Is this really just to differentiate them and to delay the point where their product will be entirely generic by a little while? If so, I call this greedy, cruel and evil.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Kashgarinn]

The thing is, it's not an improvement even though they think it is.

There is one good reason why the old system works better: We have relation-based memories, so logical drop-down menus work very, very well because you remember what you need to do by the relationsship from the current window to the command you're looking for, _even_though_it's_longer_to_navigate_.

The ribbon system (especially the home tab) is an arbitrary assortment of buttons and placement, so you have to specifically remember the arbitrary layout, which is harder for us humans (especially if another person than you chooses the arbitration).

What they should have done is to have the ribbon tabs completely logical, and then have a "favorites" tab where you can move what you want to that tab, and customize the buttons as you want, then you both use a relational-memory as well as build your own arbitrary layout which is easy for you to remember because you made it yourself.

This is how a ribbon system should be done.

- And yes, not allowing addons to create their own tabs sucks hard.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[TarMil]

Some people, when confronted with something they don't agree with, think "I know, I'll use a quote." Now they haven't moved the topic forward in any way.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Politburo]

"I actually need and use my email"

Love it. The literally millions of people who do just fine with Outlook and the ribbon obviously don't "need" or "actually use" their email, no.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcmonkey]

Rarely used features are more important to make visible, not less visible.. because people don't know they're there otherwise.

You realize that's insane, don't you?

Go in to your bathroom. Looks at the things on the counter around the sink. What do you see?

Hand soap? Toothbrush? Hair brush? Do you see the things you use every day?

Now kneel down and look in to the cabinet under the sink. What's in there? What's waaaay in the back? The stuff you haven't see in years.

Why isn't that stuff on the counter? That's the rarely used stuff, the stuff you forget about. Why don't you keep that where it's easy to find?

There are some exceptions. For example, a fire extinguisher. That's something which in most cases is rarely used, but you want it someplace easy to find in a hurry.

But for most things, the things we use the most should be quickest to find.

A few posts have mentioned all the data MS crunched to come up with the ribbon.

To that I say, so frackin' what? I don't care if 7 billion people are changing their line spacing options every day. That's not an option I use. In the old icon system, I could move the line spacing option off to the side, or remove it entirely, while the folks who use that option could keep it handy.

With the ribbon, it's all or nothing. If I don't like having the line spacing button front and center on my screen? I can hide the ribbon. I can't add or remove commands. I can't rearrange or regroup commands.

So it takes up more room and offers less functionality than the old icon toolbars.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Politburo]

How many 'commands' do you think Word has? (NB: This is different from how many commands you actually use) How exactly are they all supposed to be up on the screen at all times, and none hidden in menus?

That certainly wasn't the case in Office 2003, so it's odd that you hold it up as an ideal.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Gamer_2k4]

Well, I think the issue is that they keep reinventing the wheel, and the result is that instead of people being more productive with a tool they are familiar with, the changes in the UI keeps getting in the way.

Reinventing the wheel isn't a bad thing when your target market is people who don't know what a wheel is. Besides, if the wheel had never been reinvented, we'd still be rolling cargo along on logs.

Change isn't bad.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Politburo]

Page break, picture, and cross-reference are all on the insert tab.

It's odd how you have 'many common cases' where the ribbon slows you down, but didn't articulate one (except the obvious-bullshit one).

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Politburo]

There has always been a page in the help file listing keyboard shortcuts.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jitterman]

I'll throw in on your side. It's fine for me, and I *do* prefer it over the old menu style. People will have preferences of course, but I personally am cool with it.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[next_ghost]

I work on a helpdesk so I have to know Office and help people with it, Office 2007 is significantly easier to use from the point of view of a computer illiterate than Office 2003 by my observations.

That's true, but isn't that the biggest problem? Dumbing computers down to accomodate computer illiterates at all costs does more harm than good because it creates the notion that the illiterates already know everything they need to know and don't need to learn anything new.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[next_ghost]

For some things the commandline is faster, but if you sit at the prompt and are wondering if there is a command to do X, there is no reliable way to discover it.

apropos X. It's not perfect, but it does the job most of the time.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[bioster]

I offer you a challenge then: Force yourself to use the ribbon interface until you become comfortable with it, then try and go back. After doing this tell me whether you still think the ribbon is a bad idea.

I have used the ribbon interface until I became "comfortable" with it. I had to do this because I cannot go back, at work. I have to use the software I have to use, and it's ribbon. I dislike the ribbon, and I think it is a bad idea.

The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.

Now, this is why I'm posting. I'd like to ask you why you think the ribbon is an improvement in UI? Personally, I find it cluttered and messy. I like the idea of customizing it, but if I then prune it down to the point where it's simple and shows me only the things I use frequently, how do I get to the commands that I use infrequently?

Maybe I just don't get the ribbon, and I'm missing something fundamental that makes it easy to use. However, I would argue that I'm a fairly technical person and if I don't get it then the average person probably doesn't either. The only advantage I see with the ribbon is a completely non-technical person will be comforted by all the big icons... however, I doubt they'll be any more productive.

So, please... why is the ribbon a better UI? What am I missing?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll quote Jamie Zawinski." Now they have brain damage.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jitterman]

Sorry, but at a time when 1280x720 is very much on the low end of most video cards' settings, I just haven't had issues with ribbons, menus, or title bars stealing useful space from me. Not hating, just saying that I don't find it to be a problem.

Interestingly, I *do* get annoyed when shortcuts change, and don't feel that it's unreasonable to expect them to remain the same.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

That panel on the left is still find.

Control + F previous opened a "Find" dialog box. Now it opens the "Find" panel.

You'll find the panel to be way better than the dialog box because it shows you every occurance of the term you search for, in context. It makes finding things a lot easier. Try it! :)

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Politburo]

Page setup? Use the breakout button. It's next to the text that says "Page Setup".

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[bored]

It's a button bar that resizes itself to whatever size the window is. It's a button bar that adapts contextually to what you're doing. It's a button bar that makes the most used items larger, and thus easier to hit. It's a button bar that gets out of your way with a single keystroke if you don't want it there....

Except that one of the most important aspects of _GOOD_ UI design is consistency. Constantly moving things around violates this principal. Consistent interfaces are boring because the user knows what to expect. Microsoft's problems is that boring interfaces don't get people excited about spending $300 to upgrade their OS/office package.

MS has totally jumped the shark, the day that alt-f,s stopped saving in MS products was the beginning of the end. When they started hiding the keyboard shortcuts by default might be another choice. Frankly, the windows UI is a mess. When I first installed the win7 betas I proceeded to start like 8 different applications that _SHIP_ with windows and they were all using different UI paradigms.

Really, the number of ways that the ribbon is not "just a buttonbar" is tiring to have to educate you about.

Yah, I know... Its a _TABBED_ button bar, christ, its shit because it doesn't really make anything clearer, and you have to "explore" it 3/4 of the time by mousing over everything to find what the fck your trying to do. Frequently little icons can't replace two words of text to describe a function. It may make it easier for grandma who uses word once a month, but it does nothing for people who sit at it all day, unless they are the kind of people who can't learn keyboard shortcuts. But even then, I think there is a class of people who are totally screwed. My mother is one of those people who takes notes when you show her how to do something on a computer. In the past those notes would be a simple as "click table" "click insert" now its like "click on the funny green icon with the square in the middle, and a white line through it, if you can't find the square click this other button"

Granted the menus in office 2003 were a mess, but they could have fixed 99% of the problems by cleaning up the menus and properly categorizing everything. Instead they decided to create yet another UI paradigm with a different set of strengths/weaknesses. The fact that we are having this discussion means its possible that in balance, the new UI isn't significantly better than the old one, just different.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Politburo]

You don't have to click. Alt+F, A.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[next_ghost]

Did the zip folder contain any files with the same name as files that were in the folder? When prompted for overwrite I presume you click no.

Bash solution:

1) unpack the zip file in a clean directory tmpdir 2) cd tmpdir; for f in *; do rm ../$f; done

Oops. You just trashed any original files with conflicting names.

Big deal, just throw in if ! cmp -s $f ../$f; then ... in step 2. Unzip does ask before overwriting files unless it's run with -o. So the only files from the original directory you will trash are those that you still have in the archive. And if you really want perfection, nothing keeps you from pulling the list of files to delete by sorting them by creation date. It's about as fast in shell as it is in GUI. Modification date is useless because it's kept from the archive.

In the GUI, you set it to a thumbnail view, scroll down until you see camping pics, click the first, control click the last one, ah but you went to a car show in the middle of the trip, she won't want those, so you control click around that batch, and then individually... control click out a few bad shots, along with the candid shot you grabbed of your wife sunbathing, and take the jumbled highlighted set, right click, send to DVD, the burn data disc window pops up, and your done.

What's the bash solution?

Launch GUI image manager and use the right tool for the job. Unless you have the pictures tagged beforehand. In that case, you simply pull the list of files with the right set of tags and hand them over to the burning tool.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Politburo]

Interesting that you are (rightly) quick to consult the help file in Office 2003, but not in Office 2010. It still exists.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[vux984]

So what you're saying is that your GUI won't let me merge a set of files from a zip file into an existing directory?
It will, but its generally a stupid idea that leads to bad things whether you use the command line or a gui.

I tend to unzip to a separate folder, and then copy/paste or drag/drop to the true target folder.

Or are you saying no one can make mistakes on a GUI?

Of course not. I'm saying the gui defaults help minimize them.

Or maybe someone clicked "overwrite all" automatically, without thinking.

Then we're going to be recovering from backups regardless of whether we used the GUI or Command line, and your example of undoing the damage with some clever command line scripting is moot.

When GUIs present nag pop-ups all the time one develops a tendency to always click automatically some default buttons.

Command lines will prompt for overwriting files as well, (unless you set the switches not to ask.) This isn't restricted to GUIs.

GUIs are fine for searching visually among a set of images.

But that's still file management. And it wasn't just the visual search that set my example apart, it was the ability to interactively select a sub-set of the files that would have extremely cumbersome to do via a command line without typing out long lists of individual filenames.

The problem is people who do not know how to use the best tool for each job. When the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail, I'm sure you've heard that one.

Yeah, but mastering the command line is a huge investment of time, with low dividends for most people.

Just as its asinine suggesting that everyone learn SQL because it would make generating a list of their contacts who live in city Y, work for company Z, and don't have CxO in their job description easier.

SQL might well be the best tool for the job... but learning SQL and keeping it fresh enough to use on demand when you only actually need sophisticated queries once every 3 months is silly. Better to just brute force it with a couple finds and then groom the resulting list manually than to take a month off learn sql, write your elegant query and then forget most of it before you need another one.

That, is how most people find the command line. Great tool, dimly aware its powerful, don't want to spend months mastering it just so they can save a few hours a couple times a year when it would really make a difference.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[TangoMargarine]

The one thing I don't get with MS, why not make it an optional style.

I didn't either, but in the article (yeah, I know...) the author explains that they would have to add the new features into the old layout and apparently that would just be too much work. Which makes a little bit of sense I guess.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[moichido]

Right....

My work forced me to use the ribbon interface.

It sucks and continues to suck.

And change for the sake of change is not a correct attitude for any human interface. I would love to see your justfication for "the ribbon is an improvement in user interface design". It IS personal.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

It has pretty pictures, larger labels, and is interactive. It uses menus, galleries, buttons, checkboxes, and other controls to make things faster and nearly eliminates dialog boxes to speed things up. I could go on....

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Rudisaurus]

That's cool! I actually didn't know it did this, and I've used Office 2007 for a few years now. I suspect that's the case for more than a few other users. Thanks!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Jon_S]

If you were using a GUI, you probably wouldn't have unzipped the files into the wrong directory in the first place.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Alt-F, S works fine here in all office applications that have file saving.

Why is it that everyone who complains about how crappy office is seems to use things that just aren't true for their arguments?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Software isn't your bathroom. It can adapt to understand the context of your situation. Imagine if the toilet paper showed up when you sat on the stool, or the toothpaste suddenly appeared when you picked up your toothbrush. The real word doesn't work that way, but software can.

The fact that the most requested features in Microsoft products are already in the product goes a long way towards proving that seldom used features should be visible when you want them.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Might I suggest :
perl -MCPAN -e 'install ACME::Humor'

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[geedubyoo]

I'm so glad to see your comment "not every human is equally adept in recognizing images". I thought it might just be me: for years I've been inadvertently clicking on the print icon instead of the save icon. To my mind, they are generally rectangular and similar colours; unless I stop and think about it for a second there's a 50% chance I'll hit the wrong one. Recently, I made the mistake of putting bookmark icons for Gmail and BBC iPlayer next to each other and removing the text. Both icons are reddish and have triangular bits.

Although I much prefer text based interfaces, I appreciate that some people have problems distinguishing words. A good UI needs to give people the choice.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[u38cg]

Whatever you're doing it that you really can't do it with another twenty pixels...you're doing it wrong. If you really have that little space, try selling your monitor to a museum.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[nschubach]

I'd like to see Explorer beat XP in vertical space: (Really, I would... but I don't see it happening.)
http://i.imgur.com/Hw6Xy.png

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dgatwood]

Thats 15% of a badly sampled group of 46 users. No matter how you look at it, it is neither "statistically significant" (as it doesnt really qualify as a good sampling) nor is it a major percentage.

Matters not. There are many other folks who have done similar studies with similar results. That was just the first one I could dig up in a Google search.

You may cut and paste several thousand times while attempting to sort out a music library...

Blech. That's pretty horrible. Can't this interface support multiple windows, one per folder, and let you drag files to where they need to go? Cutting and pasting files is an okay interface for the occasional move, but it's clumsy as heck if you're doing it over and over.

... but to say that explorer is supposed to be smart enough to figure out how to arrange my files the way I want is ridiculous.

I didn't intend that to include user actions that actually change data. By that same logical stretch, you might think that I would expect a word processor to automatically type the "e" key because I do it so often. Clearly, that's not a rational interpretation of what I said....

In that paragraph, I was referring to repetitive actions that are exactly the same every time, done in exactly the same way, achieving the same results in the same context. The most common example of this is actions that alter the UI behavior, like window size and position, column lists, sort order, etc. The granularity at which such information should be stored varies depending on the information in question. For example, I'd expect window sort order to stay the same every time I go back to a specific folder, but I'd expect the shown/hidden columns setting to be the same every time I open a browser window in a list view.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Man Eating Duck]

I offer you a challenge then: Force yourself to use the ribbon interface until you become comfortable with it, then try and go back.

Been there, not comfortable, I dream of going back. I'm happy that it works for you, but a lot of folks, including me, are *not* happy about it. Thanks for enlightening me about what works best for me.

Luckily Office is not my main working tool, but I've been using it more or less daily at work since 1999. I've used the ribbon for years, and it's still no good. Even apart from the fact that they've removed whole submenus and that the layout does not make sense, here's why: Scanning a vertical list of text (as in a classical menu) is lightning fast, I'm literate after all. Hotkeys that are highlighted by default so I can use a keybord shortcut next time is even better. Having to hunt for keywords horizontally among a lot of ribbon clutter bullshit is slow, and even then I frequently have to hunt in a sub-dropdown. I guess that during my time with Word and Excel I've used maybe 90% of the features at one time or another, but many seldom enough that I still have to browse the menus to find them.

For me the ribbon plain doesn't work. Maybe it's better for the types who likes visuals better than text, but it slows me down to the point where I'm very happy that there is a "search ribbon"-plugin. You know that your "User Experience" is in trouble when people with 12+ years of experience with your software need a fucking search function for your damn "menus".

The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.

Thanks again for teaching me. Your arrogance reminds me of a certain person who sought to teach people how to hold a phone, they were apparently "holding it wrong".

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Man Eating Duck]

The ribbon wouldn't be anywhere near so bad if it had a "quick search" feature.

The ribbon is bad to such a degree that someone at Microsoft heard your cry and made... a search commands plugin. It's made the time I have to spend with MS Office almost bearable.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mangu]

If you were using a GUI, you probably wouldn't have unzipped the files into the wrong directory in the first place.

No, because there's no way you could ever drop a file on the wrong directory, right? No way your finger could slip from the button and release something where you didn't intend to, or inadvertently click in the wrong place.

Oh, wait!...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcswell]

That's the answer--Just say "no" to the ribbon!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcswell]

If I'm using the keyboard, why would I want to use the mouse? The old menus gave me the shortcut keys withOUT a mouse!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcswell]

People aren't *comfortable* pulling down a menu? What, it takes more strength to pull down a menu than it does to pull down the ribbon?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcswell]

Hey, watch your mouth! I happen to have a pony tail, and I *hate* the ribbon!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcswell]

Pretty pictures? What kind of nonsense is that? The ancient Egyptians invented pretty pictures, and called them hieroglyphics. Somebody speaking a Semitic language invented this thing called an alphabet, and pretty much every written language (except for Chinese and, to some extent, Japanese) use alphabetic writing now. Or we did, until the Ribbon, which brought hieroglyphics back.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with dialog boxes?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcswell]

> Power users use keyboard shorcuts and context menus.

Not this power user, at least I don't use the context menus. They require a mouse. I prefer to find my menu item with the keyboard, and that means the main menu...which isn't there any more. Also, the Alt-Key keyboard shortcuts in each new iteration of Office seem to be different, and I find that a pain.

There are two improvements in Office 2010 over 2007, IMO:
1) I can set Paste to the default of paste text only. 99.9% if the time, that's what I want. With Office 2007, the unchangeable default was paste with original formatting, which was *never ever* what I wanted.
2) I can get rid of some (apparently not all) of the items in the ribbon that I never want, and add some I do. (Mail merge is a most-used command? How 1980s!)

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[mcswell]

> You seriously moved to open office rather than just learn how to use the ribbon?

I don't know about the OP, but I moved to Open Office on my home computer because I prefer the menu system. It's not that I don't know how to use the ribbon, I have to use it at work; I don't *want* to use the ribbon, because I find it makes the things I want to do harder (more keystrokes), and because it's got all kinds of junk things I don't need. (Office 2010 allows me to remove some of the clutter from the ribbon, but afaict not all.)

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[LordLimecat]

Blech. That's pretty horrible. Can't this interface support multiple windows, one per folder,

Er, yes, it does, and has for ages. Its called you open another window/.

Cutting and pasting files is an okay interface for the occasional move, but it's clumsy as heck if you're doing it over and over.

How do you propose to move a file without moving said file?

In that paragraph, I was referring to repetitive actions that are exactly the same every time, done in exactly the same way, achieving the same results in the same context. The most common example of this is actions that alter the UI behavior, like window size and position, column lists, sort order, etc. The granularity at which such information should be stored varies depending on the information in question

Which is why that information is stored in the registry, and you have the option of setting a global standard, as well as having particular folders use a particular deviation of your own choosing. Windows keeps a window size/location history, you know.

For example, I'd expect window sort order to stay the same every time I go back to a specific folder

Im fairly certain it already does, and has since at least XP. I might be wrong on that particular detail, but certainly it remembers view style, position, and size.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dudpixel]

Good for you.

I switched to Linux. Same result.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[dudpixel]

I dont have it in front of me, but from memory, the functions of the original File->Page Setup ended up spread all over different toolbars in places where they didn't seem to fit.

I cant really comment more than that. Pointing out where the features are now is like telling someone 3 years later why their car's brakes failed.

The reason most people are doubly frustrated is because many of us were quite proficient at previous versions of Office. And we don't use it enough to learn a whole new layout that's nothing like any other software we've EVER used, nor like anything we currently use (I dont use windows much).

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[daver00]

I already addressed this, use Latex. I could not even conceive of using Word for serious documentation, nothing beats Tex.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[daver00]

I too said the same thing in a few comments. Latex all the way.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Johann Lau]

I'd rather write scripts and assign them to buttons. why would I eat for loops for breakfast, when I can shift-select and drag and drop? and what would I need a regex for? to filter something out of a huge list, instead of clicking the icon I put where I want it, in reach of the stuff it operates on? seriously, no. of course, it depends on what you're actually doing with your computer, but I would be hard pressed to think of much I do regularly that wouldn't be slow like ass via the command line. unless you want to add every single application to your path and whatnot, which would be insanity/stupid.

and are you seriously meaning to imply that for example writing latex or postscript or even HTML is faster, even with auto-completion, than styling something in word with the mouse? hah! mind you, I code ALL my stuff by hand, I enjoy that, but I also do not live in bizarro world. come on, get real. you do have a very, very good point, but you totally lose it with your "clicky filemanager" quip. have you ever seen directory opus? check it out and see if you can bring yourself to diss it. a GUI isn't just about clicking, also about graphical meaning, vicinity, all sorts of things. and while you use the mouse, you're still free to use (simple) keyboard shortcuts, too ;)

how would I even go about selecting text with the keyboard on a webpage? and even just just tooltips and contextual, non-intrusive help is so awesome in so many cases - I'd prefer having the manual in-app for the most part, with links to more elaborate explanations where needed/useful. in most cases, I can simply use apps without having to learn fuck all. they simply work as expected. that would be VERY hard to pull off with commandline stuff, that won't ever happen.

to think the command line is not a GUI, is silly anyway -- it's just a very rudimentary GUI. the screen I am looking at now has LOTS of text and LOTS of input fields. a CLI is just a stripped down version of that. sorry to pop that bubble, I'll get off your lawn now and maybe you can go back to sleep and keep dreaming ^^

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

While YOU might like restricting an interface to just words, I think you find that average user prefers a combination of icons and words.

It not only helps identify the purpose of a feature and how it is different from others around it, but it helps with recall, makes the button easier to click on (because of its size), and ... oh to hell with it.

I could tell you that the Ribbon shits out golden eggs and brings back dead puppies, but you're still not going to agree with me. Good day, sir!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

Holy mother of all things crazy.

In any Office application, use your madd keyboard skillz and press Alt.

You know Alt, right? The same key you've been using forever with all of your menus.

It still works in Office 2007/2010.

True story.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Reziac]

And that old-fashioned customizable toolbar goes back at least as far as Word4 (among other apps), running on Win3.1. If something persists that long in a supposedly user-driven environment, maybe there's some logic to keeping it, eh??

Ribbons, bah.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jedwidz]

Agree. My take on this is that the current generation of 'Desktop Search' tools fail to deliver in that you can't use them to actually 'Search Your Desktop'.

By 'Search Your Desktop' I mean find matches for search terms in text and metadata anywhere on your desktop, including documents and applications you currently have open.

So for example you could type a search term into the search tool, and get results including such things as open Firefox tabs, terminal sessions, and unsaved word processor documents. Selecting one of these results would switch you to the relevant window and navigate to the first result.

The search paradigm introduced by internet search engines is a winner; the more we can leverage it the better.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[next_ghost]

You're missing the point: The lack of incentives for computer illiterates to learn.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[next_ghost]

and what would I need a regex for? to filter something out of a huge list, instead of clicking the icon I put where I want it, in reach of the stuff it operates on?

Regexes do much more than just filtering stuff. You can also use them to do very complex text replacement. For example, when you need to crawl several web pages with common design for table data and dump it into CSV, for loops, regexes and wget are everything you need for the job.

of course, it depends on what you're actually doing with your computer, but I would be hard pressed to think of much I do regularly that wouldn't be slow like ass via the command line.

You'd be surprised.

and are you seriously meaning to imply that for example writing latex or postscript or even HTML is faster, even with auto-completion, than styling something in word with the mouse?

Writing it in Word the first time might be faster, but Word will drive you crazy when you try to restyle it. And Word doesn't allow you to include pregenerated and prestyled content (unless it's a copy-paste from another Word document). When you can generate 100 pages of your document just by running a single script, forget about using Word.

you do have a very, very good point, but you totally lose it with your "clicky filemanager" quip.

I've never said you're not supposed to ever use clicky file managers. There are a few instances where they are the best tool for the job...

a GUI isn't just about clicking, also about graphical meaning, vicinity, all sorts of things. and while you use the mouse, you're still free to use (simple) keyboard shortcuts, too ;)

...but the main problem of GUI is that all you have is what the UI designer expected you to need. When you need just a little bit more, you're out of luck and you either have to find a whole new GUI app to do what you need, or you have to spend hours of furious clicking to do what could have been done by a one-liner in 10 seconds. Keyboard shortcuts don't cut it because they don't expand your toolset, they just make the limited set of tools faster to use. The power of command line is in combining simple tools to do difficult jobs. That's the one thing GUI can't do by design.

how would I even go about selecting text with the keyboard on a webpage?

Why do you need to select text in the first place?

in most cases, I can simply use apps without having to learn fuck all. they simply work as expected.

And that's the problem. People who try to do complicated stuff without learning even the complete basics always mess the job up horribly. They don't know how to do it right because they don't even know there IS a right way to do it.

the screen I am looking at now has LOTS of text and LOTS of input fields. a CLI is just a stripped down version of that.

Sorry to pop your bubble, but the number of input fields says nothing about how efficient something is. In GUI, you're stuck with what the designer gave you. In CLI, you're not.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[daver00]

If anything the ribbon does exactly that. Do you know how many computer illiterates know about Word styles today, only because of the ribbon? Many. All documents should make use of styles, and the ribbon provides exactly the right kind of incentives for people to learn.

Why do you think your particular usage patterns are the most efficient for all users?

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

You can do everything with the keyboard, just the way you used to (well, slightly differently, but same results).

hit alt key, that "activates" the tab bar, just like it used to activate the menu bar.

Use left and right arrow keys to move within the tab bar to select different tabs, just like you used to select different top level menus.

Use down arrow to move into the toolbar and then left and right to move around in between the buttons.. just like you used to with menus.

Yes, a small few keyboard shortcuts changed. This was largely to make sure there were full alt-key shortcuts for everything (some things used to be ctrl-key shortcuts, and even those mostly still work as well). Most keyboard shortcuts are still the same.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jahudabudy]

It even gets out of you way if you are just doing something like cut and paste.

Oh, how I wish that were true. More than once, I have been unable to get to a cell in an Excel spreadsheet, b/c that cell was covered by the formatting pop-up thingy. And I couldn't make it go away. I had to click on a different cell, arrow over to the cell I wanted, then copy/paste from the formula bar to get that value.

I hate that damn pop-up.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[hairyfeet]

Let me guess...a Linux user. you have the elitist bad attitude down pat. Do you have ANY idea how many God damned programs i gotta deal with in a fucking workday? do you? Probably close to 50 as well as on average 2 to 3 different OSes and a bunch of support crap. And guess what? Other than the classic save edit close shortcuts nobody uses the same shortcuts my guess is because the programmers didn't know the shortcuts for the more offbeat stuff either.

So please do get off your 'CLI gives me gonad powers" keyboards make a man out of you BS. it is 2011, wake up and smell the iPad. The future is all GUI, all touch, all muscle memory, all visual. Dealing with consumers 6 days a week I can tell you copy paste is the ONLY keyboard shortcuts that ever get used on a consistent basis, and even then more than half the time they right click.

I got dozens of programs, PCs piled up to my nutsack waiting on me, I don't have time to curl up with cheat sheets for every one of the 50+ programs I use consistently like it is a Harry potter book. Just another classic example of ignoring how people ACTUALLY use products and instead demanding they use the product the way YOU use it. And folks wonder why Linux is stuck at 1%, hell it is practically the Linux motto!

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[FaxeTheCat]

Your argument sounds much like what I used to get many years ago when I criticized vi (or is it VI) for having the most non.intuitive and silly user interface for editing text files, and why could there not be a simple, user friendly text editor in Unix? (This has since been corrected in Linux...) The real argument (but not openly expressed) was that this was the pain you should get through to be worthy of using a computer. Which was BS then as it is now.

Making things difficult does not make people learn more. It simply makes things difficult.

Most computer users of any generations don't care the least about what happens when they press a button or click on an icon. Even thinking that they will start to care or become proficient because something is difficult is just silly. Most will simply give up. How can that be a goal?

The only reason we have had the computer explosion during the last 15 years is because things have become simpler (MAC, Windows). It is beyond me why this exact point in time should be the time when things are "simple enough". What are the criteria for being simple enough?

And there are more then enough obstacles in the world without creating artificial ones in computer GUIs.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[FaxeTheCat]

Ah, yes, picking on the choice of words instead of commenting on the intended meaning of the post.

That is SO clever! You must be proud of yourself! You really pwned me there!

Especially since english/american is not my native language.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[CCarrot]

If you can style a table in 5 seconds instead of clicking 180 times, that isn't because the classic menu bar is a poor design. It is because the buttons you press are not properly placed in the menu bar. You could have gotten the exact same speedup by just putting a "Most Used" entry after "Help".

Or, you know, creating your own toolbar, with your own neat, tiny little icons linking to the commands or macros you use the most, grouped how you liked to see them. Thing is, creating or editing such a custom toolbar was quick and easy and reliable pre-ribbon...have you tried to create a new ribbon tab (or whatever) in the new UI? It's a lot like trying to pet a wild badger, exceedingly painful and not really worth the effort...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[geminidomino]

You seriously moved to open office rather than just learn how to use the ribbon

Well, that, and the price tag, yes. I also moved from Ubuntu to Mint after Maverick for much the same reason (excepting the price, of course), and am looking for a way out of my reliance on a handful of Firefox addons: fucking with things for no good reason is bad enough. Fucking with things, and doing it badly means you get dumped, AFAIC.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[tibit]

I use CLI quite rarely. I only run Linux on servers, and there I generate all the configuration from one master file, using a python script. The master file is kept up to date using a web-based UI. For me, CLI is pretty much the equivalent of clicking an icon somewhere. I use OS X in my daily work, but spend about half the time in various VMs.

All I'm saying is that it'd be hard not to learn keyboard shortcuts for an office package that one supposedly uses day-in, day-out. And the complaints about MS changing to ribbon interface are just silly IMHO. Of course it's hard to switch. That's how we're built, it seems. If we didn't have that innate block, we'd spend all the time playing with new gadgets and not accomplishing anything. So we try to stick to what we know. But if it's obvious that MS is going the ribbon way, it should be no brainer to learn it in a day. From a usability viewpoint, ribbons use screen real estate more efficiently than a menu + a bunch of toolbars. I detest toolbars in OpenOffice and derivatives. I wish they switched to ribbons.

The Linux rant is IMHO entirely off-base. I don't use Linux on my desktop, and I like GUIs and usable interfaces as much as anyone. I can be very effective just mousing around in OS X. But one should have most of the shortcuts memorized if one really does this IT work for as long as you do. Your brain should be your cheatsheet. We used to have Linux at home for many years, but that was before we could afford an iMac. For what we used it for, it was a perfect fit (my engineering class work and my s.o.'s browsing and text editing/spreadsheets).

It'd perhaps be wise to educate the consumers that just as they don't stop their car almost everywhere ("just to make sure") as they did in their early days of driving, they should similarly pay attention to becoming an efficient user of what they paid good money for...

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[Twinbee]

Thanks! I'll bet I'm going to use it quite a bit, but it's only a shadow of what I really had in mind, as each one leads off to a separate window with more icons/sliders/checkboxes, rather than having all these available in the primary window (e.g. changing the mouse pointer speed). I'm after a "SuperGodMode" I think ;)

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Your description doesn't make sense. The formatting popup only happens when text is highlighted in in-cell edit mode. If you click in another cell (or just arrow to one), it goes away because that text is no longer highlighted (Esc also works).

I can see that there might be a small edge case that this would be annoying, but the solution isn't as complex as you make out.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jahudabudy]

Except sometimes it doesn't go away. It appears as soon as I open a workbook, and stays until I close and reopen the workbook. Which is annoying to do, so if I need the value the pop-up is covering, I arrow over to that cell. Still can't see the value b/c it is covered by the pop-up, but I can see it in the formula bar. Maybe this is a bug, maybe it is some weird boundary case I occasionally invoke unknowingly, but either way, I find it annoying. It completely outweighs the minor convenience of the pop-up for me.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[B1oodAnge1]

From my own experience, the difference is that I can look at a word and know what it means, but I have to interpret an icon.

I'm sure that a ribbon interface makes it easy to pick up the absolute basics quickly, but I think that it limits overall productivity levels for people who use it extensively and generally only use the UI for finding those seldom used functions that they don't know the shortcuts for.

You mention the Quick Access Toolbar, but it is a perfect illustration of my point. Everything I need regularly goes there, then when I need something I don't use often I must look through a jumble of icons in multiple tabs instead of being able to drop down and scan text menus. To add insult to injury, even though the Quick Access Toolbar is the most useful part of the interface it is also the smallest, leaving the ribbon to hog screen real estate while providing little service in return, provided you don't minimize it (and basically change the interface to 2003 with massive hard to scan menus and only one customizable toolbar.)

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DavidD_CA]

If you upgrade to 2010 you can customize the Ribbon by turning tabs off or making your own tabs and populating them with whatever icons/features/menus you choose.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[man_of_mr_e]

Well, in any case.. you can turn it off. Go to File->Options and on the General tab, uncheck use the mini-toolbar.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[CtownNighrider]

ctrl+a if you want a large list but not everything click the first in the list then hold shift and select the last in the list.

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[DaveMckenna]

Hate ribbon

Re:Paging Darth Vader

[jahudabudy]

Thank you, that is good to know. I"ll admit, I assumed there was a way to turn it off, but didn't know it was called the mini-toolbar. Which made Googling more difficult, and once I had figured out a workaround the issue, lost interest in spending time actually fixing it. I know, all the time in the world to post to Slashdot and complain, no time to find a solution. Thank you again.

Bleh

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like a two year old designed it. Talk about cluttered. Explorer has a ribbon, the right mouse button.

Whatever

[archen]

Another reason to learn keyboard shortcuts.

Re:Whatever

[UnknowingFool]

Unless MS in their wisdom decides to change the shortcuts. Like prior to Windows 7, locking the computer was either Windows+L or CNTL+ALT+DEL then W. With Win 7, it's just Windows+L only.

Re:Whatever

[shutdown -p now]

From TFA:

One of the top requests from more advanced users is for more keyboard shortcuts. All of the existing Windows Explorer shortcuts work in this version of Explorer, but with our new approach, all of the approximately 200 commands in the ribbon now have keyboard shortcuts as well.

Re:Whatever

[ashridah]

Uh. Locking the screen is the first entry in the ctrl-alt-del menu.

Try ctrl-alt-del, then hitting enter.

Awful

[Moof123]

The ribbon is just awful. Generally it takes me 1-2 weeks to get back to 95+% productivity with a new machine. I am now over 18 months into Office 2007 at work, and still only at 75-80%. Important things were buried or burned to make the ribbon approach fit, so I am constantly having to dig for simple crap like "crop". Ugh, I was hoping it all would go the way of Clippy...

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

In this particular case, I suggest you read the blog post first before jumping to conclusion. It has a fairly detailed analysis of most used commands in Explorer, and how they were specifically placed all on the default Ribbon tab so as to be at a single-click distance.

Re:Awful

[MightyYar]

The ribbon is just awful.

The thing is, it's not a bad toolbar replacement, but it is an absolutely dreadful menu replacement. It is so much harder to find less-frequently-used functions now, and half the time when you find them, they are in a menu behind a little button!

The craziest thing is that Mac Office still has the ribbon - but RETAINS THE MENU! Why can't they do this on their flagship platform?

Re:Awful

[h4rr4r]

FSM forbid you ever want to do anything not in the most used commands list, if you did have fun hunting through the random categories.

Re:Awful

[SpryGuy]

If there's something you use frequently that isn't on the home tab, you can just add it to the "Quick Access" bar... a custom list of any of the ribbon commands you want to put there. It's then one click away at all times, period.

Or you can just lear the key press for it, and use that.

Really, there's a ton of whining about the Ribbon that I see from people that strikes me as nothing more or less than someone whining about how ignorant they are about the Ribbon or how to use it.

Most people I've known who "hate" it stop hating it after I sit down with them for five minutes and just show them how to use it and make it work like they want it to. It's really not that tough, and the only reason they didn't figure it out themselves is that they were so dead-set on just HATING it because it wasn't exactly like they were used to.

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

Context menu is still there. FWIW, I don't recall when I've last used the toolbar or the menu in Explorer - everything that I actually need seems to be in the context menu - and I expect it to be no different in this version. On the bright side, the ribbon can be collapsed so that only the tab titles show, which is likely how I'll end up configuring it.

Re:Awful

[hedwards]

There's a right way and a wrong way of doing it. Probably the best interface I've seen in some time is in Vuescan. Options and settings which have no influence in the current mode disappear and only ones that actually function are available. Granted it is a bit confusing at first, but because they're located next to the area I'm working with, I can readily find them without having to go hunting for them.

The problem with the Ribbon is that anybody that last used Office before they added the ribbon more or less has to completely relearn how to use the products. Which is not good in cases like this where the original organization was functioning.

Ultimately, this sounds more like the start of a pissing match between Apple and MS over who can force their customers to put up with the stupidest stuff.

Re:Awful

[hedwards]

I could be wrong, but doesn't that have something to do with Apple's UI requirements? One thing that I always liked about OSX was that there was some consistency from program to program as to where certain things would be found. In Windows, you can generally find the preferences button in 3 different places depending upon where the UI designer felt like putting it.

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

The problem with the Ribbon is that anybody that last used Office before they added the ribbon more or less has to completely relearn how to use the products.

I agree that it is a major change, and starting it with a "productivity" application like that was quite heavy-handed. Nonetheless, this is 5 years since Office 2007...

And we can't stick to the old interfaces solely on the basis that everyone is used to them - if that is strictly followed, there wouldn't be any evolution in UI at all. In practice, different people try different new things, and only some of them stick around as good ideas - but if you don't try at all, then some company will make theirs stick, and out-compete you.

Ultimately, this sounds more like the start of a pissing match between Apple and MS over who can force their customers to put up with the stupidest stuff.

I'm not a big fan of Apple, and I do know a number of flaws in their UX design, but I think it's hard to deny that it was largely their novel approach to touch UI that made iPhone and then iPad the bestseller that it is - there wasn't anything particularly innovative about either product, but that point alone was underestimated for too long, and they capitalized on that with great success, and keep going (while e.g. Android is still playing catch-up in many areas).

Re:Awful

[Missing.Matter]

There are suggestions for UI design in OSX, but even Apple themselves routinely violate them. There is no more consistency in OSX than there is in Windows.

Re:Awful

[Blakey Rat]

Not in a solid decade. More, really... Apple stopped worrying about UI guidelines near the end of the Classic era (remember Quicktime Player 3.0?), and they've never given a crap in the OS X era.

There were reams and reams of materials written to come up with some consensus as to when you should use a "metal" window as opposed to an "aqua" window, but it all summed to, "shrug, nobody knows!"

Re:Awful

[Compholio]

Most people I've known who "hate" it stop hating it after I sit down with them for five minutes and just show them how to use it and make it work like they want it to.

Every time I use an Office 2007+ machine I have to re-learn how to use the damn thing. I use a lot of different software and somehow I can still remember how to use it even going months or years between uses, but for some reason I cannot do that with the Office ribbon interface. However, my main compliant about the ribbon really has to do with that it doesn't tell you what the shortcut keys are. All sane software for the past decade has had this nifty menu system that tells you exactly what shortcut to use for each operation, why exactly is it more convenient to force me to use the help to find the shortcut keys?

Re:Awful

[khallow]

In this particular case, I suggest you read the blog post first before jumping to conclusion. It has a fairly detailed analysis of most used commands in Explorer, and how they were specifically placed all on the default Ribbon tab so as to be at a single-click distance.

Ok, read it.


Nor is this the last time that Microsoft has arbitrarily changed good interfaces for poor ones or broke the reliability of their code. They did the same to the OS when upgrading the system from 2000 to XP. I think the only thing keeping us on Office is vendor lock-in.

Re:Awful

[Anonymous Coward]

What they CAN'T fix however is losing a friggin' inch of space at the top of the screen for that godawful ribbon. At work when I'm limited to 1024x768 resolution, that retarded ribbon kills a healthy chunk of space.

I mean, would it KILL them to be able to set it to 'classic' layout?

Re:Awful

[oakgrove]

So if there's something I frequently use, I should add it to the quick access bar? Why not just leave the toolbar? You haven't made any argument for why we need a ribbon in explorer. Basically, your post boils down to whining about people whining.

Re:Awful

[tomtomtom]

The ribbon is just awful.

The thing is, it's not a bad toolbar replacement, but it is an absolutely dreadful menu replacement.

No, it's a crap toolbar replacement too: (i) they removed all ability to customise it and (ii) you can't show things from more than one "category" at once, meaning that a lot of things that used to be 1 click away are now 2 clicks away. Seriously, what POSSIBLE reason is there to stop people from customizing the toolbars/menus to make them work the way THEY want them to?

Add on top of that the changes it implies to keyboard shortcuts (and just to really mess with the users, they decided to make it so that *some* of the old shortcuts still work but with no predictable way of telling which ones... and of course for the shortcuts which were based on the old menus you now lose the visual cues that you used to have).

And that's just the issues with Ribbon as a concept. The implementation is awful too... many things just not in anything like the "logical" place (I've resorted to just googling what I want to do immediately if the old keyboard shortcut doesn't work now, it's quicker). My workplace switched to 2007 over 12 months ago and people are *STILL* struggling every day to find things which used to be easy.

Re:Awful

[johnwerneken]

oooh point proved. iphone and ipad and iScrewU are worthless BS whether popular with id10ts or not. Jobs may be a genius at what 'people' like but that's what I hate about Apple...as I hate people in the general sense, and generally hate most people...

Re:Awful

[SpryGuy]

Um... yes, it tells you exactly what the short cut keys are.

Hold down the alt key. Now look at the ribbon. It shows you exactly what keys to hit in order to get the function you want. You can switch tabs and hit any control with a keypress, and it hand-holds you all the way through.

How can you have been using this months or years without knowing this? I'm not sure. It's right there before your eyes, and works very similarly to how the old system did it, with Alt key highlighting (via underline) the hot key to press, or activating the menu control. It's not like it's a completely foreign concept.

So, your "main complaint" is completely without merit. What's your next complaint? Perhaps I can help you out there too.

Re:Awful

[SpryGuy]

If you had BOTHERED to read the actually article, you'd realize that there is MORE vertical space for the list of files in Windows 8 Explorer WITH the Ribbon, than in Windows 7 Explorer, without it. AND you can collapse the Ribbon, so that there is still MORE vertical space available.

Your complaint is without merit.

Re:Awful

[santiagodraco]

And THAT is the problem. All this "one click" bs. it's not about how many clicks it is to get to the function, it's about how easy it is to perform the task. Ribbons are a confusing mess (at least every one of Microsoft's are) so it makes finding functions a frustrating nightmare because they seem to live in a world of their own physics.

Re:Awful

[Lokitoth]

Hit alt, and the shortcut keys get highlighted.

Re:Awful

[SpryGuy]

The "tool bar" (not really that) in Windows 7 wasn't customizable.

Are you actully complaining that they made all the most common and useful functions available on the Ribbon (just a fancy toolbar to begin with) and have now given you the ability to fully customize your own toolbar as you see fit?

And my post isn't just about people whining. My post is about people whining about things that are simply not true. It's really annoying. Virtualy NONE of the points made against the Ribbon have any real merit, beyond the subjective taste-based "it's ugly".

Re:Awful

[UnknowingFool]

The problem with adding something to the Quick Menu is that you have to use it enough to know you are going to need it. For other functions that you use sparingly adding it isn't really a solution unless you have some sort of pre-cognition.

Re:Awful

[Lokitoth]

Or, select the image, go to the contextual "Picture Tools > Format" tab, and hit the big button labeled crop. Not entirely sure what is difficult about this that someone on Slashdot is incapable of figuring this out.

Re:Awful

[SpryGuy]

True enough, but then if that's the case, is it really a burden, at least more so than Windows 7's Explorer? You either already know the keyboard short-cut, or the right-click context menu (in which case you've lost nothing), or you're going to have to poke around for it anyway, and since it's just once in a rare while, have you really lost that much? At least, have you lost enough to make the advantages of the rest of the ribbon and customizable tool bar "not worth it"?

I think there's a lot of complaining about apocryphal "what ifs" that really aren't going to be an issue for most people, even power users... all while ignoring the significant improvements made over Windows 7 Explorer. In other words, a lot of cringing from "its' different!" without any real world experience that hey, it's not bad at all.

Re:Awful

[Bo'Bob'O]

I think you actually hit upon the main problem with the ribbon in your defense of it. The ribbon is in fact a great replacement for the old toolbar system and so, when you sit and spend the time to customize the bar, just like when you used to customize the toolbar, you are going to work faster.

However, as a general purpose tool for finding commands it's awful. It relies on you already not just knowing the command you are looking for, but that you know what the shortcut to it looks like. Worse, sometimes those commands are buried under other commands.

I do a lot of work in autocad, and while %90 of what i do I do on the keyboard or on the tool-bars, but there are hundreds of commands, many I simply don't use on a regular basis. All I usually need to find the command is to go to the menu of related commands, and read the short descriptions of the functions there. That's what the menu is there for, to provide some insight for the available commands and that is not what the ribbon provides.

I shudder to think of having to provide me grandmother with instructions over the phone on how to do something where I have to explain to her toolbar icons rather then just telling her the command she is looking for. Fortunately, she's still on windows XP.

Re:Awful

[mkairys]

You have to remember also that Microsoft are making Windows 8 more practical for tablet devices. The main reason that they are going for the ribbon interface is because it is far easier to use with touch input whereas context menus are harder to use unless you have a large screen surface. Many dislike the ribbon interface but if you use it for a bit most users do find it better for commonly accessed tools.

Re:Awful

[Kopiok]

You're points (i) and (ii) are 100% wrong.

(i) Right click on ANY WHERE on the Ribbon. There's an option, specifically titled, "Customize Ribbon" with an extensive UI offering every option (literally, every option) that will let you put it on any bar anywhere in the Ribbon, let you hide anything on the Ribbon, and let you change anything already on the Ribbon. You could have 100% customized Ribbons if you so choose.

(ii) See (i). You can take commands from anywhere (on the Ribbon or not on the Ribbon) and put them on any menu on the Ribbon, or even create entire new tabs.

Re:Awful

[owlstead]

Nope, that space argument is very valid, just looking at the screenshots and seeing the file preview part still there makes me cringe. That's one way of proving yourself right. We had this awfull thing at the bottom taking up space, and now we've put something slightly smaller at the top, so we're OK...

Re:Awful

[tftp]

And we can't stick to the old interfaces solely on the basis that everyone is used to them - if that is strictly followed, there wouldn't be any evolution in UI at all.

I think your motorbike needs some evolutioning. So I decree - and force you to obey - that starting tomorrow your motorbike transforms into a Pogo stick. I have my reasons to believe that you will benefit from this change; your own opinion on the matter is of no interest to me.

As a home assignment, while you are hopping to work perhaps, you can think of how to evolve the wheel, the hammer, and the brick. They are so old that clearly we can't afford to use them anymore. Once you are done with those, develop new spoon and new knife and new fork.

Re:Awful

[MightyYar]

they removed all ability to customise it

They partially fixed that in 2010, but the Office applications in general are all less customizable than they were in 2003.

you can't show things from more than one "category" at once

That's true, though really that's just a detail that could be fixed with some little "thumbtack" icon.

But yeah, the ribbon is not really welcome at all.

I've resorted to just googling what I want to do immediately if the old keyboard shortcut doesn't work now, it's quicker

LOL, me too! MS help is so blindingly awful that I just Google everything. How is their search function so, so bad??? It's like they keep shining the same early 90s help system turd.

My workplace switched to 2007 over 12 months ago and people are *STILL* struggling every day to find things which used to be easy.

Same here.

Re:Awful

[MightyYar]

I suspect that it was more likely that they saw people in no hurry to move from Office 2004, which has pretty much all of the same features as 2011.

Plus, as you allude, your application looks pretty silly on Mac just wasting the top 50 pixels for no real reason beyond religion.

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

I have my reasons to believe that you will benefit from this change; your own opinion on the matter is of no interest to me.

But in this case users' opinion was of interest - where do you think all the statistics on command usage and such come from?

As a home assignment, while you are hopping to work perhaps, you can think of how to evolve the wheel, the hammer, and the brick. They are so old that clearly we can't afford to use them anymore. Once you are done with those, develop new spoon and new knife and new fork.

Are you seriously claiming that desktop UI as of, say, mid-2000s, was as completely evolved and perfect as a wheel or a hammer?

Re:Awful

[hattig]

you can just lear the key press for it, and use that.

At least menus tell you outright what the shortcut is.

I see no indication that these actions have a shortcut on the ribbon. Maybe if I hover over an icon it tells me? I doubt it because I don't recall that from Office 2007.

The thing is, the concept of a Ribbon isn't that bad. But I think that having a configurable toolbar (single row of larger icons) is better (not Office 2003 style toolbars full of tiny icons), when used with menus. I guess that's why Apple still uses that style of UI in many software products (e.g., Pages).

Re:Awful

[MightyYar]

The main reason that they are going for the ribbon interface is because it is far easier to use with touch input

If Apple can make their OS in touch and desktop flavors, then why the hell can't MS's army of programmers? :)

but if you use it for a bit most users do find it better for commonly accessed tools.

Why in the world would you use MS Office if you only need the functions that are on the home ribbon?

The ribbon gets in the way of power users, which is why most of the reaction is negative here. Windows is supposed to be for work, and they are turning into the computerized version of No Child Left Behind.

Re:Awful

[hattig]

You seriously think that's a good UI? Having to hit 'alt' on the keyboard to get some hint of things on the ribbon?

Firstly, it is something you have to learn. The fact you are writing that here to people who have used the ribbon and who don't know it, shows that it isn't intuitive nor obvious. That's a major fail right up.

Secondly, why alt? Why not hovering the mouse over the icon - that makes a lot more sense in a graphics UI. To know that you have to hit that special key to get hints is ludicrous. It's quite clearly not 'before your eyes'.

Menus worked. The learned thing to do there was to click on the menu name. At least that's a mouse driven action. It makes sense, then a menu appears, and hey, shortcuts.

Re:Awful

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's something you use frequently that isn't on the home tab, you can just add it to the "Quick Access" bar...

If you can find it, and if you can find the "Quick Access" bar, and that still doesn't solve the problem of finding commands that they hid in strange places.

Or you can just lear the key press for it, and use that.

Keypresses are secret hacker secrets. You're not supposed to know about them, Citizen. That's why they were removed from the display in 2003.

Really, there's a ton of whining about the Ribbon that I see from people that strikes me as nothing more or less than someone whining about how ignorant they are about the Ribbon or how to use it.

Alice: It's difficult to use.
Bob: That's because you haven't learned it yet.
Alice: That's not the point. It's difficult to use.
Bob: That's because you haven't learned it yet.
Alice: Of all of the user interfaces I have used in over 30 years of using computers, including DOS, Mac, Amiga, OS/2, Win3.1, Win95, Irix, Gnome, KDE, vi, and emacs, this is one of the most difficult user interfaces to use.
Bob: That's because you haven't learned it yet.
Alice: Every user I've spoken to who has used it says that it is difficult to use.
Bob: That's because you haven't learned it yet.
Alice: The university just ran a double-blind study of 20,000 computer users of varying backgrounds and found that users of the new interface took 150% longer to accomplish common tasks and failed to find the command they were looking for 16% of the time.
Bob: You are an ignorant, stupid slut.

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

Hold down the alt key. Now look at the ribbon. It shows you exactly what keys to hit in order to get the function you want.

You don't necessarily need to hold Alt - you can just press and release it. Consequently, when you execute the shortcut, you don't have to do a combo, but can just press keys sequentially. E.g. in Outlook, when you press Alt, you get H for the "Home" ribbon tab. When you press H to select that, individual commands on it are highlighted - "New email" is N. So, to open the new email window, you can press Alt, H, N - sequentially, not as a combo.

This is so as to be somewhat consistent with the old quickest way of operating top-level menus with a keyboard - Alt would bring focus to the menu, and then you'd use the underscored characters to open items.

Note that you can also press and hold Alt, and then press H then N (again, this also worked with old-style menus). Consequently, you can also press and hold to display shortcuts.

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

There are comrehensive Windows UI guidelines, as well. Problem is that practically no-one is actually following them, not even many Microsoft products.

Apple also loves to ignore their own guidelines, but they (or rather their users) are much less forgiving towards anyone else who does that. If your app doesn't look and behave like a normal OS X app should, it'll get crucified regardless of its other merits. Hence, developers and designers are kept in check.

FWIW, the correct place to put "Options" menu item in Windows is under "Tools".

Re:Awful

[tftp]

But in this case users' opinion was of interest - where do you think all the statistics on command usage and such come from?

For all I know, it was user's cats walking on the keyboard and pushing the mouse. The fact is that no user was ever asked what they think about this or that. User's opinion and user's actions are very different things. We act because we have to; but we love or hate things because of things themselves. A donkey may walk in circles around the well, pumping water, but this action doesn't reflect his love for this job.

There is also another flaw in this argument - the rule by majority. If 55% of Office users are secretaries that only type simple documents, does it make just and proper to make Office unusable to remaining 45% of users, scientists who create complex documents? Remember, the ribbon is not removable in the Office. Making it optional would have stopped the ribbon hatefest in an instant.

Are you seriously claiming that desktop UI as of, say, mid-2000s, was as completely evolved and perfect as a wheel or a hammer?

There are only few changes that are accepted as positive by majority of users. There were many attempts at changes that ended up in disaster. Generally, Win2K GUI was functional and usable back in 2000. I can't think of any major, conceptual improvement done since then. I'm looking at my Vista screen (and Win7 next to it) and I don't see anything that would be much different from the 2000 state of the art. Or, to put it another way, what features of the current UI are limiting your activity?

The ribbon is actually one such thing that many users are complaining about. But do we have anything else that is so widely despised since Microsoft Bob?

Re:Awful

[chrismcb]

It isn't a menu replacement. It IS a menu, a sticky menu. And yes it is a horrible toolbar replacement.

Re:Awful

[mkairys]

Windows isn't going to be just using trackpads for touch input. Apple knew that the traditional GUI was inefficient so they made iOS just for their mobile products as a result. If you used Lion with a touch screen you would still suffer the issues common with Windows 7. Their new implementation of spaces would work pretty well for touch devices though as it can be application specific like on iOS.

Why in the world would you use MS Office if you only need the functions that are on the home ribbon?

The ribbon gets in the way of power users, which is why most of the reaction is negative here. Windows is supposed to be for work, and they are turning into the computerized version of No Child Left Behind.

There are other tabs for the ribbon, common tasks used such as font selection, alignment etc. are only in the main tab. The other tabs cover the other tasks used based on what you're trying to do. Could you elaborate exactly what features power users are missing / harder to access?

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

The fact is that no user was ever asked what they think about this or that.

That would also be wrong. The stats in the blog post are gathered from the users without asking them questions, yes, but do you seriously think there are no usability studies involved in Windows design, or ribbon in general?

If 55% of Office users are secretaries that only type simple documents, does it make just and proper to make Office unusable to remaining 45% of users, scientists who create complex documents?

No, of course not. Personally, I much prefer it when the old UI still remains (like e.g. the "classic" start menu in XP, or the old taskbar in Win7). But when you have both around, you have to test both, support both, fix bugs in both etc. At some cut-off point it is simply not cost-effective.

And here we come to the numbers themselves. In actual usability studies with the ribbon - back in Office 2007 timeframe - user acceptance rate was in fact above 80%. Note, not usage statistics, but actual user opinions. Ribbon is mostly reviled among the geeks, so if you only frequent the places where there are high concentrations of them - like, well, Slashdot - you get the impression that four out of five users hate it. But that is just selection bias.

I'm looking at my Vista screen (and Win7 next to it) and I don't see anything that would be much different from the 2000 state of the art. Or, to put it another way, what features of the current UI are limiting your activity?

The funny thing about those is that we don't really know until someone comes out and makes the next breakthrough in UI (for which another nine has to come out and make mistakes first, so that we all can learn).

I remember a book that was on the shelf in my school's computer class back in 1991; it was mostly about DOS, but had a brief chapter about Windows (3.0, IIRC). It said, literally, "To any user who is comfortable and experienced at command line, it is clear that all those windows and icons and drag&drop are just fads that don't add to productivity. We fully expect that fad to go away in a few years, so you would do well to focus on command line instead."

Re:Awful

[Missing.Matter]

Uh, get a bigger monitor? Office 2010 probably cost more than a monitor, so if you can afford that you can afford some more resolution.

Re:Awful

[Torodung]

Seriously, what POSSIBLE reason is there to stop people from customizing the toolbars/menus to make them work the way THEY want them to?

I know that was probably rhetorical, but it's worth answering.

One of Microsoft's big problems in Office 97-2003 was that people were not noticing features that Microsoft wanted them to use (features that, if relied upon, made their software the only good solution on the market in the process. Extended features, especially ones with IP attached, provide lock-in and/or licensing). So they found a way to advertise the features they want you to use, and combined it with features that are popular. You don't want your customers customizing your ad space. Adding all the most popular commands alongside means that they got fewer complaints when users figured out that their software is telling them how to use it (In Soviet Russia), instead of the other way around.

The ribbon is the application equivalent of a billboard. It's there to advertise the extended (and usually less interoperable or legally encumbered) features of Microsoft's awesome software, because no one could find them in the Byzantine menu system, and they weren't leveraging the full value of their product as a result. This was baffling to Microsoft. That was its purpose in Office 2007.

It's also patented. That is its purpose when extended to all the other products. Lawsuit bait. Like it or lump it, Microsoft is aggressively pursuing a patent arsenal in a patent arms race.

It is not there for any reason other than to serve Microsoft. They carefully test market exactly what they can get away with, the same way advertisers test market an ad that might cross the line with its audience. If MS goes to an ad-based model, expect to see Flash advertisements in the Ribbon.

Re:Awful

[tftp]

do you seriously think there are no usability studies involved in Windows design, or ribbon in general?

I know that MS did usability studies. But I don't know what audience they were using. Clearly a bunch of toddlers would have done better with ribbons than a bunch of gray-haired managers. Everyone would agree that if you start with zero knowledge of Office and zero skills then ribbon is better. Problems begin when you try to do complex work that needs actions from multiple ribbons.

when you have both around, you have to test both, support both, fix bugs in both etc. At some cut-off point it is simply not cost-effective.

That is of course true. MS sells their products on such a thin margin that it barely can afford to keep the lights on in their offices. Besides, the simple menu code that is nearly bug-free certainly now requires active, aggressive maintenance, as opposed to brand new and barely tested ribbon code. Note that WIN32 API still has the menu support because it is required by millions of applications.

Ribbon is mostly reviled among the geeks

One of my friends is an MBA, as non-technical as they come. He despises ribbons and can't find anything in them. He is just not graphically oriented (just like me.) I can't find an icon on a busy desktop even if it is there; but I can easily find an item in the menu because I remember how to get to it. Different people have different ways of remembering things.

The funny thing about those is that we don't really know until someone comes out and makes the next breakthrough in UI (for which another nine has to come out and make mistakes first, so that we all can learn).

I completely agree and I'm all for that. However it is criminally stupid to cram the innovation down people's throats. As I said, there would be no contention if only MS made the ribbon optional. A forced marriage is wrong even if in the end the couple was correctly matched by parents.

Re:Awful

[Missing.Matter]

Don't even try to pretend the classic text-based menu is perfectly categorized and anything you need to find is self evident. Let's look at Open Office for instance. Say I want to add a foot note. My options are File | Edit | Insert | Format | Table | Tools | Window | Help. Nothing jumps out at me and screams, "footnote" but maybe I'll try "Insert" since that's the action I want to perform. Ah, there's an option for "Footnote/Endnote"... but not really what I was looking for. Turns out there's a second option for "Footnores/Endnotes" (with an "s") under "Tools".

This tools menu seems to be an odd "Misc" sort of menu. It contains everything from references, to spell checking, to mail wizards, to macros. And then there's that "Table" menu which is always there, even though I hardly am dealing with tables.

The argument "It's hard to find things" does not apply to the ribbon alone. You might think it does because you went through and found everything 10 years ago. But there is as much nonsense going on in a text-based menu. At least with the ribbon it's fully customizable (as of Office 2010).

Further, I don't have to look very far because chances are what I need is within 2 clicks. For example, if I want to set the layout of my page in Open Office to two column, it's 3 clicks (Format->Page->Columns). In Office, it's at most 2. If I'm not satisfied and want to adjust it, in Open Office, it's 2 clicks. For Office it's 1.

Also there is a shortcut for absolutely every function. So no needing to explain "click the icon that sort of looks like..." Just say prest Alt+x+y or whatever the shortcut is.

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

Perhaps those are the most common used commands, but the most common USE is to browse folders, and when the ribbon UI and "enhancements" start eating up real estate it takes away from that core purpose. The ribbon takes up 3x horizontal space compared to Win7.

Do you mean vertical space? If so, then compared to toolbar alone, it does; but with all other changes to Explorer combined together, the end result has just as much vertical space for files as before, and in some cases more. Also note that you can minimize the ribbon if you don't care for it - this will be about as tall as the old menu in XP.

Also in case anyone from MS is reading along, here's some helpful suggestions

I'm from MS, though not from the Windows division. That said, I'll try to find the best person to forward your feedback to. Alternatively, apparently there's this form to submit user feedback (as a side note, I'm quite frustrated by how long it took me to find such a simple thing; IMO, if you type "feedback" or "bug" in Start menu search field, and don't immediately get to the right place, it's an epic fail in that department).

Re:Awful

[Pharmboy]

The problem with Microsoft changing the system to make it easier for most people, is that most people are not power users. The 5% of us that are constantly have to suffer through the changes that make it harder and harder to use Windows, and yet we literally have no choice because of the software that we *must* run. (no, Wine doesn't run everything).

I miss the simplicity and ease of setting up menus in Win95. Networking was simpler, there were almost no Wizards to get in between you and the meat of the OS, and it was trivial to customize the look and feel. Again, I don't want a pretty OS, I want the OS to get the hell out of my way, and simply make it easy to configure so I can run APPLICATIONS.

Even in Linux, I can't stand Gnome or KDE anymore, and have migrated to ICE, for the exact same reasons.

Re:Awful

[oakgrove]

Don't have to be a baker to know the bread's stale.

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

I understand the sentiment, and partly share it (I used classic theme and start menu all the way until Win7); but Windows is a commercial product, and it is development is inevitably driven by the desire to appease the majority of its userbase. It doesn't mean that power users are completely ignored - after all, there are still features like PowerShell - but where there is a conflict it's obvious which option will be taken.

Even in Linux, I can't stand Gnome or KDE anymore, and have migrated to ICE, for the exact same reasons.

You have this option in Windows, as well. E.g. this might be of interest to you.

Re:Awful

[MightyYar]

Could you elaborate exactly what features power users are missing / harder to access?

I think the other posters here are doing a fine job. My personal pet peeve is that the ribbon adjusts itself and moves around depending on the size of the window. So while I know keyboard shortcuts for my most commonly-used commands, there are some like "Autofit Columns" that are maddeningly hard to find (they are hidden in their same old format toolbar, that is now a button). If it were always in the same place it wouldn't be so bad, but go ahead and resize your window and watch the Format button jump around!

And UI customization is maddening. You have to learn the whole XML scheme for all but the most trivial of modifications. Unless you are an Excel developer, this is a tremendous waste of time and energy. Ever since Office 6 in like 1993, you could edit the toolbars and the buttons. Now you can only edit little areas of the ribbon and choose from the MS limited pallet of buttons. You want a custom button? Package up an icon file with some shady XML packer thing into a special add-on type file.

I actually like some of the improvements in Office, and I think that even the ribbon has improved since the 2007 release... I mean "Copy As Picture" in the "Paste" button??? Really??? If they continue to add customization features it will get better, but I'm afraid they will never make it as consistent as the old menus were (after you turned off the auto-hiding feature, naturally). You could argue about the logic of some of the placement in the old menus, but at least they stayed put!

Re:Awful

[MightyYar]

Sorry - a menubar replacement is what I meant.

Re:Awful

[SpryGuy]

Clearly you have never used Windows before, so I have to wonder why you're complaining so much. Alt has always been the key to get access to the menus from the keyboard. It works the same for the Ribbon. All your complaints are simply invalid whining because you've never taken a moment to get familiar with it. You reject it not because it's bad, or "unintuitive", or difficult... but because it's different. That's all.

And that's kind of sad.

Re:Awful

[Belial6]

I would say that there is even less consistency in OSX. Even the core buttons don't always do the same thing, and the fact that the red x in the corner SOMETIMES closes the application, and SOMETIMES leaves it running, only closing the UI is truly hideous.

Re:Awful

[SpryGuy]

Your ignorance of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

See up there at the top? By default there's typically a save ("diskette") icon, and probably undo/redo. Just right-click one of those buttons and customize it to your heart's content from the context menu.

You can even move that quick access toolbar from the menu bar to below the ribbon, and minimize the ribbon, all from that menu.

Or you can go to the Excel "Options" menu, and select "Customize".

There are multiple ways to get there.

Sorry, but you're wrong.

Re:Awful

[syousef]

In this particular case, I suggest you read the blog post first before jumping to conclusion. It has a fairly detailed analysis of most used commands in Explorer, and how they were specifically placed all on the default Ribbon tab so as to be at a single-click distance.

Who's most used command list? Certainly not my own personal one.

Re:Awful

[SpryGuy]

The ribbon is every bit as browsable as a menu bar. In fact, every assertion you make is simple and obviously false (as pointed out in other messages in this thread).

Again, your ignorance of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and your incompetence with something doesn't mean it's hard to use or badly designed.

Re:Awful

[spud603]

In my experience OSX developers stick to the UI design standards more than their MS counterparts. My guess is that there's a higher premium on macs for programs that have the right 'look and feel' so it's really the users of the programs that enforce the UI standards. That is, there are more mac users that care whether their program feels like a mac program than there are windows users that care whether their program feels like a windows program.

Re:Awful

[Andreas Mayer]

I would say that there is even less consistency in OSX. Even the core buttons don't always do the same thing, and the fact that the red x in the corner SOMETIMES closes the application, and SOMETIMES leaves it running, only closing the UI is truly hideous.

The window close button closes the window. It does that reliably.

Some applications just choose to quit themselves when you close their last window. Most of those are utility type applications, like System Preferences, that you usually open, do something and then immediately quit again.

(Fortunately, in the future you most likely won't even be able to see if an application without an open window is still running or not because the system will handle that transparently and independent from user input. ;))

Re:Awful

[Your.Master]

I'm curious: what do you use the current explorer interface for that would have to be relearned on a ribbon?

I'm pretty sure the only reason I ever go there is to turn off "hide file extensions for known file types". Everything else happens by expanding out the tree, drag and drop, right click context menus, ctrl-x / ctrl-c / ctrl-v, etc.. I doubt if I'd even notice the switch to a ribbon (unless it made something much better).

Re:Awful

[syousef]

How can you have been using this months or years without knowing this? I'm not sure. It's right there before your eyes, and works very similarly to how the old system did it, with Alt key highlighting (via underline) the hot key to press, or activating the menu control. It's not like it's a completely foreign concept.

So, your "main complaint" is completely without merit. What's your next complaint? Perhaps I can help you out there too.

Well I've been using the ribbon for years and also did not know this. It is not obvious unless you've been told about it, and the correlation with alt for file menu may not be obvious either. Do not blame the user for poor education transitioning between interfaces, since the user cannot know which questions to ask if they do not know that a feature exists. I know I don't go around hitting alt randomly for no good reason. Even if I did I would have to be in the right frame of mind to be curious about what the symbols were and so workout they are shortcuts.

Also I have not found a way to switch between ribbon bars once I do select one other than to hit alt again to disable, and alt again to select the new one. (With menus, you could use the arrows to navigate them). That is a shame because if you there is such a shortcut, and used in combination with minimize ribbon, you would almost have something similar to the file menu in terms of efficiency....well except for the fact that the new layout of what is on each ribbon is not as logical as the old menus were (and I am NOT saying the old ones were perfect). So what the ribbon does is give you a poor mentally delayed approximation to a menu system that was superior in the first place.

Re:Awful

[Belial6]

So, totally inconsistent, and the the way that Apple will handle it is to hide its inconsistencies.

Re:Awful

[salesgeek]

I think MS is about to have a Unity moment.

Re:Awful

[toddestan]

Well, they already removed the "Go up one folder" button in Vista, so I'm actually a bit more concerned about what they are planning on removing entirely as opposed to what gets regulated to the non-home tabs.

Re:Awful

[fyzikapan]

You have to dig for "crop"? I mean, it wouldn't occur to you that it might be in the (differently colored to stand out) context-sensitive picture formatting tab on the ribbon? Even my mother, who can't grasp how to email an image without sticking it in a word document first, has figured this out.

Re:Awful

[fyzikapan]

But you do have to have some familiarity with the bread in question.

All this baseless whining (and that's what most of it is) is quite ridiculous. How would like it if someone started bashing KDE4 without bothering to know much of anything about it?

Re:Awful

[oakgrove]

Yep, I used Windows for many years. Vista which 7 isn't far from is what drove me to Linux. After I got passed the initial learning curve, I realized it was the best computer related decision I ever made. And how did something like an OS get so holy that even the slightest criticism is considered "bashing"? Lastly, what did I say about Windows that was wrong?

Re:Awful

[x_MeRLiN_x]

I am constantly having to dig for simple crap like "crop"

I don't think I've ever inserted a picture using 2007, but that sounded like crap to me. I loaded up Word 2007, dragged a picture into the document and looked at the ribbon tabs. I saw one had a pink "Picture Tools" annotation and lo and behold, Crop is the largest button on the entire toolbar.

Here's a screenshot for anyone who would otherwise happily believe what I think is baseless complaining.
http://imgur.com/9Um3d

Re:Awful

[shutdown -p now]

Hopefully the fact that the "go up one folder" button is making a reappearance in this release will reassure you. ~

Re:Awful

[Stupendoussteve]

I think it's more likely a beneficial symptom of the Mac UI in general. The universal menu means an application like Word with only the ribbon would have a giant grey bar at the top with "Word" and nothing else. It looks ugly, and the application window itself can't really get any more streamlined than it already was anyway.

On Windows each window has its own menu, so removing all of the menues and streamlining the window is visually acceptable, even if it removes (needed) functionality.

Re:Awful

[LO0G]

One of Microsoft's big problems in Office 97-2003 was that people were not noticing features that Microsoft wanted them to use

One of the other motivations about the ribbon: When Microsoft asked users about what features they would like to see in Office, it turns out they asked for features that were already there. But the menu system was so complicated that nobody figured that out.

Jensen Harris (architect of the Ribbon) has an awesome talk about the history of the Office UI that led to the creation of the ribbon on his blog. Search for "why the ui". He also did a video of the story

Re:Awful

[mcavic]

If there's something you use frequently that isn't on the home tab

Or, how about if we just organize all of the commands into a pull-down menu bar? Oh, wait. That's what we've always had since Windows 3.1, until now.

Re:Awful

[man_of_mr_e]

Hitting alt, then pressing the arrows works fine for me. You can also hit alt, then do ctrl-tab.

Re:Awful

[man_of_mr_e]

There were many reasons for the ribbon, but the biggest one was that the number of features in office apps has been growing steadily, and just adding them to more menus was not scalable.. it just made them more cluttered and hard to find things.

The fact is, there is what the user says, and what the user does. Hard data made up of telementry from Microsoft products shows that what users say they do and what they actually do are not the same thing. They "say" they lose 20% productivity or some such, but reality shows they typically gain productivity and more knowledge of how to use features they didn't know before.

Re:Awful

[man_of_mr_e]

"Intuitive" is defenseless against "stubborn". No matter how intuitive it is, it won't matter if you refuse to believe it might not suck.

Re:Awful

[man_of_mr_e]

It's ironic that people that pride themselves in their ability to understand complex, inconsistent, confusing and even downright sadistic (in some cases) technology seem completely unable to use those same skills when it comes to a Microsoft product that is much easier to use.

Maybe that's it. The more efficient and easy to use it is, the more it must suck.

Re:Awful

[man_of_mr_e]

Any of several ways.

* Ctrl-F1
* Double Click on the tabs
* Right click and choose "Minimize the ribbon"
* Click the chevron in the upper right corner next to the help icon

There are probably even more ways, but these spring to mind. With all the ways to do this, how can you not have stumbled across any of them?

Re:Awful

[man_of_mr_e]

Since when did they remove the "go up one" button? It's there for me in Vista and 7. It's called a breadcrumb, and you just click on the parent directory name to go up that one level, or hey you can go up 3 or 4 in one click as well if you want.

I really don't understand why people find breadcrumbs more difficult than click an "up" button 3 or 4 times.

Re:Awful

[DavidD_CA]

The "AutoFit" feature is located in the giant Format menu on the ribbon, in the Cells group.

It's no more difficult than finding it in the Format menu, then Column, then AutoFit, back in Excel 2003.

Besides, most people just double-click on the column divider anyway, which is why this feature probably didn't get top billing. If it were more-commonly used, it would have.

You mention that the icons move around when your screen is resized, but how often do regular users do this? Studies show that most users run Office apps in maximized mode.

And even if they do move things around, this is still better than Office 2003's toolbars which had to truncate icons that didn't fit into the chevron menu which everyone hates.

And, Copy as Picture is in the Copy menu, not Paste. Though it is *next to* Paste, it's very clearly a little pull-down menu next to Copy.

Re:Awful

[DavidD_CA]

You've got to be kidding me.

When you *HOVER YOUR MOUSE* over a feature in the ribbon, it tells you the shortcut key (if there is one).

The Alt-X-Y feature that the parent is referring to is only necessary if the feature has no dedicated shortcut key.

Re:Awful

[syousef]

Hitting alt, then pressing the arrows works fine for me. You can also hit alt, then do ctrl-tab.

Hitting ctrl-thttp://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2403472&cid=37249556#ab only takes you through the items on that ribbon, it doesn't take you to the next one.

Re:Awful

[hattig]

Having had the misfortune to use Office 2007 for several years, not every common function on the ribbon showed a shortcut when you hovered the mouse over it. If Microsoft have added this - or there is some setting somewhere that activates this - then that's good.

It seems there are a lot of Microsoft Windows defenders here who actually think that the Windows UI is good and intuitive (or easy to learn). I think some of them went on to design KDE interfaces.

If you don't know that 'alt' shows menus (but the keyboard has a menu key, wha?) then you out of luck. Glad that the setting is so easy to find as well, and defaults to the one that hides the keyboard shortcut from the user until they press the magic key that isn't the menu key.

it IS obvious to anyone who has been using Windows for years

Epic Fail.

Anyway, I never wrote anything there against the concept of the ribbon. I do actually think the idea is good, although I'm not particularly fond of how Microsoft has implemented it (possibly because of things around the ribbon that are terrible, like the Office 2007 app icon thing). And it will be especially useful for touch interfaces.

However if people weren't using menus before then people obviously needed some training - just like the 'alt' key. Then again I think some people need training on the fact that there are keyboard shortcuts in the first place. So for them having some big buttons to mash is good and they'll never go any further in the computer interaction.

And you can't claim that Explorer Ribbon UI is good in any way. Adequate, maybe. Lots of stuff to learn around it - icons on the title bar, menus on the title bar, tabs next to not-tabs, and so on.

Re:Awful

[hattig]

I think the Ribbon concept is good actually, even after having to use Office 2007 for a few years. But Microsoft seems to want to futz with the concept until it actually looks really really messy, and rather than being a clear interface there are dozens of small icons and UI elements that make it appear cluttered. Just look at the screenshots - especially the top left of the window, and then try to claim again that this implementation is good, intuitive and easy to pick up.

Re:Awful

[MightyYar]

The "AutoFit" feature is located in the giant Format menu on the ribbon, in the Cells group.

Great! Now resize the window :)

It's no more difficult than finding it in the Format menu, then Column, then AutoFit, back in Excel 2003.

I disagree - it never moved around before.

Besides, most people just double-click on the column divider anyway, which is why this feature probably didn't get top billing. If it were more-commonly used, it would have.

Like I said, it is less-frequently used. But I generally like to use it rather than the double-click because I usually want to exclude the headers from the operation.

You mention that the icons move around when your screen is resized, but how often do regular users do this? Studies show that most users run Office apps in maximized mode.

I'm not most users :) On my big monitor, it would be a colossal waste of space to run anything but Excel at full res. But even if I were a full-screener, I have several computers with varying resolutions. On the laptop, the Format button is in a different spot than on my work desktop monitor, even at full res.

And even if they do move things around, this is still better than Office 2003's toolbars which had to truncate icons that didn't fit into the chevron menu which everyone hates.

As I said, the ribbon concept isn't a bad toolbar replacement (or could be made so with a few tweaks). I just want the menu bar like they have in their Mac versions.

And, Copy as Picture is in the Copy menu, not Paste. Though it is *next to* Paste, it's very clearly a little pull-down menu next to Copy.

No, you are looking at 2010. In 2007 there was no Copy drop-down. I am very glad that they fixed this, though it made me chuckle every time.

Re:Awful

[hattig]

I'm amazed that you determined all that from me writing that needing to have specific knowledge (about the 'alt' key - I presume the 'menu' key on the keyboard does the same too) about one thing means all the rest you have written. Ultimately it isn't the most obvious thing in the world to pick up if you haven't used DOS twenty years ago - and that is what I am commenting on. Well done for assuming that I didn't know that 'alt' did that, I was merely challenging the concept.

And I'm not commenting on how the fucking word processor application is implemented. Auto-detecting the user's intention is a good thing, sheesh.

And yes, I do use styles, both paragraph level and character level. In fact I do believe that allowing free-style formatting is annoying, especially when you are trying to apply a common look and feel across documents.

Re:Awful

[hattig]

I wrote "Why not hovering the mouse over the icon - that makes a lot more sense in a graphics UI.".

So it does that. Great. Exactly what I wrote would make sense. I don't recall Office 2007 actually doing that, but maybe it just was having a hissy fit at the time or I've buried the memories of using it.

Re:Awful

[MightyYar]

He may be using 2007. 2010 improved customization quite a bit, though it is not quite as flexible as you make it sound. Custom buttons cannot co-mingle with regular buttons, and the icon selection is pathetic - with no way to edit like the old UI had since 1996 or so.

Re:Awful

[TuringTest]

After you have pasted text, you can press Ctrl or mouse-select the Paste icon that appears below the pasted text. This opens a context menu to select the formatting style - Text only is for unformatted.

Re:Awful

[jmichaelg]

Really, there's a ton of whining about the Ribbon that I see from people that strikes me as nothing more or less than someone whining about how ignorant they are about the Ribbon or how to use it.

You know, when a lot of people are reacting negatively to a UI, it suggests that maybe the UI isn't all that great.

It took Microsoft three years after adopting the Ribbon to bring back user customizable menus. Seriously, who the fuck thought that having to break out an IDE to install a menu into Office was a good idea? With the kind of group-think going on at Redmond that would even think of dropping a user-customizable interface, it's probably not a good idea to preach to us that you understand us better than we understand ourselves.

Re:Awful

[goldspider]

"I know that MS did usability studies. But I don't know what audience they were using."

Then you would do well to cut your losses and stop arguing your admittedly uninformed assumptions and biases.

"One of my friends is an MBA, as non-technical as they come. He despises ribbons and can't find anything in them."

Anecdote is a poor substitute for data.

Re:Awful

[alispguru]

You should also read this blog post commenting on the Microsoft post. Money quote:

Again, this is Microsoft’s own research, cited in the same post: nobody — almost literally 0% of users — uses the menu bar, and only 10% of users use the command bar. Nearly everybody is using the context menu or hotkeys. So the solution, obviously, is to make both the menu bar and the command bar bigger and more prominent. Right?

Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody.

Re:Awful

[Ol Olsoc]

You can just, you can just..... I can just use something else where I'm not an idiot, or a luddite.

I used the ribbon - and still do if I have to use a machine that it is on. Used it enough to know that it doesn't work as well as the old system.

Also, I can't "just" change another user's interface.

But as I say, I just left Office on the PC behind. Problem solved. Ribbon lovers have their precious icon based and sort of random interface, and my money goes elsewhere. Who wins?

Re:Awful

[gweihir]

I completely agree. This may all be simpler for non-expert users, but for experts it is an insult and kills productivity.

I also agree about Gnome and KDE. Tried a few days, then went back to non-intrusive, non-clutter, clean-desktop fvwm. A window-manager should never distract the user or hog the screen.

Re:Awful

[Just Some Guy]

Um... yes, it tells you exactly what the short cut keys are. Hold down the alt key.

UI fail. A WIMP GUI that requires keyboard interaction to learn needs to be taken out back and shot.

Re:Awful

[Ol Olsoc]

So, why change the interface at all? How about placing all the functions in a box around the edges, or maybe have to put up a second screen with the interface and you have to use a second screen? How about changing everything with every new release? The change needs to improve things, not just be different.

The argument about the shortcuts is specious anyhow, because we could always do away with the interface altogether, and just hit the alt key for everything we need to know. I suspect it would even work better than the odd way the keyboard commands display when you hit the alt key in Office.

In fact, shotrcut discussions tend to undermine the supposed superiority arguments for the ribbon. If it's that great, wouldn't we want to use it in preference to the shortcuts?

But that isn't what it's all about. People do tend to want a graphic interface, and what a lot of people are saying is "We don't like this!" Call them luddites or stupid, or whatever, they just don't like the interface.

And for most people, we learn about the shortcuts by seeing what is on the menu, and the old menu gave us a reasonably good way to find the shortcut we might want.RIght up there when I look at the menus.

But all that is almost irrelevant. I could hardly give a good rat's backside about the interface. It only exists for me to get the real work done, and to keep out of the way otherwise. I'm doing stuff, and that ribbon just gets in the way. I've shown to at least my satisfaction that I can work faster in the old menu system, I don't have to shift gears when I shift programs when they all have a more or less standard menu, and one of them is wildly different. I don't care otherwise, I just know some things get in the way, and things that get in the way simply slow me down.

Standardization is not an evil thing. When the time comes to change interfaces, it will be obvious, not just because some lowlife Office suite wants to force it on us. Which brings me to the ultimate solution. I like customizable interfaces. How about offering both? Then those who see the obvious wisdom of the ribbon can use it, and the rest of us can stick with our buggy whip of a menu based interface.

Re:Awful

[SpryGuy]

Dude, you're talking about a KEYBOARD SHORT-CUT. You're already at the keyboard. And "Alt" is the standard windows way of accessing menus and controls, and has been since the dawn of Windows. Alt-F would activate the File menu, for example. ALT should be part of every Windows users's knowledge. It's fundamental. Like "knowing" what that little yellow candy dot is on windows in OS X. Or "knowing" what those little glowy dots are under the icons in the dock on OS X. There are just a few basic things you need to know. ALT is one of them. And it's universal. And useful.

So no, not a fail. It's consistent, and has been so for decades.

Re:Awful

[Baloo Uriza]

Also, since when are Microsoft's astroturfers allowed mod points on Slashdot?

Re:Awful

[toddestan]

I don't like it because I have to actually go read the text in the bread crumb, mentally identify the folder that is one up before I can click on it. The toolbar button I can just click on without thinking about it. Plus if the folder name is long and/or the window is small you don't actually get the bread crumb without clicking on the little expand menu button thing.

Don't get me wrong, I think the breadcrumb was a good idea, but I think removing the go up one folder button was premature.

Re:Awful

[mcswell]

Oooh, you've hit another of my pet peeves. I really can't tell, looking at an Office 2010 app, whether it's in focus or not. Whereas I can always tell with my other apps, like Thunderbird or Firefox; the color difference is clear.

Re:Awful

[man_of_mr_e]

Heaven forbid you should have to think before you take an action. However, if you're determined to do things blindly, you don't have to read the text, just click on whatever is the next level up.

I've never seen a folder so long that you can't see at least the next level up in the address bar.

Upcoming news....

[Niomosy]

And alternative file manager downloads soar on Windows 8 launch day.

Windows professionals and consultants ready themselves for increased profits in tutoring a new array of people having difficulty simply working with their own files.

Re:Upcoming news....

[EvanED]

if you don't like the way the OS is going then why would you even use it?

Because if I took your suggestion, I wouldn't have a computer?

Less flippantly, there are more things to an OS than the file manager. It's perfectly reasonable that you'd like some of the other changes despite the file manager and see the upgrade as a net positive.

Re:Upcoming news....

[thegarbz]

On windows 8 launch day? I've been using alternative file managers ever since I hit F3 and was greeted by a dog.

I could honestly say I don't know what the windows 7 file manager looks like and I have been using it since the public betas. The lack of functionality in the windows file manager is atrocious, and the default user interface just seems to make it hard to navigate on purpose. Big Icons, no explorer view ... and that's about all I remember.

If anyone is interested in an alternative I suggest looking at Directory Opus. The ability to have split windows showing two folder structures, and the system having an source and destination window (even when the destination is minimised) makes file copying a breeze, and the quickview options are incredible.

Re:Upcoming news....

[twothousand]

Or better Windows 8 joins Vista in the trash dump ...

Re:Upcoming news....

[LordLimecat]

Oh good gracious, how many people do you think will actually come to you and say "im a power user and I HAVE to use details browsing mode, but I cant figure out which picture on the ribbon corresponds to that"?

I mean, whens the last time you used the menus in explorer, and you werent just going to "folder options"? For me, I think it was the third of never, Im always using keyboard shortcuts or rightclick. That is to say, the menu has been utterly worthless.

And for the folks who can neither figure out rightclick nor keyboard shortcuts, pointing them to the gigantic "CUT" and "PASTE" buttons is a lot easier than watching them struggle thru the menu.

I can see some complaints about losing the menu in Word where there really are a zillion little options, but if the ribbon shines anywhere it is where there ARENT many options, and I honestly cant figure out what you would want to do with your files in explorer other than "cut" and "paste".

Re:Upcoming news....

[PommeFritz]

I've been a happy user of the Directory Opus file manager tool since when it first came out for Windows (and before that on Amiga, but that is beside the point here). Indeed it seems I'll be a happy user of Directory Opus for many years to come.

Blech

[cmdr_klarg]

If I can disable the damned ribbon and use what I want, fine. I get the feeling that it won't happen.

No advantages and a few disadvantages to Win8, and I haven't even looked at it closely. I'll stay with 7 for the time being.

Re:Blech

[SpryGuy]

I think you're jumping to conclusions based on little or no evidence.

The article goes in to rather serious detail about the advantages and the whys and hows of the Ribbon in Explorer.

Really, I only see improvements. Where do you see anything that isn't an improvement? More functional than Win7's Explorer, more vertical screen space than Win7's Explorer, more customizability than Win7's Explorer, and more touch-friendly than Win7's Explorer.

How do you get "no advantages and a few disadvantages"? I'd love for you to list out these alleged disadvantages, and explain why you think there are no advantages. It might help you to actually read the full article first.

Re:Blech

[Deathlizard]

it looks like you can chuck the ribbon interface by using the Quick Access Toolbar. It's the second to the last pic on the msdn page. Although frankly I never used the top of the explorer window other than for going up one directory. (but clicking on the directory name in the vista/7 address bar is somewhat of a compromise fix)

speaking of which, the "Up one directory" arrow is back.

Re:Blech

[shutdown -p now]

If I can disable the damned ribbon and use what I want, fine. I get the feeling that it won't happen.

You can't disable it, but you can minimize it (so that only the tab headers show). In that mode, you'll save significant vertical space over Win7 explorer, which is what a power user likely cares most about.

The context menu is still there, and so are the keyboard shortcuts. On the bright side, there are way more keyboard shortcuts now, so it's easier to ignore any mouse-driven UI altogether.

Re:Blech

[Barny]

/me points at the part where he justifies it all by comparing real estate between a windows 7 file manager (without the huge waste of space at the bottom disabled) with a windows 8 file manager (conspicuously missing said waste of space), claiming you can see 4 more files.

Shit, you could see another 10 on windows 7 if you turn off that pox riddled status bar.

Re:Blech

[SpryGuy]

Dude. They moved the info panel from the bottom to the side, so you STILL have that info in Windows 8.

And if you disable the info panel in Win7, keep in mind you can minimize ("auto-hide") the Ribbon in Windows 8.

End result: YOU STILL HAVE MORE SPACE.

And you don't lose the info panel stuff, because it's over on the right, taking advantage of the wide-screen format. (but you can turn that off too if you want).

Still wrong. Complaints still not valid. Much whining without substance.

Re:Blech

[Barny]

No, because you still have this huge bloody ribbon thing, that 99% of the time I don't need to use at all, dominating the top of my windows. All files have context menus, I don't need all this junk at the top, side, bottom or wherever. If I wanted that info I would right click the parent folder and, following the context menu, get the info.

Why could they not just push the info panel stuff to the side in the current explorer and recover another 10 files of real estate that way? rather than then putting in all this stuff that is, most of the time, not needed and lose 6 of those files to an unneeded interface item?

Re:Blech

[SpryGuy]

No, because if you don't WANT to see the ribbon, you just hide it. It's suddenly no longer dominating the top of your windows.

Again, your complaint is without merit.

Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of s

[Nathan Campos]

Better information about Microsoft's researches: http://seldo.tumblr.com/post/9549775746/this-is-genuinely-microsofts-idea-of-a lol

Ribbons are for the birds.

[Cprossu]

I hate ribbons, they create about three times more headaches than they solve.
I don't care if Grandma will be able to use autocad easier, every time a new ribbon shows up it makes my life a living cluttered hell.

RIM style management?

[grimmjeeper]

Is Microsoft taking a page from the RIM management playbook? It seems to me like they're deliberately trying to make themselves irrelevant by not giving people what they clearly want. I guess hubris strikes every large company eventually. They're systematically flushing themselves down the toilet with every release of code. It will be interesting to see the post-Windows world in a few years.

Re:RIM style management?

[danbert8]

Say whaaaaaaaaaaa? RIM is getting complaints because the Blackberry OS hasn't changed it's interface much at all (to compete with Android and iOS). And you are comparing them with Microsoft who is forcing a change that nobody wants (to compete with Apple)?

Re:RIM style management?

[grimmjeeper]

It's opposite sides of the same coin. The lack of market focus is the issue. Both companies are just forging ahead with their own idea of what to build without listening at all to user complaints. Both companies are diving into the deep end of the stupid pool, just from different sides.

Re:RIM style management?

[danbert8]

I don't think RIM is in the same boat as Microsoft. Both have to appeal to users, but remember who the customers for each company is. It's not the end user, it's businesses. RIM is listening to businesses who want a locked down phone for calling and handling emails. Apps are nice, but businesses could care less about them, and in fact probably want to discourage time wasters and games. They aren't really trying to compete with the iPhone and various Android headsets which are primarily leisure devices.

Microsoft on the other hand is totally ignoring the fact that most businesses don't like change because it requires retraining. I know a lot of businesses are still not upgrading past XP because they don't want all the 40+ employees saying, "where did the start button go". Heck people at my workplace can't figure out how to do half the stuff in Office 2007. Not saying anything about the benefits of the ribbon, but even if it is more efficient or better, it may not get adopted (see Dvorak vs QWERTY). Microsoft is competing with Apple even though OSX is not even coming close to beating Windows in the business sphere.

One word: WHY?

[jb68321]

In the age of widescreen displays, why in the world do they want to waste more of my precious vertical viewing plane with pictures?

My company's switch to Office 2007 nearly a year ago is still bringing groans from my coworkers (who by the way are engineers in their 20-30s for the most part). We love new things, and we love improvements; we abhor inefficiency and "stupid pretty things". If we wanted eye candy, we'd get a Mac.

I guess I should read more about their "clear benefits", because we are obviously missing them!

Re:One word: WHY?

[SilverHatHacker]

In the age of widescreen displays, why in the world do they want to waste more of my precious vertical viewing plane with pictures?

Because if they put it on the sides, everyone would be complaining about wanting the ability to move it to the bottom of the screen.
See also "Unity launcher".

Re:One word: WHY?

[afidel]

I was thinking exactly the same thing, this seems like a major step backward from 7 where you gained vertical realestate versus the XP Explorer system.

Re:One word: WHY?

[shutdown -p now]

In the age of widescreen displays, why in the world do they want to waste more of my precious vertical viewing plane with pictures?

It sounds counter-intuitive, but redesigned Explorer with Ribbon fits as many files as Explorer in Win7, and in some cases even more, because some other UI elements were either ditched altogether, or (like the file info pane below) moved so that they consume horizontal space rather than vertical.

I guess I should read more about their "clear benefits", because we are obviously missing them!

You probably should read the blog post linked from TFS, and see what points you disagree with. It gives a fairly detailed rationale for UI design.

Re:One word: WHY?

[FrankSchwab]

We love new things, and we love improvements; we abhor inefficiency and "stupid pretty things". If we wanted eye candy, we'd get a Mac.
I guess I should read more about their "clear benefits", because we are obviously missing them!

Almost byte-for-byte the same thing I said when I was dragged kicking and screaming from Win2000 to WinXP and it's Fisher-Price UI design.

Re:One word: WHY?

[Pieroxy]

Unity is a piece of crap for so many different reasons !! But that one is definitely one. But it is not the same.

See the difference:
Unity, 30 icons, all necessary. You want to see them, hence you need it horizontal.
Explorer: 30 icons, all useless. You don't want to see them, hence you want them to consume less real estate.

Re:One word: WHY?

[ghmh]

I don't get it either - the move to 16:9 ((from 16:10 (from 4:3)), and given said move the lack of design to accommodate it in a sensible way.

Firefox is really starting to annoy me for various reasons, but I still use it because it's the only browser that has a really good horizontal tabs option

To be fair, the ribbon probably improves a low end users general experience, but for those of us at the other end of the spectrum, changes of late mainly seem to be for the worse.

Re:One word: WHY?

[ClubStew]

Did you read the original post? There's actually more room for content now when compared to Explorer that's been around in Vista and Win7.

Re:One word: WHY?

[Skywolfblue]

That's due to cutting out stuff on the page, not the toolbar using less real estate. It's a good thing they're cutting the page down yes, but it doesn't excuse the horrid ribbon.

Re:One word: WHY?

[Volante3192]

I particularly like this graphic:
http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-29-43-metablogapi/8422.Figure-21-_2D00_-Real-Estate-comparison_5F00_2.png

You get to see TWO MORE FILES!!!! with the ribbon...
Except if you streamline your W7 explorer you'll get about 6 back.
Let's compare the most streamlined W8 layout to the least streamlined W7 one! MARKETING!!

Re:One word: WHY?

[Dishevel]

Hate Vista and 7's explorer.
A file manager should be about files and directories.
Everything should keyboard, click, double-click and right click.
Period.
Having a bunch of crap on my screen just means I see less of my files and directory structure.
They don't want a file manager any more. They want a "Unified User Space".
Fuck that.
I do not need to visit Facebook from my file manager. I just want to rename shit. Move crap around and find a few things.
If they wanted to make our lives better why don't they build in easy batch file renaming? How about right clicking on a folder and being able to run a small script in explorer right from there? Why not give us better search? Why not improve speed? Why not do something USEFUL?

Fuck em.

Ubuntu is all fucked as well. At least there are linux distros that do listen.
We need "Windows Distros" :)

Screw it. All I really need is more game support in Linux and to figure a way to get the Tait radio programming app to work under wine.
*Sigh*

Re:One word: WHY?

[PCM2]

I know it's a radical concept, but maybe you should read TFA, specifically the subsection labeled "Designing for a wider screen."

Re:One word: WHY?

[EvanED]

...and if you "streamline" your W8 explorer, you'll get those 6 back too. Whoopdie do.

Re:One word: WHY?

[Missing.Matter]

The most streamlined W8 layout would have the ribbon collapsed.

Re:One word: WHY?

[Sir Holo]

If you wanted efficiency, you'd get a Mac.

Re:One word: WHY?

[hattig]

So take the Win 7 UI, move the file info pane and get rid of the file listing header, and you've got 28/29 files shown. The Ribbon is hiding 4 or 5 files.

Re:One word: WHY?

[Locutus]

but how could that possibly be when before each release of their 'new operating system' they do research on how to make the user interface MS Better? You must be wrong and so must your users and everyone else because Microsoft knows what's best.

BTW, this is exactly what's wrong with the model of letting one company dictate what's best for YOU, and all those other users who use their software. I recall their CEO claiming open source software was a cancer and another that it was like socialism. Well they have a dictatorship model and it has sucked since they declared themselves emperor in 1995. That is when they took over complete control of the desktop UI.

LoB

Re:One word: WHY?

[Bucky24]

At least in windows XP you can use the windows classic UI still.

Re:One word: WHY?

[Volante3192]

Except you wouldn't be able to show off your ribbon and why would we dare do that since everyone will be using a ribbon?!

Re:One word: WHY?

[tfranzese]

It's not intended to benefit of the ribbon, but rather to illustrate that they've made changes to other parts of the Explorer UI so that the ribbon won't eat away what vertical space was already there (which was my only concern). Seemed obvious enough, maybe you didn't read the entire blog entry.

Re:One word: WHY?

[tfranzese]

*It's not intended to show a benefit of the ribbon.

Re:One word: WHY?

[Stormwatch]

The screen ration change was a scam, a way for screen makers to sell us LESS screen for the same price.

Re:One word: WHY?

[thegarbz]

False. This only applies when the details pane is set to large.

If the details pane is set to small you get 27 visible files in the explorer at the resolutions they quoted. So I wonder how readily the ribbon bar can be resized without making it hidden or otherwise removing the supposed one click advantages.

Re:One word: WHY?

[LordLimecat]

Cant the ribbon be collapsed? Pretty sure it can. Theres your 6 files back.

Re:One word: WHY?

[RogerWilco]

We love new things, and we love improvements; we abhor inefficiency and "stupid pretty things". If we wanted eye candy, we'd get a Mac.

I've moved to Mac in 2007. I'm an enigneer, having used Windows and Linux as my main desktop before. I'm much more productive on the Mac, because it actually has less "stupid pretty things". It has a very clean, minimalistic interface, with a powerful BSD under it. Sure it's a little less customizable, but that also means that things are much more consistent and there is a lot less clutter.

I have a Windows and a Linux machine at home, to tinker with, but as a machine to just get work done, Macs are in my experience the best choice, especially as an engineer.

Re:One word: WHY?

[ghmh]

Presumption much? I RTFA, that section was the reason for the post. TFA also mentions they've already pretty much given up on trying to accommodate power-users which to me is a questionable long-term strategy.

To me widescreen screams for them to bring back a dual-pane view. However, I suspect this is really a move to try and not lose user share to Apple based on UI visual appeal and usability, and they wont because it's too hard, or too hard to make look pretty as well as functional.

Re:One word: WHY?

[Volante3192]

Collapsing the ribbon would defeat the purpose of having the ribbon, which would defeat the purpose of showing why the ribbon is TEH AWESOMES! Therefore you cannot collapse the ribbon. As a result, from a marketing perspective, you *must* make W7 take up more space. Which means turning on that utterly useless status bar.

(Wouldn't it be hilarious if, by default, W8 comes with the same huge, shitty status bar turned on? So much for that whopping two additional lines of space!)

(Also, doesn't it seem funny that per MS's own research, the ribbon seems...pointless? >80% of commands come from context windows or hotkeys. See: https://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-29-43-metablogapi/3125.Figure-6-_2D00_-Command-entrypoint_5F00_2.png . Seems people have adapted just fine to NOT using the menu bar which is what this monstrosity replaces.)

Re:One word: WHY?

[daid303]

Atleast they filled the space with something useful this time around. Look at the W7, it's all empty space above and below the files...

Re:One word: WHY?

[LordLimecat]

Collapsing the ribbon would defeat the purpose of having the ribbon, which would defeat the purpose of showing why the ribbon is TEH AWESOMES! Therefore you cannot collapse the ribbon

Thats some fallacious reasoning if Ive ever seen any.

The fact remains that for those of you who want that extra space and dont care about ribbon / organizer, you can minimize both to no negative effect. For the rest of the world, they have the ribbon which really is better for a touch interface. And for me, I dont care because I use keyboard shortcuts.

As for your comments about "some people just adapting fine", there are a number of people who have issues dealing with and manipulating files; menus can be confusing to explain to a first time user (as in, someone who has never used a computer before and is over 50).

Re:One word: WHY?

[Volante3192]

Exactly: space that can easily be removed. Get rid of the white space, and you get a lot more real estate. In comparison, there is no white space on the W8 side. Removing something on the W8 side, however, will remove visible functionality.

Awful.

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally can't stand the ribbons. So busy and hard to find anything.

Here's a great example: ZIP is under the "share" tab. Please explain that one to me.

Re:Awful.

[peragrin]

easy because you zip up a file to share it stupid.

I don't get the complaining about the ribbons, they are just big pictured menu buttons. it is just as quick as the regular menu and just as obtuse as office 2003 menu's where. In reality very little changed they just added a few pictures to the menu bar.

Re:Awful.

[hedwards]

I disagree. It's quick if what you want to do is one of the most commonly used tasks, but it's a real bitch if it's something that most folks don't do. For those that don't use MS Office constantly or who only need to perform a particular task a few times a year, it can take a really long time to find it.

And really, this is just another example of why I think that MS should be paying people to use their software. If MS had to pay for the losses in productivity from their half baked UI decisions then they'd probably be a bit more mindful about these sorts of changes.

Re:Awful.

[peragrin]

and how is that any different from the menu;s of Office 2003 where if you didn't use it very often it took hours to find?

they are just large pictured menu buttons. click on the more options some time and find the old menus still there. broken down a little bit, but the exact same menus are still right there.

Try it. sit with 2003 and 2007 next to each other and find a feature. and then find the option. the dialog boxes are identical in most cases.

Re:Awful.

[DavidD_CA]

Complete a Mail Merge in 2003 and 2007 (or 2010) and tell me which was easier and faster.

Or insert a Table of Contents using both versions.

Or work with Indexes, Footnotes, or other references.

Or go into Excel and customize a chart.

Do any of these things in 2007 (or 2010) and try them in 2003, and you'll quickly see the benefit of the Ribbon.

Good Idea

[mkkohls]

I know a lot of people hate it, I did the first time I used it, but I now think the ribbon is actually a better interface. Once you know where things are it does make you work faster. Especially when you are using items that are in the same tab of the ribbon, or same menu of the old style. While there may not be as many benefits to the ribbon in explorer as there were in Office, I'm all for them putting it everywhere they can.

Re:Good Idea

[MightyMartian]

The number of options available in a file manager are considerably less than those available in an average word processor. I see little enough to be gained here.

But hey, as long as they bring a proper fucking up level button, it will be a huge improvement over the abortion that Windows Explorer has become.

Re:Good Idea

[drolli]

Once you know where things are keyboards bindings are the fastest.

Re:Good Idea

[mkkohls]

Doesn't that go with everything? As soon you get used to it, then you will work faster. Ribbons aren't a solution. As it was before ribbons, I was already doing quite fine. Ribbons have not done my work any faster and I doubt it ever will to most users.

Not really. Getting used to it is the portion that will always be slower because you don't know where buttons are. As for me I tend to use the same tab a lot especially in word. The current tab stays up which allows faster access to the functions versus a menu which will close each time you click on an action thus making you open it again. Hence why it's slower before you get used to it.

Re:Good Idea

[urbanriot]

I initially hated the ribbon as well, angered that they'd removed some of the functions I'd used or misplaced them... until a Microsoft developer blogged that everything is still there, it's just ribbonized. I gave it a chance and after around 3 months, I prefer the ribbon.

I agree with another poster though, that the world has upgraded to wide screen displays and software developers need to innovate and find a way for us to use the left and right areas of our screen, rather than the up and down. (I've tilted one of my 24" LG displays vertically until then)

Re:Good Idea

[GrumpySteen]

> Once you know where things are it does make you work faster.

Have you actually timed how long it takes to move your mouse to the top of the application window to click on something versus the time required to move your mouse to a menu at the top, click and move it down to an item on the menu and let go? Unless you're the most painfully slow human being on earth, it can't be more than half a second and it's just as disruptive since you still have to move the mouse and look at a different location, locate what you want and click.

Assuming you do this 240 times a day (which is most likely not the case), you've saved a whole 2 minutes. How much work are you actually going to do in 2 minutes?

And that's ignoring the fact that for some things, like inserting a column in Excel, you have to go to the tab, click on an item and get a menu that you have to choose an option from.. For those things, you actually have more steps than in previous versions and that's going to take a correspondingly longer time, sucking away those precious half-seconds that you're so proud of saving.

Re:Good Idea

[grimmjeeper]

There is already a computer and operating system out there for people who have no clue what they're doing. If you just want to play Farmville and exchange text messages with your BFF, get a Mac. Those of us who have to use computers professionally don't need to have big pretty pictures to figure out how to get work done. In fact, the ribbon obfuscates so many useful features, making Microsoft products a challenge to use. What real purpose is served by completely and fundamentally changing the user interface of a product that was already very well entrenched in so many offices? It's not like Microsoft has any real competition for the desktop office market.

At best, once I relearn the user interface, I will be just as productive as I was before. Certainly no more than I am now. There are no new features, at least not any that are significant. Fundamentally, the software does exactly what it did before but with a new interface. I could understand the change if it went with a significant improvement or advancement in functionality. But that's just not the case. It is change for the sake of change.

But what gets me is that this ribbon interface is universally criticized by "the masses" yet Microsoft continues to shove it down our throats in the entire product line. I just can't fathom what they're thinking.

Re:Good Idea

[oakgrove]

What does the fact that it comes from Microsoft have to do with anything? People on here complain about bad UI period. Barrels of digital ink have been spilled on here about the abortions of Ubuntus unity gnome 3 kde4 Firefox , etc. Microsoft doesn't get a pass. Why are you do sensitive ?

Re:Good Idea

[Ksevio]

I typically agree - it's a lot more intuitive to find things. The data at the beginning of the article shows how 10 commands makes up 81.8% of the usage.

But then the next picture is of the huge ribbon with 4+ buttons on the top strip, 5 on the second strip, 19 on the main ribbon, ~7 on the location bar, then the files.

That's ~35 buttons in one view not including the list of files, making it a bit overwhelming.

The ribbon is nice when it simplifies and organizes things, but in this case it looks like they've added a fair number of options to make it look like I'm running something in Office rather than a basic file viewer.

Re:Good Idea

[mcmonkey]

How do I work faster when I can't see what I'm working on? Even if I all the items I use are on the same tab of the ribbon, the ribbon is just too damn big.

The only thing I can think of useful to do with the ribbon is hide it.

Re:Good Idea

[Raenex]

refers to PCs as "boxes."

Just be glad it's not "boxen".

Re:Good Idea

[iggymanz]

The above post and its parent brought to you by the Little Fluffer who sits under the desk of various Microsoft executives; they post sticky notes for him which have pointers such as "You'll find my nutsack will need particular attention this morning".

The recession has hit the gay porn industry hard, but thankfully the Little Fluffer has job security; adapting was hard, but by rubbing the Microsoft C?O's peckers with a little shit, he can still enjoy that last-act-ass-to-mouth aftertaste.

Re:Good Idea

[PCM2]

The number of options available in a file manager are considerably less than those available in an average word processor. I see little enough to be gained here.

Actually, I'm not so sure about that. If I open a file window right now and right-click my C: drive, I see seventeen options. Two of those have submenus and several have ellipses after them (...), which means they will open a new dialog box. As TFA points out, having users access all of these options via an "invisible" control system (the right-click menu, which has no onscreen hint to let you know it even exists) is suboptimal. But that's what happens right now; most people use the context menu rather than the menubar. Microsoft hopes to change that by bringing in the Ribbon.

Re:Good Idea

[clampolo]

As soon you get used to it, then you will work faster.

That is true. When my master gave me my first whipping, i didn't like it one bit. But after a while calluses formed and it was perfectly fine. In fact I now use the crack of the whip to help me keep a good steady pace while I'm working the fields.

Re:Good Idea

[jyx]

Nope. I hate HATE HATE the ribbon. I liked the tool bars because:
1) I could put them where I wanted (text formatting at the top, table stuff down the bottom)
2) I could easily customize or create my own specific tool bars
3) Toolbar's didn't appear/disappear depending on what the program thinks you are doing.
4) Using the drawing canvas was actually useful.

The Office tool bars give me serious RAGE when ever I have to use them at work. Ive actually installed libre office (against company policy) which I now use on the increasingly rare times I have to the document thing.

Re:Good Idea

[chrismcb]

Especially when you are using items that are in the same tab of the ribbon, or same menu of the old style..

And there in lies the biggest problem with the sticky menus (I mean Ribbon) In the old days. the item I wanted was a click away. Because it was on a toolbar. Now it is under a different menu (I mean tab) which requires more clicking on my part. The Ribbon is bad.

Re:Good Idea

[Bucky24]

Computer systems for sewage treatment plants are very important :D

You do realize that by reacting as strongly as you did you have basically painted yourself as a microsoft fanboy?

Re:Good Idea

[Bucky24]

How on earth is this post rated two of ANYTHING? It's clearly flamebait.

Re:Good Idea

[kurt555gs]

I just updated my bio. It's been years since I've done that.

Slashdot is full of paid Microsoft shills both posting the company bull shit and modding down anyone who speaks ill of their masters. I have fun pointing these out.

Re:Good Idea

[cyclomedia]

From reading slashdot I thought the ribbon was afwul for about two years, until I moved jobs to a place where they had Office 2007 and frankly, after ACTUALLY USING IT I think it's fine. I don't get giddy over it, but I don't miss hunting in tabs of property dialogs launched from sub menus in the menu. Also this File Manager Ribbon actually has a dedicated New Folder button front and centre. I've only been waiting 15 years for that.

Re:Good Idea

[DavidD_CA]

You can hit the [Backspace] key to go "Up".

Re:Good Idea

[spauldo]

The post above was brought to you by a bitter, stubborn neckbeard who works on computer systems for sewage treatment plants.

So... he's got a specialized job in the computer field? Kind of like how I used to work on computer systems for military installations, or a friend of mine maintained Novell systems for a refrigeration company?

He even abbreviates Unix as 'nix for no reason

What's wrong with that? Linux != Unix, but they're similar enough that some people use 'nix or *nix or whatever as a generic term. Unix has AT&T source code in it. 'nix is anything POSIX conforming.

and refers to PCs as "boxes."

And you refer to them as "PCs". I usually refer to them as "workstations", "systems", "machines", or, yes, "boxes". I certainly wouldn't consider my Sun or DEC systems "PCs", but they're boxes (or boxen, if I'm talking to other geeks).

Wow, you know, if you ever went outside, you might find people who talk different languages and perform all kinds of jobs. That would really blow your gasket, eh?

Re:Good Idea

[a_hanso]

I too initially hated ribbons, especially since I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts (e.g. "Alt+A, I, A" to insert a row above current row in a table in word, "ma ... y'a" in vi to yank lines to a given mark, etc.)

I resisted upgrading to Office 2007 for years and only upgraded **week before last**. I am now past the initial learning curve and my productivity is actually higher than it was with the older interface. Only drawback -- when using a laptop screen, I have to keep the ribbon minimized due to lack of vertical screen space.

Re:Good Idea

[rynoski]

UP and BACK are not the same.
[Backspace] goes back, not up.

Re:Good Idea

[DavidD_CA]

My bad. It's Alt + Up.

Re:Good Idea

[Vegemeister]

The 'enter' key has no onscreen hint to let you know it exists either. Surprisingly enough, these days pretty much everybody has gotten used to the idea that the right mouse button brings up a context menu.

Re:Good Idea

[PCM2]

The 'enter' key has no onscreen hint to let you know it exists either.

It does have a label marked "Enter" on it, though. If you ever go to a foreign country, you will be surprised how useful the little labels on the keys actually can be. And significantly, "Enter" pretty much means "Enter" all the time. When you're typing it means "insert carriage return," like a typewriter; otherwise it means "OK," pretty much all the time. On the other hand, the contextual menu will have different things on it depending on which application or even which mode you are using. You have to actually click it and read through the options to figure out whether that was the right way to find what you wanted to do. That's pretty non-intuitive.

Surprisingly enough, these days pretty much everybody has gotten used to the idea that the right mouse button brings up a context menu.

Tell that to a Mac user.

Re:Good Idea

[iggymanz]

don't panic, it's the default setting for those with good karma. Many of us with good karma really don't give a shit about having it, so we entertain ourselves with immature or disgusting or trolling or offtopic posts. then people like you have to read them. sucks to be you.

Re:Good Idea

[Bucky24]

The veil has been lifted from my eyes...

Re:Good Idea

[spauldo]

You could call NT POSIX conforming, if you had a requirements sheet that needed POSIX for no good reason. POSIX used to be specified by a lot of general regulations for government and military machines back in the day. There wasn't any real need for it in most cases, so having a POSIX API layer was good enough to get around the requirements.

Microsoft never really supported it, and it wasn't really useful in any case - after all, if NT was actually POSIX compliant, you could run Unix code natively on it. Cygwin didn't even use it, because it was so crippled it may as well have not been there. Once the government changed their operating system requirements, Microsoft discontinued it altogether - hence why Win2k didn't have a POSIX layer.

Might be could

[Baloroth]

This will, of course, cause massive outcry, but I suspect it will end up being an improvement. Although since there are very few things you really need the menu for in a GUI file manager, I'm not sure I see the point. I honestly don't remember the last time I used the Explorer file manager menu, it was probably just to see hidden files. Everything else is done with the mouse and left/right clicks.

Actually looking at the screen shot, the main problem might end up being wasted screen space for the ribbon. 7 managed to stay out of the way pretty well, and I honestly think an absolute minimalist approach is best for file managers (unless you let me code scripts for file management...). Like I say, besides the file tree little to nothing else is needed in a file manager with two button mice and keyboard shortcuts.

Re:Might be could

[shutdown -p now]

I agree that a power user is unlikely to use ribbon, and would use context menu instead. Consequently, the best option would likely be to minimize ribbon (which takes less space than Win7 toolbar in that mode). Other changes from Win7 result in some extra vertical space been freed - particularly, the file info bar on the bottom is gone - so you'll end up with a pretty minimalist look.

Re:Might be could

[rynoski]

7 has crap at the top, bottom and left. It hardly stays out of the way.

Bad Design

[ludomancer]

No matter how you look at it, Ribbons are inefficient, badly designed UI elements.

Microsoft continues to floor me with how valiantly they push that envelope toward a cliff.

Re:Bad Design

[Missing.Matter]

Really? What are your metrics? Because the link (which I'm guessing you didn't read) provides a convincing argument based on actual user data why the ribbon is a better UI. Let me guess, your argument boils down to "I'm used to doing things a certain way and can't accommodate change in my life."

Re:Bad Design

[brainzach]

Ribbons are more efficient than navigating complex drop down file menus.

Re:Bad Design

[0123456]

Really? What are your metrics?

It's odd, because the people with 'metrics' are usually the ones pushing UI changes that almost everyone hates.

Re:Bad Design

[pixelpusher220]

Metrics:

Height of menu, 15 pixels
Height of Ribbon, 60-80 pixels

That about sums it up.

The biggest gripe is that it's not 'optional'. We're talking about nothing more than the GUI here, not the actually commands. And we aren't allowed to change it. It does say this will be the most customizable version since XP so here's hoping we can make it 'look' like XP. If it ain't broke...

Re:Bad Design

[mcmonkey]

Ribbons are more efficient than navigating complex drop down file menus.

And that is why they are bad. Because most users do not spend most of their time navigating file menus or ribbon tabs. (At least, that's not where they want to spend their time.)

We want to spend our time in our document or spreadsheet or email. And gadgets that cover up or take space away from our documents make us less efficient.

So perhaps that 2% of the time I spend hunting down some rarely used option in Word can be done better with the ribbon. But the 98% of the time I spend in my document is worse.

Re:Bad Design

[cyber-vandal]

Does it say why the ribbon was imposed on users with no way to switch back to the UI they were familiar with? Why should users have to learn a new and confusing interface just because Microsoft think it's cool? I used to be pretty quick with Word and Excel, now I have to Google to find out how to do stuff that I used to be able to do in my sleep. I can accomodate change when I can see a clear advantage; the ribbon provides no clear advantage.

Re:Bad Design

[iggymanz]

Actually, the open source world showed strong leadership in this regard; Ubuntu, Firefox, Gnome, KDE proactively fucking up their UI before this Microsoft announcement.

Re:Bad Design

[johnwerneken]

Bull. Lotus-style ring menu created the whole concept of "menu" as an option for CLI and has yet to be improved.

Re:Bad Design

[Missing.Matter]

changes that almost everyone hates.

everyone, of course meaning you and the three people in your office you talked to about it, right?

Re:Bad Design

[Sprouticus]

Almost everyone hates change, period. The change in question doesnt matter. You could have the best UI in the world and people would hate it. Because it makes them have to learn and most people dont see value in learning something when the ROi on the time investment would be more than 1 minute.

We humans are hard wired to not see the long term.

Re:Bad Design

[brainzach]

Most users don't spend time navigating file menus is because they are complex to use. It results in the average user not knowing about useful features that can make them more productive with their work.

The ribbon uses the same amount of real estate as the menu in Office anyways, so I don't buy the argument that it gets in the way. The only thing that slows you down is learning the new system.

Re:Bad Design

[chrismcb]

Really? What are your metrics?

My metric is mouse clicks. In Office the Ribbon puts MANY items that used to be one click away, two clicks away. And then they claim it is faster. I'm not sure how clicking two things is faster than clicking one.

Re:Bad Design

[Missing.Matter]

It also brings many things which were 5+ clicks away to two clicks. Pretty much 80% of the functionality you could need is brought to two clicks. My experience is that because of this, documents from novice type setters are much nicer (correct pagination, styles, footnotes, cross references, bibliography, etc.) simply because they're finding these features (which were always there) and using them.

If there's some option you need so much that two clicks becomes and issue, just pin it to the quick access bar.

Re:Bad Design

[microbee]

Almost everyone hates change, period.

Mr Obama respectfully disagrees.

Re:Bad Design

[daver00]

No matter how you look at it, Ribbons are inefficient, badly designed UI elements.

Are you kidding me? So hiding all the tools in nested drop-down menus is somehow more efficient and intuitive? The Ribbon was a huge improvement to the Office interface, it does remain to be seen how it turns out for Explorer.

The only valid argument I've seen against the ribbon amounts to: I do not like change. And you have presented nothing new right here.

Re:Bad Design

[xhrit]

>a convincing argument based on actual user data why the ribbon is a better UI.

That's the problem right there. Microsoft's products are used by idiots. If you get a big group of idiots together and designed a drool proof interface for them to use then the something like the ribbon with big fischer price buttons on it would be perfect.

Re:Bad Design

[LordLimecat]

Do you have usability data to support this? I see a lot of claims about how bad ribbon is, but the only one Im aware of doing usability studies on it is MS. If thats not correct, perhaps you wouldnt mind linking us to your non-anecdotal source.

In other words, [citation needed].

Re:Bad Design

[gbjbaanb]

don't forget most of the ribbon commands are hidden behind little v symbols that pop up menus anyway, so it's no less efficient than the menus used to be.

The biggest argument against the ribbon: its fine for new users, power users want something faster to navigate (ie where the command aren't hidden under different tabs or in obscure places). They say its a great toolbar replacement, but a poor menu replacement. That sounds about right.

Re:Bad Design

[gbjbaanb]

I think the issue is that usability studies focussed entirely on users who were new to computers, or new to the interface (obviously). They take automated test results of command usage and then utilise these results badly.

For example, they say that 'paste' is the #1 command, fair enough, I believe them. So then they say we must put a big 'paste' icon on the GUI so people can access it easier. the thing they forgot is that nearly everyone access the paste command via the keyboard. So they've just gone and restricted the UI with a huge icon that no-one ever uses.

This is where it all goes wrong, and then they compounded the problem by refusing to let the ribbon be customised, thus making the 'one size fit all' problem come true. Now explorer will have the ribbon.. and guess what, it won't be customisable again (I can't see the same kind of move icons around solution working for explorer as it has so few in the first place, its not like Word with its 10000 commands).

However, add-ins will not be able to plug into the ribbon UI. This was a difficult engineering choice for us and we expect that many of you will read this and suggest we add the capability--of course if we could get it right this time around we would have done that

so I think the Ribbon is a great thing - for new users who've never seen a computer before. For the rest of us, it's a bit of a retrograde step.

Re:Bad Design

[LordLimecat]

the thing they forgot is that nearly everyone access the paste command via the keyboard.

They didnt "forget" it, their telemetry captured that info as well. And Im really not convinced that its accurate that "most people use the keyboard option". Some people do, but the vast majority of people using computers arent IT folk and programmers, and of the remaining portion only some learn the shortcuts.

For the rest of us, it's a bit of a retrograde step.

I fail to see why, I basically never use the menus anyways and it would be nice for a touch interface to have a paste button (since I wouldnt have keyboard or rightclick). This doesnt take away the ability for me to keep doing what Ive always done.

Re:Bad Design

[daver00]

Biggest rebuttal: Why are power users even considering Word for documentation? At the very least a document editor should be WYSIWYM, (what you see is what you mean) such as LyX. Really though if you want a powerful tool use the best: LaTeX.

Horrible

[Haedrian]

Ribbons are ok if you want to have large menus with few sub elements which need to be large and look important.

For Office, they do what they're meant to do. For paint, they're horrible.

For this they're beyond description. When i use explorer I want to see all the elements that I can, and I right click to do what I want. Putting a huge bar at the top with colourful icons will only serve for more 'accidents' and less people knowing about the right menu. Please. No.

Re:Horrible

[Haedrian]

The irony is that they put a graph:

Which says that 55% of commands are right click, 30-something are from hotkeys and a bit more 10% use the Command Bar.

Solution: SHOVE EVERYTHING INTO THE COMMAND BAR.

Re:Horrible

[WankersRevenge]

Granted I haven't used Windows in the past three years, but I always hated the mish mash of user interfaces. Never mind all the hidden secrets (press alt to see the menu, disable personalized menus to see the actual options, wave a dead chicken over the keyboard to get to the command prompt). I had often wished they would just pick one and be consistent across the board.

Re:Horrible

[SpryGuy]

Win8 Explorer shows MORE files in the list than Win7 Explorer. There is MORE vertical space available for the file display. So by your own standards, Win8's Explorer is better than Win7's.

And you can still right-click whatever you want. So you've lost nothing.

In addition, the UI is much more customizable than Win7's Explorer. You can add commonly used (but burried) commands to the quick-access bar for one-click access, as well as minimize the ribbon so it works more like a menu and stays out of your way (no "accidents") if you won't want it or need it.

So what exactly are you complaining about again?

Re:Horrible

[shutdown -p now]

You forgot to mention the bit in TFA where out of 10 most used commands, only 2 are even available on the command bar. When user can't find what he wants there 4 times out of 5 (and can find every single of those commands in the context menu), is there any surprise that command bar quickly becomes neglected even among casual users?

Re:Horrible

[Haedrian]

With all the effort to improve it, they should have just stripped the interface down to its basics.

Look at web browsers and how their interface has become. That sort of thing. Its useless work which looks ugly and is expanding in the wrong direction.

Re:Horrible

[Haedrian]

The problem is that not every interface is best for every task.

Lets take web browsers and office applications as an example.

Web browsers - the emphasis is on the content. All major browsers are moving to 'tiny/collapsable' menu.
Office examples - emphasis is also on the tasks you do. There are tasks which are important/time saving and using a ribbon really works for that.

If we take notepad as a third example - do you think a ribbon would be good for it? Nope. Same thing for browser.

Re:Horrible

[Haedrian]

Right click menu and keyboard shortcuts are more efficient though. The mouse barely has to move for those.

I don't see why we should wean people off them.

Re:Horrible

[SpryGuy]

You are free to hide the ribbon, and you're free to create your own customized toolbar (via the "quick access toolbar"). The work isn't useless, that I can see. And you have more options to configure things the way you want. So why are you exactly complaining?

Re:Horrible

[shutdown -p now]

I don't see why we should wean people off them.

Given that right-click menu is still there, and there are more keyboard shortcuts in Win8 explorer, I don't see a problem.

Re:Horrible

[Haedrian]

So you're suggesting that this extra effort to redesign the UI is simply so nobody uses it? I'd argue that changing the RCM would be a better idea since its used so much, like putting a pie menu with the most common items or whatever.

Large colourful icons encourage people to use the less efficient design.

Re:Horrible

[shutdown -p now]

So you're suggesting that this extra effort to redesign the UI is simply so nobody uses it?

No, of course not. It's there so that people who are not familiar with the existing concepts can start using it quickly and easily. This does not prevent them from discovering the context menu eventually, and it may well be something to which all power users eventually gravitate. But "large colorful icons" are simply easier to teach, and for most people being efficient (in terms of time required to perform an action) in file management is not something that is of much importance. Frustration from not being able to figure out how to do something is, however.

Re:Horrible

[Missing.Matter]

Look at web browsers and how their interface has become. That sort of thing.

That is a terrible idea. Web browsers are all about displaying content. Word processors are all about creating content. Hiding all the functionality would make it impossible to use. The windows explorer is somewhere in between, but I'd argue there's more file operations going on than otherwise, and hiding all the functionality is not a good idea. If you do want to hide it, just collapse the ribbon.

Re:Horrible

[im_thatoneguy]

Which says that 55% of commands are right click, 30-something are from hotkeys and a bit more 10% use the Command Bar.

Solution: SHOVE EVERYTHING INTO THE COMMAND BAR.

You're approaching this completely backwards. People are using hotkeys and right click because the command bar is terrible.

If I discovered that 99% of my users hated a part of my UI I would take action to improve it.

"99% of windows users don't use search."
"We should probably improve our search feature and make it more prominent."

You don't say:
"99% of windows users don't use search."
"We should remove it completely."

Just because something is popular doesn't make it right. And just because something is right doesn't mean it's popular. In UX design there are a lot of situations where you know something that 95% of your users don't know. You are aware of a feature that will really help but isn't placed well enough or users don't understand how to use it, or the interface is so clunky they don't want to use it. So the solution is to fix it up so that it becomes "competitive".

Following your logic Apple would have looked at smartphones and said:
"80% of phone interactions take place with a stylus."
"Solution: MORE STYLUS!"

No, they identified a *bad* UX element and rebuilt the UI to encourage a better way of working.

Re:Horrible

[guruevi]

I hate button-icons. Ribbon brings that to a whole new level. 100 pixels wasted on buttons I never use. On the old versions I could move and delete toolbars as necessary, make it look small and out of the way in a menu.

Ribbon may be great for frequent MS Office users but the only reason I use MS Office is IF someone requires me to send something in DOC format (like my once a year HR review). I send out stuff in PDF and use the appropriate tool to generate my documents. Office is an amalgam of things that try to do everything but do nothing well.

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[FrankSchwab]

Now that was a well-reasoned response. Two thumbs up!

At least it is supposed to be customizable

[JonySuede]

this screen shot won me : http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-29-43-metablogapi/4380.Figure-24-_2D00_-Alex_2700_s-customizations_5F00_2.png

Re:At least it is supposed to be customizable

[Reziac]

I'm wondering just how the hell I do phone support for that thing and my visually-impaired clients.

telemtry data

[dltaylor]

Microsoft is using uploads of your screen sizes in the section "Designing for a Wider Screen" ("we dug up some more telemetry data for Windows 7"), which the EULA allows them.

Are there any reliable controls on what else they can upload?

Re:telemtry data

[truk138]

What else did agree too upload by not reading the wall of text?

Re:telemtry data

[LO0G]

From TFA:

As a reminder, the telemetry data is opt-in, anonymous, and private, but it does represent hundreds of millions of sessions from all customer types.

You have to opt into reporting telemetry. So if you don't want your data being uploaded to MSFT, when Windows asks you if you want to opt in, don't.

However

[Allicorn]

The Ribbon is an abomination.

However, interesting little suggestion in TFA is that there is a "quick access toolbar" which basically looks... like an Explorer toolbar. You can customize anything onto it you like. And you can minimize the Ribbon, folding down into something that looks... like a menu.

So, it /may/ be survivable.

Re:However

[Eponymous Coward]

I have a hard time understanding the outrage. Do people here really have that hard of a time learning how to use it? Has Slashdot's core audience shifted away from geeks and nerds?

Re:However

[0123456]

I have a hard time understanding the outrage. Do people here really have that hard of a time learning how to use it? Has Slashdot's core audience shifted away from geeks and nerds?

'Geeks and nerds' don't like fancy inefficient interfaces.

Re:However

[Anonymous Cowar]

Yes

Re:However

[shutdown -p now]

However, interesting little suggestion in TFA is that there is a "quick access toolbar" which basically looks... like an Explorer toolbar

Note that the screenshot where it shows a lot of icons there it is in "show below ribbon" mode. To save even more space, one can instead put into the title bar of the window to further minimize space - e.g. on this screenshot, you can see it with two icons, to the left of "Documents" - which is in fact its default mode (same as in Office).

Re:However

[Blakey Rat]

Has Slashdot's core audience shifted away from geeks and nerds?

Slashdot posters:
1) Hate Microsoft
2) Hate GUIs
3) Hate making software usable for the common man
4) Hate change

What about Slashdot led you to believe people here would like and embrace the Ribbon interface?

Most of the people outraged have never used it, in any case. It's just noise.

Re:However

[pixelpusher220]

The problem is that this quick access bar is icon based no? I don't want fscking pictures to decipher, I want actual text so I *know* what I'm clicking on without having to wait for the hover panel to popup.

Worse, support, how in the holy hell do you walk someone through with just pictures over the phone?

I know the ribbon generally has text, but so did menus...without the complete waste of 10% of the vertical pixels on top.

Re:However

[desertfool]

At my place of employment, I HAVE to use Win7, IE, MS Office, etc. I have no choice. I hated XP and made it work like 2000. When Vista came along I figured I'd best learn how to use it as it was. I loved the Quick Launch buttons (put my most used applications there) and especially the "Show Desktop" button (I have a bad habit of putting a lot of files on my desktop so I can find them quickly, then remove them when they are no longer useful.) Win7 removed the Quick Launch (found a hack to put it back) and the "Show Desktop" moved, unlabeled to the right bottom of the screen. Took a while to find that.

Then came Office with the ribbon. No way to put the menus back that I had been using since Windows 95. Ugh. I hid the ribbon so I could get screen real estate back when using Word/Excel/Visio/Outlook. It still takes a while to find the things that I don't know the keyboard shortcuts for. Real productivity waster. It's not the minute or two that I am not doing my work that bugs me, but the break of my chain of thought that is most annoying.

We just upgraded to Sharepoint 2010-- Now with the RIBBON! What a waste. They took a good tool and made it tedious. More clicking just to find anything. I will get used to it, but I want my old Sharepoint back.

With the Sharepoint upgrade the URL's for some things I follow changed. I have documents that others may change, and it would email me when someone did that. Outlook couldn't connect to Sharepoint with the old URL, so I thought I would just go in and change it. After about 10 minutes I just deleted the damned .ost as I could not find where in the ribbon I could change it. Frustration won out.

I've had non-IT folks I know ask me how to do things in Office/Sharepoint/etc with the ribbon. My stock response is "I have no idea."

Do I hate GUI's? Heck no. Full disclosure: I own Macs at home and love Snow Leopard. I'm not sold on Lion, but some things are easier. But the machine that I spend nearly 10 hours a day working with I still stumble around trying to figure out why the heck Microsoft hid whatever function I was trying to use.

Re:However

[Eponymous Coward]

Yeah, no kidding. What did KDE ever do to 0123456?

Re:However

[Blakey Rat]

I hated XP and made it work like 2000.

Translation: "I hate change."

When Vista came along I figured I'd best learn how to use it as it was. I loved the Quick Launch buttons

You know Quick Launch was in Windows XP too, right? (Actually I think it goes back to WIndows 98...)

and especially the "Show Desktop" button (I have a bad habit of putting a lot of files on my desktop so I can find them quickly, then remove them when they are no longer useful.)

That was in XP as well. Maybe if you hadn't spent so much effort making XP behave like Windows 2000, you'd have found these great features 5 years earlier.

Win7 removed the Quick Launch (found a hack to put it back)

You don't need a "hack", the launch toolbar is still built-in to Explorer, they just didn't create a Quick Launch toolbar by default. You have to make your own instead. At least I hope you're not using some poorly-written buggy "hack" that does nothing but duplicate a feature Explorer already has...

It still takes a while to find the things that I don't know the keyboard shortcuts for.

More or less time than in Office 2003?

Real productivity waster.

You come at me with a stopwatch and some real data, and I might be inclined to believe you. So far, every study done on the ribbon shows it as being significantly more efficient (i.e. fewer clicks to perform task, more discoverable, etc.) than the toolbar/menu mess in Office 2003.

There's a pretty famous CLI vs. GUI study in computer science, where users felt they were accomplishing tasks much faster in the CLI than the GUI, but the stopwatch showed the exact opposite. Your perception is not data. Your emotion ("I hate the ribbon") is not data. You bring data, you convince me.

Otherwise it's just noise from creatures of habit who hate change.

Do I hate GUI's?

No, you just hate change.

The first job of a UI designer is to identify the people who are only complaining because they hate change, and eliminate them from consideration-- because no matter what you do, no matter how superior it is, they'll bitch and moan. And the bitching and moaning adds up to so much noise, it's impossible to tell if you're improving the product or not. Which is exactly what happens here on Slashdot whenever talk of the ribbon comes up.

But the machine that I spend nearly 10 hours a day working with I still stumble around trying to figure out why the heck Microsoft hid whatever function I was trying to use.

So take a day and learn it. You didn't "magically" come to know where all the functions in the toolbars and menus were, you either took a course on it in school or spent months exploring the interface to find them. So spend some time exploring the ribbon in the same way. Show the world that your brain isn't a carved slab of marble, but is still capable of learning new things.

Who knows, you might like it.

Re:However

[Soul-Burn666]

"Win7 removed the Quick Launch" What crack you are talking?
Win7 took the Mac approach you so love and combined the real-estate for applications you want to launch and applications which are already running. If you want a new instance of an application just right-click (or left-click-drag-up) the icon and run it.

IMHO, the Ribbon is categorized much better than in the previous Office versions.
Also, people usually want to apply several actions from the same category before moving to another. For that the Ribbon works great.
As for keyboard shortcuts, just hold or tap Alt and you see the shortcut overlayed. It's as simple as that.
As for the actual shortcuts being confusing, I agree.

Re:However

[desertfool]

"So far, every study done on the ribbon shows it as being significantly more efficient (i.e. fewer clicks to perform task, more discoverable, etc.) than the toolbar/menu mess in Office 2003" [CITATION NEEDED]

You want me to use a stopwatch in my office, but then cite 'every study'? Cite one that wasn't produced by or paid for by Microsoft.

Re:However

[0ld_d0g]

1) Untrue. Besides which you know that this is an open source oriented website right? Why would they be fans of proprietary software companies?
2) Oh cmon..
3) Seriously? We actually *want* it to be usable so that everyone can stop using up our time for tech support.
4) What? Maybe they just don't like change that that doesn't benefit them.

I dont think ytour cynical points about Slashdot group-think are accurate. Why do you think the ribbon interface should be embraced? I don't find the ribbon UI hard to use or adjust to BUT I didn't find the earlier menu system hard to use either and don't see any benefits - for me. Thats what everyone here is doing. I don't think its fair to say that everyone should just go along with whatever rationalization a company gives for a change that doesn't benefit you. Maybe you want all comments to come with a header that says "Even if I can see why this change helps my grandma my opinion is that ---"

Re:However

[0ld_d0g]

Cite one that wasn't produced by or paid for by Microsoft.

Why would any company besides microsoft pay for a study to see if UI changes in microsoft software are beneficial to users? In any case, I hope you realize that they want to *increase* sales, not decrease them. On that alone, I would not doubt that this study by MS is accurate - the data, not necessarily the conclusions.

Re:However

[Pope]

Most of the people outraged have never used it, in any case. It's just noise.

Sounds like every Apple topic on Slashdot.

Re:However

[mcswell]

> I hope you realize that they want to *increase* sales, not decrease them

Right, and you increase sales of software just like they increase sales of soap back in the 1960s: by making the package say "New and Improved." New, yes; improved, well, if Microsoft says so, I'm sure they're right. After all, they're trying to increase sales.

Re:However

[0ld_d0g]

Nonsense. Consumers return products they don't like all the time. And no business is going to place an order for ms office upgrades if their employees are not actually productive while using it, otherwise *they* lose money.

Re:However

[mcswell]

Nonsense indeed. How do businesses measure that productivity?

Re:However

[0ld_d0g]

How do businesses measure that productivity?

I have no clue how businesses measure productivity. If you want to go down each and every branch of conversation maybe you should do some research of your own, rather than posing questions that deviate from the topic at hand. Goodluck.

SUCKAGE!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

IT BURNS!

Can I please have new retinas?

Re:SUCKAGE!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

What really pisses me off? They spend their billions and waste their considerable engineering talent (drained from the main pool, where it could be put to so much better use) on piddly, unwanted and irredeemably narcissistic UI frippery, like this irredeemable excrescence.

But if there's a minor hiccup in an HTTP 1.1 or SMB file transfer on a local network? Sorry. Resume from the beginning.

If your transfer protocol is so broken? Write some fucking caches, checksums and wrapper proxies on your server and in the Explorer. Fix the shit that really steals hours and days out of any real user's year.

"We actually have a usability study that shows 1.7 weeks a year are saved in Knowledge Worker productivity, every quarter, by using the ribbon. Here's a great ROI calculator you should shove under your CFO's backside - to convince him that a Windows upgrade actually saves your enterprise money!"

That's what these losers actually pedal. It's enough to be sick down your shirtfront.

Re:SUCKAGE!

[johnwerneken]

MS said that a "knowledge" "worker" actually did anything productive using the Ribbon? "Knowledge" and "work" and "ribbon" go together...like...this is a hard one lol...F and kill for peace and chastity?

Re:SUCKAGE!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

They have a "Enterprise Field Sales" role called something like "Knowledge Worker SE".

I know a couple. Very bright and good people. Trapped - like Howard the Duck - in a world they never made.

Re:SUCKAGE!

[BrokenHalo]

What really pisses me off? They spend their billions and waste their considerable engineering talent (drained from the main pool, where it could be put to so much better use) on piddly, unwanted and irredeemably narcissistic UI frippery, like this irredeemable excrescence.

Not that I disagree, but there are lots of equally craniorectal UI designs in the OSS world. Take Gnome 3, for instance. I've been a Linux user since ~1995 but spent a couple of years travelling around with a MacBook until a couple of weeks ago when that machine died messily. Returning to Linux was an educational experience.

I've been primarily a Gnome user since before version 1.0, but the new interface is so counterintuitive and needs so much mouse action as to make it almost unusable for my purposes. And that was just for firing up applications; configuring the desktop was a nightmare.

Looking for alternatives, I toyed briefly with XFCE+compiz-fusion, but that still didn't rock my boat, and for the moment I am working with KDE. I guess the moral of the story (from my point of view) is that any desktop environment that treats the desktop as anything other than a place to drop or open files is something I don't want.

Makes it official

[SiliconJesus]

Everyone will be skipping Windows 8. Seems like every other version of Windows is determined by boneheads with a barely functional magic 8 ball.

Re:Makes it official

[Mashiki]

Win8, the new WinME! Not quite like Vista, but plenty of suck and blow.

But what if you don't know what to look for?

[hellfire]

Word is famous for being able to do 1000 things to a document, but the interface makes it faster to only do 3-4 of those tasks, and make it frustratingly agonizing to find some little known feature, which pisses me off, ruins my experience, and blows all the efficiency I just gained on complaining and hunting for what I needed.

A Ribbon would be great if word only did about 50 things, but then that's the problem, word is bloated and crazy. They've put the right interface onto the wrong product.

Then again, a Ribbon on Explorer might not be bad, because it really only does 50 things.

Re:But what if you don't know what to look for?

[gilgongo]

Then again, a Ribbon on Explorer might not be bad, because it really only does 50 things.

Actually, Explorer has 200 commands (one of them is something called "rotate" apparently), according to the Microsoft blog post. But who's counting.

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[impaledsunset]

This is somewhat flawed. It's not simply how often the operation is used, but how often is used multiplied by the amount of work that it will do for you. Also if the ribbon is rarely used, it's exactly the place to put rarely used commands that might put in handy.

But otherwise, yes, this demonstrates why the menu/toolbar approach is better. The most useful commands go through the shortcuts, the second most useful commands go through the context menu, things that might come in handy go into the toolbar, and everything else go to the menu. The ribbon approach breaks this.

Jesus, look at all that wasted space and UI vomit

[Sarusa]

Oh sure there are clear benefits. For people who have no idea what they're doing and don't realize you can ctrl-c/ctrl-v files.

And how can you possibly think that's a clear layout, even for those people? Maybe we should slap some more separators in there, the more separators you add the better it gets.

On the positive side, if you can collapse those tabs like you can in Office, at least you can hide the mess and do everything with keyboard controls.

Ugh.

[Cooknn]

Long live Mac OS X. I hope.

Re:Ugh.

[Skywolfblue]

Given the trends started in Lion I'm afraid for the future of OS X. Oh well, viva la 10.6, long may it reign.

Total Commander

[Xian97]

I have been using Total Commander since Windows 3.1 as a file manager. Every version of the Windows File Manager and Explorer seems very limited to what I can do with Total Commander.

This new one even looks like it is a step backwards yet again. I hate the ribbon interfaces in Office 2007 and used a third party addon to get the old menus back, so I doubt if I will like the Windows 8 ribbons any better.

Re:Total Commander

[ProfanityHead]

Total Commander user since 1998, couldn't agree more.

Still miffed he backed down from MS and renamed it from Wincommander though...

Re:Total Commander

[SpryGuy]

In what way is it a step backwards?

It seems, in every way, to be a step forwards as compared to the Windows 7 Explorer. More customizable, more features available and discoverable, better handling of file conflicts when doing bulk moves/copies, etc.

Re:Total Commander

[Lisandro]

Much agreed. TC is by far the best twin-panel file manager i've ever tried, on any platform.

Re:Total Commander

[Ralphus Maximus]

This! I wish I had mod points. I can't count the number of folks I've converted to using Total Commander.

Cheers,
RM

Re:Total Commander

[dunkelfalke]

True, in a way. I use Total Commander because I've been using Norton Commander "for fucking years, absolutely years" and thus know all the shortcuts by heart. The two panel paradigm also feels more natural to me (the reason could be that NC was the very first piece of software I've ever used).

Re:Total Commander

[gweihir]

Care to share what addon that is and how your experiences with it are?

Re:Figure 10 - Is this a joke?

[brainzach]

Ok, look at the image where they annotate various buttons with the frequency of use (10th image down). I thought this was a joke. If MS has such detailed usage statistics, why wouldn't they order or size the buttons according to frequency of use. Why is 'New Folder' (1%) the same size as 'Paste' (19%) and twice the size of 'Cut' (7%).

Probably because most people don't know about the new folder button. One of the advantages of the ribbon is it makes important features more discoverable by the average user.

I try so hard to like the ribbon

[DrXym]

But I just can't. I realise it's all logically ordered, with task centric tabs and all the actions right there to hand. But my day is filled will little brain farts because the buttons I want to access are not visible until I figure out the "task" they belong to. So I have to click on the tab and then the button (hopefull) appears and I click somewhere else. And invariably I have to flip to another tab straight after and I end up moving the mouse around and clicking a lot more than I would if there was a context sensitive toolbar.

It just seems so much slower than toolbars. Not to say toolbars don't have their own issues but ribbons can be downright annoying.

Re:I try so hard to like the ribbon

[paulej72]

So how did you find these tasks on the menus. They were task centric and you had to figure out which menu to look under to get the right selection.

Re:I try so hard to like the ribbon

[DrXym]

The thing with menus is you can whirl from one end to the other while holding the mouse down. Everything is arranged in a hierarchical fashion so the behaviour is predictable.

On ribbons the behaviour is not predictable. The File tab hides the document you were looking at completely. The other menus employ a variety of layouts which don't even align properly with each other meaning a game of hunt the button. So instead of a mouse down, mouse down, mouse release, you have "think of task"", mouse move, click, "hunt the button", mouse move, click often followed by the reverse to get back to the tab you were on.

It's this mind gap that I don't like. I recognize the ribbon does present you with actions in a more ordered way and is more task centric but this doesn't mean the result is flawless. Perhaps novices appreciate it more than I do. The ribbon has certainly come in for some heat and I suspect it's because of the effect I describe even if people can't put their finger on it. I think the ribbon could be improved if advanced users could hold down the mouse, and drag across the tabs like navigating menus, drag down to the action and release the button. The file tab needs to be completely rethought.

Slighty OT, but I experience the same problem using GNOME 3. Apps live on one screen, activities / task bar lives on another. Flipping from one to the other knocks my train of thought for six in the same way as the File tab in MS Office.

Re:I try so hard to like the ribbon

[Panoptes]

The best alternative to the ribbon I've found is 'Classic Menu for Office' from www.addintools.com - both ribbon and classic menu are instantly accessible. Guaranteed to save time and sanity.

Re:I try so hard to like the ribbon

[Agent0013]

They had better categories when they put the items into the menus. I think that is what makes the ribbon so annoying! It's that the places they put things make no sense, so it takes forever to search every ribbon for the thing you are looking for.

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[Blakey Rat]

It's kind of hard to take him seriously when he claims the menu bar has been "made bigger and more prominent", right underneath a screenshot showing that Windows 8 Explorer doesn't have any menu bar at all!

Dammit

[mrquagmire]

I HATE the stupid ribbon. It's huge, messy, and unintuitive. Maybe it's time I switch to OSX.... or Linux even.

Sadly, it's a 'good' move

[dawning]

I've never really loved Ribbon UIs, but only because of PEBKACs around me coming to me whining cause they're useless at looking at something right in front of them. Why switching Explorer to a Ribbon UI sounds like a good move to me is because they're using it in other flagship products that actually sort of require and benefit from that kind of workflow. While Explorer could probably get away with a less able UI, the droves of PEBKACs that roam the planet will whimper and annoy slightly less if Explorer as the same UI as they see in other places. Old school PEBKACs will whine regardless, but new ones will not reach their peak crying-volume, thanks to decisions like this. I may loathe most things Microsoft, but really, I think they made a call that makes the average sanity level just a little better than if they'd done anything else. Now, if the MS Office team decides to make a totally new UI shortly after this, that'll be like the best self-trolling since Chris Crocker.

Re:Sadly, it's a 'good' move

[dawning]

PS - I use Ubuntu Linux ;)

I like it

[Reapman]

I admit I had to RTFA, but after reading it I like - it seems to solve a lot of the complaints they increase screen real estate (and even more if you hide the ribbon WHICH YOU CAN), and have added a crazy amount of shortcut keys and customization options to Explorer.

Windows 8 is looking pretty good but will have to see once it goes live if it lives up to the hype they're tossing.

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[lattyware]

I disagree with that post - yes, they have put features that are not commonly used and into an interface that wasn't commonly used - but to assume that this means it is a stupid move is wrong. Those functions were not used because they didn't exist. That interface wasn't used because it was hard to use. The new interface and new functions might actually be really useful to the user. I'm not saying they are, but that argument is flawed.

Who Needs Power Users?

[carrier lost]

'Of these, the ribbon approach offered benefits in line with our goals.'

Gotta sell more Microsoft mouses.

My brain asplode

[mcmonkey]

Simons countered, saying that Microsoft's data -- obtained from millions of Windows people who agree to provide telemetry on how they use the operating system -- showed that 83% of users run Windows 7 on a widescreen display.

Oh, so this guy is on our side. Using a widescreen display, adding a thick ribbon to the top of every window reduces usable space for the user.

Oh, wait. Here's the full quote.

Simons countered, saying that Microsoft's data -- obtained from millions of Windows people who agree to provide telemetry on how they use the operating system -- showed that 83% of users run Windows 7 on a widescreen display. The new Explorer has been designed to make use of the screen's width and minimize the vertical space it consumes.

What? How does adding a ribbon minimize vertical space consumed? Can someone on the West Coast go up to Redmond and kick this guy in the crotch?

My office rolled out Office 2010 last week, and it's driving me bonkers. Outlook 2010 is a caricature, it's what Mad Magazine might design as a joke UI. I have a menu of folders on the left. I have tasks and upcoming meetings on the right. I have a list of messages on top. And on the bottom I have...I don't know what that thing is. "People Pane?" WTF is a people pane?

What I don't have, is much room left for viewing my EMAIL. You know, the purpose for having Outlook in the first place?

the ribbon approach offered benefits in line with our goals

My goals are to view my email, edit my docs, update spreadsheets, etc. My goals are obviously not in line with MS's goals.

(I did manage to minimize the ribbon and get rid of the task list on the right, so I do have a glimpse to the body of my emails, but I can't hide that damn people pane. Any tips would be appreciated. (Unfortunately uninstalling Outlook is not an option.))

Re:My brain asplode

[ToronadoCheese]

If you had RTFA you would realise your angry tirade is misjudged.

Re:My brain asplode

[Blakey Rat]

but I can't hide that damn people pane.

It's in the View ribbon. View - People Pane - Off

I admit I don't understand people who don't like the ribbon, but I *really* don't understand people who find the ribbon confusing. It uses the exact sane mnemonics as the menu that came before it! If it's something you would have found in the View menu in Office 2003, odds are it's in the View ribbon in Office 2010. And, oh look, there it fucking is!

So honestly, using your experience with past UIs, where exactly would you have expected to find the function "turn the people pane off"? If you were a UI designer at Microsoft, and were forced at gunpoint to design a ribbon, where would you have put that function?

Re:My brain asplode

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>(I did manage to minimize the ribbon and get rid of the task list on the right, so I do have a glimpse to the body of my emails, but I can't hide that damn people pane. Any tips would be appreciated. (Unfortunately uninstalling Outlook is not an option.))

Click the VIEW tab. On the right side of the ribbon click the unhelpfully designed "People Pane" button. Click on the "Die. Just Fucking Die" option. It will also inform you that it is part of the Microsoft Outlook Social Connector

Re:My brain asplode

[mcmonkey]

Click the VIEW tab. On the right side of the ribbon click the unhelpfully designed "People Pane" button. Click on the "Die. Just Fucking Die" option. It will also inform you that it is part of the Microsoft Outlook Social Connector

Thank you! It seems obvious now.

Re:My brain asplode

[mcmonkey]

It's in the View ribbon. View - People Pane - Off

I admit I don't understand people who don't like the ribbon, but I *really* don't understand people who find the ribbon confusing. It uses the exact sane mnemonics as the menu that came before it! If it's something you would have found in the View menu in Office 2003, odds are it's in the View ribbon in Office 2010. And, oh look, there it fucking is!

So honestly, using your experience with past UIs, where exactly would you have expected to find the function "turn the people pane off"? If you were a UI designer at Microsoft, and were forced at gunpoint to design a ribbon, where would you have put that function?

1) Thank you! That worked. And it does make sense (now that I know how to do it).

But I have to add 2) no, this is nothing like any other app I've worked with. It's not even consistent with itself.

I want to hide the ribbon. How do I do that? Oh, that's easy. There's this little chevron pointing up in the top-right corner of the ribbon. Click that, ribbon goes up. Chevron becomes down arrow. Click that, ribbon comes back down.

That folder list on the left side have a similar left-pointing chevron. Click that, folder list disappears to the left. Chevron now points right. Click again, and folder list comes back.

People pane? Well, obviously that's in the View menu!

Seriously, usually with side panes like that, the controls are right in the pane. Up/Down or Left/Right arrows to open and close. Thumbtack to pin the pane down. X to close.

I go the view tab of the ribbon in Outlook. Where's the control to hide the ribbon?

How about the To-Do bar on the right side? Oh, so there is a control for that in the View ribbon, right next to the control for the people pane. So how did I get rid of the To-Do bar without seeing the control for the people pane?

Because if you open the To-Do bar, you'll see 1) It has the left/right arrows to minimize.

And 2) You can right-click for a menu, which include the option to turn it off.

Go to the People pane, and it has up/down arrows, but they don't work the same way the ribbon arrows or folder pane arrows work. And no right-click menu.

So how is this obvious? How it is logical design when I could do what I wanted to do for every other pane without going to the View tab?

So honestly, using my experience with Outlook 2010, based on the ribbon, the folders pane, the To-Do pane, it never occurred to me to look in the View tab.

If you were a UI designer at Microsoft, and were forced at gunpoint to design a ribbon, where would you have put that function?

I'd pull the trigger.

Re:My brain asplode

[Blakey Rat]

Thank you! That worked. And it does make sense (now that I know how to do it).

It worked, it makes sense, and it's IN THE EXACT SAME SPOT THAT FUNCTION WAS IN BEFORE. If you couldn't find it in the ribbon View tab, why in hell do you think you would have been able to find it in the View menu? You're whining about your own ignorance, not anything relevant to Outlook's UI.

no, this is nothing like any other app I've worked with. It's not even consistent with itself.

It's pretty damned consistent, let's see your evidence:

I want to hide the ribbon. How do I do that? Oh, that's easy. There's this little chevron pointing up in the top-right corner of the ribbon. Click that, ribbon goes up. Chevron becomes down arrow. Click that, ribbon comes back down.

That folder list on the left side have a similar left-pointing chevron. Click that, folder list disappears to the left. Chevron now points right. Click again, and folder list comes back.

People pane? Well, obviously that's in the View menu!

In my copy of Outlook, the People Pane has the exact same chevron, which behaves in the exact same way. (The minimize/maximize it.) To hide it completely you use the View tab. Let's see, what if you wanted to hide the Folder Pane completely instead of just minimizing it... lo and behold, you do that from the View tab as well! Looks pretty fucking consistent to me.

(The irony here is that there is an inconsistency in Outlook's UI, the Reading Pane doesn't have the minimize chevron that all other panes to have. But somehow you didn't notice that, and instead complained about the People Pane which is entirely consistent with the rest of the UI. WTF?)

Seriously, usually with side panes like that, the controls are right in the pane. Up/Down or Left/Right arrows to open and close. Thumbtack to pin the pane down. X to close.

Yeah; it used to be that way in Office 2003. Things have changed. Cope.

I go the view tab of the ribbon in Outlook. Where's the control to hide the ribbon?

Same place it always is? I don't get your point.

How about the To-Do bar on the right side? Oh, so there is a control for that in the View ribbon, right next to the control for the people pane. So how did I get rid of the To-Do bar without seeing the control for the people pane?

You click "To-Do Bar" in the View tab and select "Off". It's entirely separate from the People Pane, both can be turned on or off individually. Did you actually try any of this before posting? Because you're starting to look like an idiot.

Because if you open the To-Do bar, you'll see 1) It has the left/right arrows to minimize.

No it doesn't.

And 2) You can right-click for a menu, which include the option to turn it off.

This one is true, and a little weird. Congratulations, you've pointed out an actual inconsistency.

Go to the People pane, and it has up/down arrows, but they don't work the same way the ribbon arrows or folder pane arrows work. And no right-click menu.

What "up down arrows"? Do you mean the chevron icon that minimizes/restores the pane? If so, it works identically to that chevron icon every where else it appears.

So how is this obvious? How it is logical design when I could do what I wanted to do for every other pane without going to the View tab?

The To-Do Pane is the only one with that contextual menu; if you wanted to remove the Folder Pane or Reading Pane or People Pane you have to use the View tab in the ribbon. To-Do is the odd man out here, not the normal case.

So honestly, using my experience with Outlook 2010, based on the ribbon, the folders pane, the To-Do pane, it never occurred to me to look in the View tab.

Well then you're an idiot. You explore to learn. You've never explored the UI, so you've never learned the UI. Then you come here to Slashdot and gripe about it as if it's Microsoft's faul

Re:My brain asplode

[mcmonkey]

Thank you! That worked. And it does make sense (now that I know how to do it).

It worked, it makes sense, and it's IN THE EXACT SAME SPOT THAT FUNCTION WAS IN BEFORE. If you couldn't find it in the ribbon View tab, why in hell do you think you would have been able to find it in the View menu? You're whining about your own ignorance, not anything relevant to Outlook's UI.

I don't recall there being a People pane in Outlook 2003, so your suggestion that the controls would be in same place for 2010 as for 2003 didn't make sense to me. Did a little Google. Turns out...the "Social Connector" was in 2003, and the option to hide it was under the View menu. Well, learn something new every day.

As for "whining about your own ignorance," that's the whole point. When I open Outlook, I want to manage my email, not learn about Outlook. Yes, I should learn to use the tool properly, but always with the goal of getting my work done. Now I know how to hide the People pane. Something I will never need to do again. So how is it useful for me to learn the location of a button I will click once?

In my copy of Outlook, the People Pane has the exact same chevron, which behaves in the exact same way. (The minimize/maximize it.) To hide it completely you use the View tab. Let's see, what if you wanted to hide the Folder Pane completely instead of just minimizing it... lo and behold, you do that from the View tab as well! Looks pretty fucking consistent to me.

(The irony here is that there is an inconsistency in Outlook's UI, the Reading Pane doesn't have the minimize chevron that all other panes to have. But somehow you didn't notice that, and instead complained about the People Pane which is entirely consistent with the rest of the UI. WTF?)

Apparently some of my complaints are misdirected towards MS when they should be going towards the folks who rolled out Office 2010 for my employer. There must be some customization, because my Outlook does not work they way yours does.

Right-click the ribbon, get context menu which includes 'minimize' (which hides the ribbon). Right-click To-Do, get context menu, which includes 'off' (which hides the To-Do pane). Right-click People pane, nothing. No context menu.

Click the chevron for the ribbon, ribbon gone. Click the chevron for the folders (Navigation pane), folders gone. Click the chevron for the People pane, pane smaller, but still there.

To say there's any sort of consistency or logic to the way these panes work just is not true.

So how is this obvious? How it is logical design when I could do what I wanted to do for every other pane without going to the View tab?

The To-Do Pane is the only one with that contextual menu; if you wanted to remove the Folder Pane or Reading Pane or People Pane you have to use the View tab in the ribbon. To-Do is the odd man out here, not the normal case.

Again, it seems my issues are with my specific implementation of Outlook 2010. For all the other panes and ribbons I wanted to hide, I did not need to go to the View tab. Maybe that has something to do with which panes I wanted to hide. But when I can hide A, B, and C without going to the View tab, I don't see how you can argue that for D obviously my first stop should have been the View tab.

As far as odd-men out, ribbon and To-Do have right-click menus; People and Nav panes do not. Ribbon and Nav panes hide all details when minimized; Person and To-Do do not. Nav, Person, To-Do panes can be controlled from the View tab in the ribbon; the ribbon itself is not. I've got four panes flying out from the four sides of the Outlook window. I've got four different sets of behaviors. So what's normal in this case?

So honestly, using my experience with Outlook 2010, based on the ribbon, the folders pane, the To-Do pane, it never occurred to me to look in the View tab.

Re:My brain asplode

[Blakey Rat]

I don't recall there being a People pane in Outlook 2003, so your suggestion that the controls would be in same place for 2010 as for 2003 didn't make sense to me. Did a little Google. Turns out...the "Social Connector" was in 2003, and the option to hide it was under the View menu. Well, learn something new every day.

It's not new, it's been there the entire time. The only difference is that View changed from a menu into a ribbon tab.

When I open Outlook, I want to manage my email, not learn about Outlook.

Fair enough, but you didn't magically know how the menus and icons in 2003 worked, right? So why would you expect to magically know how the ribbon works? If you don't spend any time learning it, exploring it, then of course you won't know how to work it-- I see this as a tautology, but for some reason ribbon detractors don't.

Now I know how to hide the People pane. Something I will never need to do again. So how is it useful for me to learn the location of a button I will click once?

What you should have learned isn't "this is where you click to close the People Pane", what you should have learned is, "the View menu/tab contains options for turning off panes." Learn the mnemonic!

If you had learned the mnemonic in 2003, you wouldn't have been confused when trying to turn off the People Pane in 2010 because (and I know I'm hammering on this point, but it's important) the mnemonic did not change.

Right-click the ribbon, get context menu which includes 'minimize' (which hides the ribbon). Right-click To-Do, get context menu, which includes 'off' (which hides the To-Do pane). Right-click People pane, nothing. No context menu.

Yes, all correct.

Click the chevron for the ribbon, ribbon gone. Click the chevron for the folders (Navigation pane), folders gone. Click the chevron for the People pane, pane smaller, but still there.

Wrong; the chevron minimizes, it does not remove. That behavior is consistent no matter where the chevron icon appears. (And think about it: it wouldn't make any sense to be able to turn the ribbon off, because you'd never be able to get it back on! Not without reinstalling.)

If you have a copy of Outlook where the Folder Pane chevron turns the folder list off, then you have a strange mutant indeed. But more likely, you're either lying to support your case, or an extremely unobservant person.

To say there's any sort of consistency or logic to the way these panes work just is not true.

The only inconsistency is that the To-Do Pane includes a contextual menu and the others dont. (I don't know if I'd count the ribbon, since it's not a "Pane" by Outlook's definition of "Pane".) Other than that, they all behave identically.

But when I can hide A, B, and C without going to the View tab, I don't see how you can argue that for D obviously my first stop should have been the View tab.

But you didn't hide A, B and C; you just minimized them. You're comparing apples and oranges.

Nav, Person, To-Do panes can be controlled from the View tab in the ribbon; the ribbon itself is not.

Arguably, the ribbon should have an entry for itself in the View tab, allowing you to minimize it. (As pointed out above, you can't turn the ribbon off like you can the other panes.)

This People pane irks me especially for a couple reasons. First, there should be a learning curve, not a learning cliff. I expect on opening Outlook I should be able to send and read email.

So the People Pane was preventing you from sending and receiving email? Seriously? You're full of shit, and the longer this conversation goes, the more full of shit you get.

The second thing is, of what use is this People pane? The ribbon, I understand why it's there. I'm not a fan of the design. I will likely leave the ribbon hidden in most of my Office 2010 apps. But I understand why there's a ribbon and what I would use it for. The To-Do pane in Outlook, an

Re:My brain asplode

[mcmonkey]

You're comparing apples and oranges.

Thank you for conceding that point. There are four 'things' (3 panes and a ribbon) on the four sides of the Outlook which reduce the space available for displaying emails. And they behave in four different ways. That's all I'm trying to say.

You haven't yet explained how having the People Pane visible was preventing you from reading email. But fair warning, it's going to be hard to explain, because it's complete bullshit!

I just returned Outlook to what I believe is close to the original configuration I saw when I opened 2010 for the first time. Ribbon down, To-Do and People panes maximized, Nav pane on the left, and in the middle of it all the list of messages in the current folder and the reading pane with the current message.

Depending on formatting and length of the message header (subject, To: CC:), I'm able to see up to 3 lines of the email body at a time.

Is it possible to read email 3 lines at a time? Yes, mostly. Sometimes emails include embedded images too large for 3 lines. Is it possible to open an email in a new window? Yes. So to say this configuration completely prevents me from reading emails is not true, I grant you that. But it doesn't make it easy.

That's not an acceptable configuration in my mind, and it's not the way I work. I have dual monitors (17 and 19 inch widescreens). Why should I have to read emails in a reading pane smaller than the display on my phone?

Of course, the answer is I don't. I can change the configuration for my preferences. That's the wonder of configurable software. So I learned how to minimize the ribbon. And I learned how to turn off the To-Do pane.

But when I got around to the People pane, what I learned about the ribbon didn't work. And what I learned about the To-Do pane didn't work. So to say my issues are because I'm resistant to learning is bullshit. And to say there's some consistency to the way the panes work is bullshit.

Actually, this conversation has been helpful for me. In the process of going back forth between Outlook, and ribbon in Word, and /. (mostly to check that the things I were bitching about were not bullshit) I've learned a few things.

The People pane is actually sort of neat. I can get a list of emails from the same sender as the current email. (I wonder if I can get it to display which folder each email is in.) I can get a list of meetings with that person. (Or at least where that person is the organizer, but not where that person is a fellow invitee.) But I still see it as something I'll have off for the vast majority of the time.

Also, when the ribbon is minimized, and the tab labels are displayed, I can click on the label, and ribbon tab is displayed. The interesting bit is in the top right corner, where the up/down chevron usually is, there is a thumb tack! Clicking the tack fixes the tab so the ribbon stays open! Exactly how I would expect it to work.

If only the panes that come out of the other 3 sides of the window worked the same way...

Re:My brain asplode

[Blakey Rat]

Thank you for conceding that point. There are four 'things' (3 panes and a ribbon) on the four sides of the Outlook which reduce the space available for displaying emails. And they behave in four different ways. That's all I'm trying to say.

If that were true, I'd sympathize. But it's not. And I've already explained why it's not. And it's not sinking in.

Depending on formatting and length of the message header (subject, To: CC:), I'm able to see up to 3 lines of the email body at a time.

That's not an acceptable configuration in my mind, and it's not the way I work. I have dual monitors (17 and 19 inch widescreens).

3 lines of email at a time, on a 17" monitor? Liar. How does it feel to have your pants constantly on fire?

So we're at a point in the conversation where 1) you aren't actually absorbing any information I provide, and 2) you're blatantly lying to me. I think it's time to end this thread. Good bye.

Re:My brain asplode

[omnichad]

You really should be viewing it in widescreen view. Go to the View tab, and under Reading Pane, choose Right instead of bottom. Don't know why it isn't the default now. Then you have the full screen height or close to it both for your message list AND your message contents.

Re:My brain asplode

[mcmonkey]

Thank you for conceding that point. There are four 'things' (3 panes and a ribbon) on the four sides of the Outlook which reduce the space available for displaying emails. And they behave in four different ways. That's all I'm trying to say.

If that were true, I'd sympathize. But it's not. And I've already explained why it's not. And it's not sinking in.

Depending on formatting and length of the message header (subject, To: CC:), I'm able to see up to 3 lines of the email body at a time.

That's not an acceptable configuration in my mind, and it's not the way I work. I have dual monitors (17 and 19 inch widescreens).

3 lines of email at a time, on a 17" monitor? Liar. How does it feel to have your pants constantly on fire?

So we're at a point in the conversation where 1) you aren't actually absorbing any information I provide, and 2) you're blatantly lying to me. I think it's time to end this thread. Good bye.

I'm honestly trying to understand. You say updating the configuration of the panes is consistent. When I point out the inconsistencies, you say 'apples and oranges'. When I retort, 'that's my point, they're all different,' you say, that's not true. Maybe it's one of those things that will make sense after I use the product more.

As for the number of lines visible in the reading pane...I took a couple screen shots with Outlook 2010 full screen on 19" widescreen. I'll play with them tonight to obscure any details my employer might object to me posting.

Re:My brain asplode

[mcmonkey]

Hmmm. That's actually not too bad. Subjects are cut off in the email listings, but the combination of sender and first few words of the subject are a pretty good indicator of whats in the message.

Even with the To-Do and People panes open, this layout still shows a good dozen or so decent length lines of message body.

Re:My brain asplode

[just_a_monkey]

I have no idea where anything I don't use daily is. But with menus I can click on each and scan them in a few seconds (because they are words) and find likely candidates quickly. With the ribbon, I must hover over every single icon until the tooltip comes up to find out what it does. That is much, much slower.

Re:Jesus, look at all that wasted space and UI vom

[Sarusa]

Okay, maybe that was a bit harsh, I do generally like Windows 7 as my primary desktop, but c'mon, you can afford to hire some UI designers. Pay what you have to, and for gods sake don't let the programmers and engineers design anything.

their goals != my goals

[tverbeek]

"the ribbon approach offered benefits in line with our goals"

Apparently one of their goals is to keep me using Windows XP until the hardware it is running on can no longer be repaired.

The concept of the Pull-Down Menu was not broke.* It did not need to be "fixed".

*Actually Microsoft did break the Pull-Down Menu, by automatically removing things from it if you didn't use them often enough. In doing so they reduced the likelihood that you would remember seeing where a little-used feature was on the menu ("I think that was under Edit..."), or discover a "new" feature by seeing it listed there ("Hey, there's an option on the View menu to display full-screen!").

Re:their goals != my goals

[johnwerneken]

yea more of that GD context sensitive bs.

Re:Fuck this shit!

[SpryGuy]

You need to RTFA.

They didn't remove more vertical space. They added more vertical space. You can see MORE files in the file list in Windows 8 Explorer than in Windows 7 Explorer.

In fact, they designed this UI with wide-screen in mind, to more effectively use the width of the screen, and to provide more vertical space for the actual file list.

So, your whiny complaining post is completely without merit.

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

You call that mess minimal ? Compare this screenshot of the Windows 8 explorer to the OSX Lion Finder, now that's no nonsense minimalism.

Thanks Guys!

[Fujisawa Sensei]

W00t Just people want, applications ribbons taking up more valuable space, and less area for for actual work.

Apple will be laughing all the way to the bank with additional converts.

And no, I'm not an Apple user, but if they start putting respectable graphics cards in their 15" laptops, I will certainly give them even more consideration. Seriously, they need a top tier gfx card as an option. Their best laptop card is 2/3ds the speed of my 18 month old PC.

Re:Thanks Guys!

[RogerWilco]

I think that if you really want desktop graphics in a laptop, you need to go Alienware or something like that. Apple puts reasonable GPUs in their systems, but it's not going to be able to keep up with the top desktop cards.

I've did a comparison of the 17" models, because they both carry that.
An Alienware 17" with an Nvidia GTX 560 with 1.5GB would be $2350.
An Apple 17" with 6750M with 1 GB would be $2699.

The Alienware is faster and cheaper. But the Apple comes in at 2.99kg instead of 4.26kg and has a higher resolution display.

Re:Thanks Guys!

[kimvette]

Apple will be laughing all the way to the bank with additional converts.

. . . or more users will discover Total Commander

Re:Thanks Guys!

[Fujisawa Sensei]

I've already done the research, that's why I find the Apple annoying, I would prefer to pay for faster chips, than a nice aluminum shell.

Clear Benefits

[cHiphead]

So, instead of drop down text menus, they make it horizontal with tabs and pictures and a few functions take up ALL of the real estate for additional functions due to the graphical nature of it all now? Yeah, the clear benefits of clicking an additional 4-8 times and going through different popups to change something that used to be 2-3 clicks.

Re:Clear Benefits

[SpryGuy]

Well, except that there is MORE vertical screen space allotted to the file list in Windows 8 Explorer than in Windows 7 Explorer. Which you'd know if you bothered to read the article, which you clearly didn't.

Never mind that the Ribbon can be hidden ('auto hide' as well, appearing only when you want/need it). Never mind you can customize the "quick access" toolbar with any command there is, in any way you want, for one click access to any feature you use frequently enough to warrent it.

I'm still waiting for ANYONE to come up with an actual, valid objection to these changes. Virtually every single post on here bitching and whining about it clearly didn't read the article, as they bitch and whine about things that simply are not the case.

Like you just did.

Re:Clear Benefits

[Robert Zenz]

Yes, there is more vertical space compared to Windows 7, except if you hide that ugly and useless bottom bar.

Re:Clear Benefits

[SpryGuy]

But if you do that, then you can also hide the Ribbon, and get back to Windows 8 having more space.

Apples to Apples... except on Windows 8, you still have the information in that bottom bar available to the side. So it's still a win.

Directory Opus

[p51d007]

Unless they put in the functionality of Directory Opus, I'll stick with it.

Agreed, but still missing th best change :(

[RingDev]

Who care's about the ribbon? The only time I ever used the menu was to get to the config options anyway. With the new one, I'll just compress the ribbon and it'll be out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

Now there is one change I have been beging for for years. Why oh why can I not filter file lists from the path input box?

Really. Why can't I type in C:\temp\*.sql in explore just to get all my SQL files from the temp folder? Why must I jump through sort orders or search interfaces to find this one file I know is in the folder I'm looking at?

-Rick

Re:Agreed, but still missing th best change :(

[shutdown -p now]

Now there is one change I have been beging for for years. Why oh why can I not filter file lists from the path input box?

Really. Why can't I type in C:\temp\*.sql in explore just to get all my SQL files from the temp folder? Why must I jump through sort orders or search interfaces to find this one file I know is in the folder I'm looking at?

You can't do this in one step, but you can do this in two - type C:\temp into the address field to navigate there, and then type *.sql in the search field to search from there. Or do you want to search in that dir only, no subfolders?

Re:Agreed, but still missing th best change :(

[archen]

assuming that's your defined temp folder, you can use WinKey + R, then type %temp%

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[wilgibson]

Or just click on that little up arrow in the top right corner.

Re:The UP Button!

[SpryGuy]

Well, it's not like the up arrow brings any new functionality... you've always had the ability to "navigate to parent".

The only two things the up arrow does brings you is familiarity (I always used the up-arrow in XP), and a consistent target to hit (the location doesn't change). Currently you just click the parent folder in the "address bar", and voila. But that 'target' is in a different location depending on how deep you are, and how long the folder names are. But you have the added ability to be able to jump back several parents with one click, instead of hitting up arrow multiple times.

WHY?

[Un pobre guey]

Why, why, why, why, WHY?

Nothing useful since 2000

[epp_b]

I'll eat my shoes if you can name one specific feature or UI element that has significantly improved the usability of Windows or Office since 2000 that couldn't have simply been retrofitted with no more effort than it took to add to the current version.

Re:Nothing useful since 2000

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I'll eat my shoes if you can name one specific feature or UI element that has significantly improved the usability of Windows or Office since 2000 that couldn't have simply been retrofitted with no more effort than it took to add to the current version

I'm confused by your question. You want the description of a feature or UI element. Okay. It has to "significantly improve" the usability of Windows/Office. Subjective, by whatever. But I have no clue what the "simply been retrofitted" requirement is trying to get at. I mean, you (or Microsoft) can "retrofit" an old version of Windows to use NTFS instead of FAT16. That probably would be less work than creating XP. Does NTFS fail this criterion?

Re:Nothing useful since 2000

[PaulMeigh]

Hover over a format change on the ribbon in Office and it is instantly previewed in your document. Huge usability improvement and not possible with a drop-down that covers the document.

Want some hot sauce?

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[djdanlib]

But... you just double-click the tab, and it goes away, taking up even less space... it's easy! This new design will actually do wonders for your average user. You know, good old computer illiterate hunt-and-peck J. Random User, who doesn't know any keyboard shortcuts and really can't be taught to use them.

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Yes I figured you could minimize it. That doesn't help when you need a function accessed through the ribbon. It's like having a drawer full of crap that you have to root through when you need a particular tool, everything looks nice and neat when it's closed but then you need something and the pain starts.

New s?

[YodaDaCoda]

I'm sorry, but in what way is this news? This has been floating around the internet since about March. suddenly it becomes news when Microsoft finally admits it?

Re:New s?

[Robert Zenz]

I don't understand your question...if it was floating around since March, but now Microsoft says "yes, ware going to do that", then yes, now it is news. Before that point it's called "rumor".

No! Just No!

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>'We knew that using a ribbon for Explorer would likely be met with skepticism by a set of power users, but there are clear benefits,' Simons said."

Benefits for the stupid perhaps.

It all depends on how you see it...

[frank_adrian314159]

Once you remember that the ribbon is a horizontally-oriented, tabbed menu for people too stupid to read words, it all makes sense. Right?

Touch UI

[dancinfrandsen]

Seems a lot more touch UI friendly. I'm guessing this was the primary reason for going with the Ribbon. Also, although the Ribbon takes up more vertical space, the huge details bar at the bottom has been dropped in favor of a details panel on the right side, which gives a net-positive screen space usage for the Ribbon.

Die Ribbon, Die!

[TiggertheMad]

but the new way actually does let you get complex things done faster.

Faster? Because frequently performed actions are at the front of the menu queue? If you want to do frequently performed actions faster, learn the hot key sequence. I will stomp the ass of a ribbon user ten times out of ten, because I know the hot keys. Fast users don't even look at the menu.

If they wanted to really improve things, they would research what hot key sequences were most used, and make those the simplest combos. And yes, the ribbon is ASS.

Re:Die Ribbon, Die!

[Osgeld]

they already did research, and found that the context menu, followed by hotkey were 1 and 2, from the menu was dead last, so what else could that possibly mean? we need more shit to confuse our average userbase

simply brilliant. how about printing a fucking manual that isnt thinner than the box it came in MS

Re:Die Ribbon, Die!

[djdanlib]

Indeed you will. So will I, because I use the hotkeys as well.

However, there exists a great majority of office users who can't be bothered to learn those hotkeys. Go work in an office, and see if any of the management wants to waste their time learning hotkeys. Chances are, most of them are barely functional on the computer, and think that sort of thing is a waste of their time. So having a bright colorful icon right in front of them really improves their speed. Ask your IT staff, if you aren't part of it. (Sounds like you could be, though.)

The Ribbon was invented for those people. Not you or I. I hide it, I turn off the menu bar, and I close everything that's taking up space on my screen.

Nothing personal to you guys who have this INTENSE BURNING HATRED for the Ribbon UI. I just disagree with you, let's stay civil in here.

Re:Die Ribbon, Die!

[daver00]

As far as I am aware, Microsoft changed none of the hotkeys, so users such as yourself are completely unhindered and the ribbon is therefore not relevant to your usage case. Hey I'm a massive geek too mate but I do it how real geeks should: render Latex markup which you type up in vim. I don't understand Word power users... it is a tool for the computer illiterate - in which case the ribbon is a dramatic improvement over the old system.

Re:Die Ribbon, Die!

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Go work in an office, and see if any of the management wants to waste their time learning hotkeys. Chances are, most of them are barely functional on the computer, and think that sort of thing is a waste of their time. So having a bright colorful icon right in front of them really improves their speed. Ask your IT staff, if you aren't part of it.

Personally I don't want management to be more productive. They waste enough of productive time and then wonder why I didn't accomplish anything when they wanted me to be in meetings or generating stupid reports all day.

Re:Die Ribbon, Die!

[djdanlib]

Good point :)

Re:Not to worry...click the up arrow

[Un pobre guey]

Many people are tired of right-click and then look down through the list for the function you want... yes, there still are beginners on computers today..

Funny you should mention that. I worked with high school kids for a year, and digging around in the "ribbon" for functionality that used to be easy to find in either the menu or the right-click list wasted many, many valuable hours. I have never had the impression that the "ribbon" improved navigation. It was different, cool-looking, cutesy, and looked as if it was better, but in practice it was clumsier to use and difficult to see all of the functionality that it represents. Customizing paragraph definitions, for example, is much less straightforward and requires more navigation than before. The kids were limited to using what little functionality was obvious in the ribbon, and only haphazardly were able to find finer adjustments and customization.

This appears to be the worst end-user UI ever...

[hattig]

I'm looking at the screenshot right now. http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-29-43-metablogapi/7245.Figure_2D00_8_2D002D002D00_Win8_2D00_Hero_5F00_449B7A36.png

The top left of the Explorer window is a morass of buttons and text things. I actually don't understand it.

The window title bar has several icons on it. First looks like the application icon - but it looks like a text document icon. Then there is a yellow icon - an open folder? After that there is a ticked document. What is that for? Then there is a downward arrow thing - does that bring up more menus?

THEN we get the application title - but oh no, it's not centred. There's a weird "Library Tools" thing encroaching from the ribbon into the window's title bar. Now I know that this happens in Office, e.g., "Table Tools", but it's just additional confusion here.

So under that we get the Ribbon. Great! The Ribbon is essentially an icongraphic tabbed representation of a menu. We can see the different Ribbons here - File, Home, Share, View, and that Library Tools - Manage one.

But ... wait ... File is dark blue. Home is white. The others are grey-blue. Which one is the active tab? Why is the other one a different appearance? Confusing!

Then there's a carat on the right hand side. Does that hide the ribbon? No idea.

The ribbon itself is a typical ribbon - common actions are bigger. I can see that it would be useful for a touch interface... but...

Oh look how small the Cut icon is - vindicating Apple's decision to not offer Cut as an option in Finder, perhaps?

What is a New Easy Access?

View is a separate Ribbon (I think) - no more quick view changes eh!

Oh, I can't continue. I have been presented with what appears to be a contender for worst UI of the decade, and it's only 2011.

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[Cl1mh4224rd]

It's kind of hard to take him seriously when he claims the menu bar has been "made bigger and more prominent", right underneath a screenshot showing that Windows 8 Explorer doesn't have any menu bar at all!

Umm... The ribbon is generally considered a replacement for the menu bar.

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[PCM2]

You call that "better information"? How about reading the thing you're criticizing instead of just looking at the pretty pictures. Right below Microsoft's graph about command usage -- which you try to use as evidence that Microsoft is stupid or not paying attention -- is the following:

With greater than 85% of command usage being invoked using a method other than the primary UI, there was clearly an opportunity to improve the Explorer user experience to make it more effective—more visible and uniformly accessible.

And your counter-argument is that they shouldn't touch the UI because nobody uses it? You should send Microsoft a resume; I'm sure they could use a big thinker like you.

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[Blakey Rat]

... and? What's your point?

The car is generally considered the replacement for a horse and buggy, but that doesn't mean they are the same thing.

It's not the ribbon ifself

[joh]

It's the fscking Explorer they have bolted it on. The same with Office: The ribbon is actually not a bad idea, but if the whole app is just a pile of functionality with no rhyme or reason to it, the ribbon just feels bad. The fact that the whole UI design is bland and confusing (especially since everything seems to be colored areas and text and pale symbols with no clear definition of what is content and what is tools) doesn't help of course.

Since XP Microsoft seems to be on a rampage to make every window look like a webpage where you have to hover over, click, double-click, right-click and drag everything to find out what happens.

Slashdot Luddites Unite Against Ribbon

[emddudley]

I, for one, welcome our new ribbon-wielding overlords.

Re:Jesus, look at all that wasted space and UI vom

[johnwerneken]

That is exactly the problem. The whole concept of pocket computers sucks totally, and "touch" is one reason why.

"that already sport that interface"

[iggymanz]

Sport? the ribbon is sported ??!! Sure, in the way that the undershorts of a person with influenza might sport a yellow-brown stripe, or the corpse of an axe murder victim sports a cleft in the skull

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[EvanED]

I bet you hate menus, then.

That will help

[Fuzzums]

http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-29-43-metablogapi/8422.Figure-21-_2D00_-Real-Estate-comparison_5F00_2.png

2 files more visible; that will help with large directories.
Less info about the file. hmm. I think I can do without.
a LOT more ***, oh wait that IS the ribbon.

Anonymous Coward Becomes Known Coward :)

[DiabolicallyRandom]

I've been an anonymous coward for years, but I finally decided to register today, for some unknown reason. In any case, the post I was going to make as an AC is below: here has been some typical outcry about this change (eg "TEH NOES RIBBONS R TEH CARP") - but I think this is genuinely a Good Thing (TM) - I hated ribbons at first too - but after a couple years of using office 2007/2010 I have become accustomed to the ribbons - and what I see among less... skilled users is that they greatly prefer the ribbons. I have had no trouble in office continuing to use my keyboard shortcuts I learned many years ago - and I am sure it will be the same for this change as well. It will simply give more options and/or make them more accessible for those who don't have all the keyboard shortcuts memorized :)

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[Culture20]

Your OSX Lion Finder screenshot ignores the huge screen-wide menu that takes up the whole top of the screen. The Windows 8 explorer can hide its menu/ribbon/whatever.

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[exomondo]

Better information about Microsoft's researches: http://seldo.tumblr.com/post/9549775746/this-is-genuinely-microsofts-idea-of-a lol

That's pretty much the most idiotic response yet, they've seen that the menu bar isn't widely used and decided to improve it, the context menus and hotkeys are used a lot so leave them as-is.

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[alphabetsoup]

Both his criticisms make no sense. Regarding his first (remaining 50% of the bar is taken up by buttons that nobody will ever use) - the space is already there. Do you want to use the space to put some useful commands, or do you leave it blank ? Obviously my choice would be to add some useful command. Empty space serves nothing.

The second criticism is even more nonsense. MS is not taking away the context menu or the hotkey - in fact if you read the blog, they are adding more shortcuts. They are only combining the command bar and menu bar into one and making it more prominent. Whats the harm in that ? It even has more vertical space!

Re:No! Just No!

[Un pobre guey]

Neither for power users nor for the stupid. It is not at all clear who benefits from "the ribbon."

will slow down the roll out of windows 8 even

[Joe_Dragon]

as some places are now just getting to windows 7 and a NEW UI in 8 just makes it even harder to go to 8 now.

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[Nadaka]

Except that menus actually are neatly labeled, and properly organized in a hierarchical fashion to a much greater degree than ribbon.

Re:In this thread.

[johnwerneken]

Insightful, funny, and dare I say it, "me too", "like he said" etc.

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

"Huge" menu seriously ? Menu's done wrong can be a nightmare, like Word's menu pré-ribbon especially the automatically collapsing kind. Finder's menu is pretty nice.

Re:This appears to be the worst end-user UI ever..

[EvanED]

THEN we get the application title - but oh no, it's not centred.

On what planet does Windows any application title?

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[hattig]

can't figure out how to minimize the Ribbon. Hint: You double click it.

Whoa, that makes no sense at all. That usually opens something.

Admit it - that Explorer Ribbon UI is one that has to be learned, and once learned you forget that it is actually a POS that looks like an icon factory shat on a UI.

Re:This appears to be the worst end-user UI ever..

[EvanED]

I seem to have accidentally a word.

"On what planet does Windows center any application title?"

Here's a thought you morons...

[johnlcallaway]

... OFFER BOTH OF THEM!!!!

Jeez .. would it really take that much more to keep the EXISTING MENUS but add an option to use a ribbon for those that like them or are new users??? I thought Windows and C++ was supposed to support some type of modular programming, it should be a piece of cake to chose one widget over another one. Just plug it in. I know it's pretty easy in Java to do it.....

Any benefit from ribbons (which I haven't seen any yet) is lost from me not being able to find stuff. Excel was just plain nasty trying to find things in. I still have a difficult time finding things that I don't use very often, but had used enough to make some sense about why they were in a specific menu.

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[Missing.Matter]

Any benefit from ribbons (which I haven't seen any yet) is lost from me not being able to find stuff.

Having used ribbon office for the last 5 years, I experience the same inability to find things in Open Office or Office 2003. Seems to me that argument is more a function with familiarity than the interface design. It amounts to "I'm familiar with this thing, and I am not familiar with that thing, and therefore that thing is worse in every way."

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[mdielmann]

Any benefit from ribbons (which I haven't seen any yet) is lost from me not being able to find stuff.

Having used ribbon office for the last 5 years, I experience the same inability to find things in Open Office or Office 2003. Seems to me that argument is more a function with familiarity than the interface design. It amounts to "I'm familiar with this thing, and I am not familiar with that thing, and therefore that thing is worse in every way."

That doesn't get around the fact that I've had slightly more complex than basic formatting tasks (in Excel) scattered over 2 or 3 different ribbons. So you either have a pile of ribbons, and 6 lines of spreadsheet data, or a dozen clicks to jump back and forth between ribbons. It's even more fun if you're trying to use a function that you can't quite remember the name of, and have to hover over a million icons to find the right one. Of course, you could search through the ribbon customizing dialog, which just happens to be reminiscent of the old menu system (with more icons).

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[DJ Jones]

From the article:

One thing Microsoft won't do in is offer the old-style Explorer interface alongside the new ribbonized design.

Simons said that was simply too much work.

I smell bullsh$t

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[DavidD_CA]

If there are commands that you use frequently in tabs other than Home, consider adding them to the Quick Access Toolbar. Just right-click on the icon and you're there.

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[nutshell42]

So you either have a pile of ribbons, and 6 lines of spreadsheet data

? How do you get a pile of ribbons?

or a dozen clicks to jump back and forth between ribbons

Which is exactly the same as a bunch of different menus. Use the shortcuts for the different tabs or even the functions themselves or put them in the toolbar.

It's even more fun if you're trying to use a function that you can't quite remember the name of, and have to hover over a million icons to find the right one.

Everything but the most basic text editing functions is labeled.

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[ncy]

yea, it seems a logical thing to do. that's why i didn't have to switch Linux distro when they released Ubuntu with Unity. there are still 2 options available, so i just use the Classic option to get Gnome.

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[nine-times]

Any benefit from ribbons (which I haven't seen any yet) is lost from me not being able to find stuff.

The thing is, Office applications have so many features that there's no way to sort them all sensibly. For some features, you eventually have to just stick it somewhere. This was the case with the old menus too-- believe me, I've worked helpdesk support long enough to remember when people were just learning Excel, and throughout the years there were always some features that you'd have to go, "I know Excel can do this, but where is the control for it?!" Worse, Microsoft has always had a habit of shuffling things around with each new release, so the location keeps changing.

My point here is that, ultimately, the problem of "not being able to find stuff" isn't new to the ribbon. You just think it's new because you've gotten used to looking for the features you use under certain menus, and now it's all moved. However, the organization wasn't any more sensible; you were just so used to it that it seemed sensible. For people who learn to use this programs with the ribbon, the old menu system would probably seem confusing and arbitrary. Even though I'm not too fond of the ribbon myself, I applaud Microsoft for studying the way people use their products and trying to improve usefulness and efficiency for their users.

As for the suggestion to offer both UIs, it introduces a problem: now Microsoft would need to support to UI designs for all of their applications. Not only does that introduce a stupid amount of work, but you know that in situations like that, developers will end up favoring one of the designs and the other one would be relatively unsupported, and stupid bugs would creep in.

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[johnlcallaway]

There is a difference between 'finding something new' and 'finding something that used to be right there'. New users are not expected to be proficient or efficient, stumbling around is part of the learning process. I don't have a problem with stumbling around to find a new feature. It's finding something that has been 'right there' for years, and it takes me several minutes to find it since they moved it that I have an issue with. Microsoft has made a conscious decision to make things more difficult for the seasoned users and take up more monitor space for the benefit of new users. Who, once they become power-users, may find the ribbon bar just as space-wasting.

And give me a break on the UI issue. Menus take what ... 5?? 10?? minutes to lay out?? Ok .. maybe an hour if someone isn't very good at it?? The routines that have to be called are all the same, so very little new code has to be written. If anything, it takes more time to lay out the ribbon with all of it's useless graphics and non-intuitive symbols than menus. I was using new Excel for months before I discovered that you can click the little icon below the format list and go right to selecting any format, instead of clicking the list and then clicking 'more formats'. A good modular design would accommodate this very easily. They already allow me to add commands to the menu that isn't there, so they could also take the stance of not even adding new features to it, go change it yourself.

And I don't have an issue with something being in the ribbon bar that isn't easily used in the menu bar. Give ME the choice on when to switch, and a fall back if I can't find the 'text to columns' button.

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[brentrad]

If you RTFA (yes, I know), it is very easy to get back to the normal menus:
"collapse the ribbon (double-click the tab, or click the Minimize arrow on the right side of the ribbon)"

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[mdielmann]

So the alternative to prebuilt menus is a build-your-own menu? This isn't a ringing endorsement for the ribbon (although I've done that), and indicates how broken the system is. Now, for fun, imagine doing phone support for that (or ribbons in general). At least with (non-auto-prioritizing) menus, you can give someone useful, accurate, verbal or written instructions for where various functions can be found.

Re:Here's a thought you morons...

[DavidD_CA]

You are proposing problems for different situations.

If the user is a power user, and they want to customize the Ribbon, they can. Those people aren't going to be calling a help desk asking to find something. And if they do, they'll understand that they've customized it and will have to adapt.

For everyone else, the Ribbon is perfectly static and reliable.

I provide phone and in-person support for Microsoft Office users all the time. It's my job. I have NEVER the kind of problem that you describe with the default, built-in Ribbon.

"Do you see the Insert tab? Good. Do you see the group of icons called Pictures? Good. Do you see the icon called Clipart? Excellent."

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I hate some menus, like the bs autocollapsing Office 2003 era ones, they're the best we have when done right though.

Agreed.

[2DGamer]

Agreed. I use it daily since about 2000. Works fine in FreeBSD and Linux as well (under Wine).

Wrong, the Ribbon is Awful; too many clicks

[master_p]

I am currently working on a Word document that has all the usual bells and whistles: tables, multiple styles, bullets, pictures, drawigs, etc.

It is awful.

Most of the time is spent moving the mouse around and switchings tabs.

Sure, it is easier to find the various commands with the Ribbon, but it takes a lot more time than toolbars. With toolbars, whatever you needed was there, you just had to move the mouse to reach it. Now, with the Ribbon, you have to move the mouse, click the appropriate tab AND move the mouse to the appropriate command.

Whoever designed the Ribbon is a complete moron. It now takes double the time to do the same work.

Re:Wrong, the Ribbon is Awful; too many clicks

[Missing.Matter]

I am currently working on a Word document that has all the usual bells and whistles: tables, multiple styles, bullets, pictures, drawigs, etc. It is awful.

What kind of work did you do pre-Office 2007? Tables, styles, bibliographics, graphics... all buried in layers and layers of menus. I can preview 10 different styles in Office 2010 without clicking a single button. In 2003 it's 2 clicks for every style. Looking at open office it brings up a little toolbar for editing tables with about 10 options in it. But it's missing a whole lot of functionality I use all the time in Word 2010... where exactly do I find this functionality? Ah maybe the table menu under more layers of menus.

damnit microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

The ribbon is retarded. --I DO NOT WANT IT-- The menu system is not broken, so stop trying to fix it. It's worked fine the past 30 years, it will continue to work fine for the next 30. Stop trying to justify your time and jobs by cramming something down our throats that we neither want nor need. I stopped using Office because of the ribbon. Looks like windows is next.

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I still use the "view" menu, even though there's a button for it and it's in the context menu (force of habit I guess), the favorites menu to quickly jump to folders and less frequently the "tools" menu for mapping network drives. I'm just one of these people who thinks MS should've stopped messing with the Windows UI around Windows 2000. Anyway it's not my problem until my workplace starts upgrading away from XP.

Re:This appears to be the worst end-user UI ever..

[hattig]

Fair point. It just looks fricking weird with that "Library Tools" thing. What is Library Tools anyway? And why is it in the title bar?

Never mind all the other icons that make the window look schizophrenic.

Dump the ribbon. Have a row of larger icons that consist of the top 10 to 15 actions that users do, with the option to have a text label beneath the icons. No need for a ribbon. Put all the other functionality into a menu or context sensitive pull down menu icon on the toolbar.

Re:Great more crap I don't want.

[hattig]

It did nothing. Then again I'm using Chrome on a Mac.

In a file explorer, double clicking opens files. Okay, the ribbons not the file pane, fair enough. Still, it's a fair leap in logic to think "how do I close this ribbon? I know, I'll double click on it".

To be fair, the carat icon, oddly placed as it is, would obviously be the more obvious action to take. Therefore you don't even need a double click action that works on unused portions of the Ribbon.

Tabbed Browsing Fail

[RecursiveLoop]

a 2012 O.S. w/o tabbed browsing shows how much FAIL M.S. is still capable of........

Menu Bar + Explorer

[DarkXale]

So its just a matter of hiding the ribbon interface. Not like I used the menu bar in Explorer (with very rare exceptions, but the ribbon makes no difference here).

Alternatives to Explorer

[Slashdotgirl]

Windows Explorer Ribbon is reported to be the next best thing since sliced bread. Yeah right, show me the research that justifies that statement and of course I assume it was independently peer reviewed?. Until then, its what I want not what you want. I want my vertical space on my screens, I want my taskbar on the bottom and I decided what icons or panels reside on my desk space!

One classic example is the difference between the Qwerty and the Dvorak keyboards, yes the Dvorak keyboard is supposedly more efficient and can be implemented easily on modern computer systems. The Dvorak keyboard never over took the Qwerty keyboard which reigns supreme. However, what has evolved is that we have a choice of what type of keyboard we want to use. So if you do not like the Ribbon versions then get a replacement.
.
Alternatives to Windows Explorer.
.

• Free Commander
• Cubic Explorer
• Explorer++
• Xplorer2
• Explorer XP
• NexusFile
• Q-Dir
• QMMander
• Total Commander

At least one of the above is open source. As for replacements for Microsoft Office and its ribbon interface, Google is your friend if you want to find proprietary or free version and if you are really lazy then I will list two open source alternatives for Office suites.

• Open Office
• Libre Office

For the record I use Microsoft Office, because where I teach that is the default software, however, I install open office and now libre office on my family's and friends computers. You should see there eyes when I tell them its free.

For the record I use opens source software and operating systems and if something gets up my nose like the current Gnome 3 issue then I just change.

Kind regards
Slashdotgirl

Re:Alternatives to Explorer

[neminem]

Yep! After fighting with the native Win7 file manager to fix all the buggy behaviors they introduced, eventually I gave up and tried a few of those alternatives. I went with explorer++, because it is technically open source (it's mostly just the original guy working on it, with occasional bugfixes submitted from a couple other people, but you can still download the source and fix things yourself if you really need to. I've fiddled with it a little for my own benefit.) Sadly, there are a few obvious bugs in it that would prevent me from recommending it fully, but it's still way better than the default Win7 explorer (I miss XP's).

So anyway, this news really doesn't affect me - the native file manager was already a buggy, unuseable piece of garbage, so if they make it even worse, I will just continue to not use it.

Agent Ransack

[kolbe]

When Microsoft hosed their search utility in Windows 7, it was programs like Agent Ransack that came to the rescue for people such as me who HATE the Microsoft Indexing Service and horrid search engine in Windows 7.

Citing this as an example, I am willing to bet that other tools, perhaps the revival of Windows/Total Commander level tools will emerge post Windows 8 that will assist us "geezers" to maintain a similar level of keyboard shortcuts without Point-Click to achieve the same objective.

Remember, Microsoft doesn't listen to the people who service or administrate said systems, they listen to the masses who bring them the most money, the consumer.

The Anti-Chrome

[Ken_g6]

Quick, what's the latest, hottest, browser out there? Google Chrome.

What's Google Chrome's strength? It hides the menus and stuff, and only shows bookmarks when you're most likely to want them.

So, does Microsoft design a file manager that works like Chrome, hiding the most unusual features deep in menus?

No! They spill everything out in a giant mass of buttons.

/facepalm

Good move

[Palpatine_li]

Now Canonical and KDE 4.0 team will not look so bad.

Terrible.

[rAiNsT0rm]

Microsoft truly believes they can force something long enough and people will just give in. Maybe years ago they could, now people will just go elsewhere. I'm an IT professional that has been in the game since Windows 3.1/Dos 6.22, the ribbon does nothing well or make life easier for pros or users. It isn't an improvement in usability. I refuse to believe they have done usability studies with real users and can defend the ribbon or the use in something like this. I watch people struggle with it daily on both ends of the spectrum.

Why not actually innovate. Forget trying to out-Apple Apple, forget trying to push the ribbon, in fact... forget everything and start fresh. It blows my mind that there are still certain windows and features that are *from* Windows 95/98 IN the newest OSes... give up, admit defeat and start fresh. They almost had something with the Courier, get some fresh non-MS talent and go in a new direction.

Dear Microsoft...

[sootman]

... if you want to know what needs fixing in Explorer, look at the graph labeled "Command usage in Windows Explorer" and note that "Refresh" is in sixth place.

Keeping up with tradition

[Fallingwater]

I see M$ intends to keep up with the tradition of alternatively releasing systems that more-or-less work and systems that really suck. Let's get ready for another round of "OMG the world isn't buying 8 and is staying with 7!!!1!".

Re:No! Just No!

[not-my-real-name]

>'We knew that using a ribbon for Explorer would likely be met with skepticism by a set of power users, but there are clear benefits,' Simons said."

Benefits for the stupid perhaps.

Think about the people that you know who use computers. Now divide them into "skilled computer users" and "not skilled computer users". Which group has more people in it?

Re:Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm o

[initialE]

Big buttons. Tablet-ready. The ribbon might not be for conventional PCs?

be met with skepticism

[nurb432]

For good reason. The ribbon sucks and is NOT more efficient.

Re:If this can't be disabled...

[RobbieThe1st]

Sadly, I agree with you. I always had about a dozen things I'd do to any XP box to make it usable(enable extensions, show hidden files, etc...) I saw how the later XP service packs and W7 was going with WGA and DRM the ribbon etc... and I made the switch to Linux (KDE on top of a debian-based system). I... don't regret it, aside from one killer feature: File Undelete. That's the only thing that Windows(fat and ntfs) does better than any of the EXT* systems.
Even gaming can be done fairly well through wine(at least, for what I want to do -- Runescape and TF2).
Anyway, recently I hosed my Linux system, and had to use my dual-boot(w7+linux) laptop for a few days. I've gotten plenty frustrated by it's *slowness*: Programs(like steam) can stop responding without any real notification, and using the task bar to switch away while it does it's thing just... doesn't work. In KDE or Gnome, a frozen program doesn't matter - Just click another program and work around it, or kill it quickly with the task manager.
The other thing that bothered me is update speed: W7 seems to do all of it's updates at startup or shutdown, and it can take many minutes to shut off or boot when it's configuring.
All the Linux systems I've used just did the updates on-the-fly, was quick about it, and would always shutdown in 10s or so.
And that's just the minor annoyances. I wouldn't use Windows anymore for a development machine; Linux is just too nice with it's tool availability, script-everything approach.

So yeah... Don't like windows? Switch!

This UI ...

[PPH]

... looks like something created by some Microsoft developer's gut bacteria.

Why not both?

[Peter Simpson]

Would it have killed them to give you the option of keeping the old interface? After years of using the old menu-bar interface, I have no desire to learn a new one just because someone at Microsoft thinks it has "clear benefits".

Enough ribbon bashing

[caywen]

I think like most reasonable people not obsessed with bashing a particular company, I will wait until I have had a chance to actually play with it and see what customization is available befor I go scream bloody murder. That is coming from someone who does not like ribbons but won't mind them if I can get what I want from them.

Date Modified preserved

[zooblethorpe]

Nice idea, but the Date Modified values are retained in Windows from whenever the files in the zip were previously altered -- so sorting by this field is no guarantee that you'll get the files you want.

Cheers,

Re:Date Modified preserved

[lgw]

Protip: Date Created is your friend. You have to add the column, but you can and it solves just this problem.

Forget UI "Enhancements"...

[LittlePud]

Instead of trying to add (what I would consider) spurious features to the UI such as Ribbon, they should start by fixing all the suck that is currently Windows Explorer. There is ZERO reason it should be as single-threaded as it currently is -- network problems should NEVER freeze the GUI.

people wonder why Apple is winning...

[Petronius]

That's where Microsoft is spending all their energy these days? The ribbon? I'm surprised Steve Ballmer is still employed.

Open Document

[Taty'sEyes]

For some reason I was reading the list of documents in the screenshot of the new Windows 8 Explorer. Near the bottom... a .odt file. I never thought MS would acknowledge it's existence.

SHOCKED

[oliverk]

Seriously, according to TFA, 1% of users use the "New Folder" command in Windows Explorer while a gobsmackingly large 6% of users use the "New Item" command. Seriously? Who creates a new Word doc this way??? Or Excel? Or anything else, for that matter? Stubbing out a blank document is non-sensical to me...and I'm apparently alone in that.

Re:SHOCKED

[DavidD_CA]

I rarely use New Item, but here's why I occasionally do:

Sometimes I'm working in a folder that contains all the files for a project. And now I want to make a new file.

Yes, I could open Word/Excel/Whatever and then Save, and navigate allllll the way to wherever my project folder is.

Or, I could New Item, select Word/Excel/Whatever, name it, and go right to working on it. This saves the time of re-navigating the path to the folder I was already staring at.

Re:SHOCKED

[mcmonkey]

Seriously, according to TFA, 1% of users use the "New Folder" command in Windows Explorer while a gobsmackingly large 6% of users use the "New Item" command. Seriously? Who creates a new Word doc this way??? Or Excel? Or anything else, for that matter? Stubbing out a blank document is non-sensical to me...and I'm apparently alone in that.

Seriously? I'm shocked, but in the opposite direction. Only 6% of users use "New Item"?

I use it all the time. Mostly to create new text files, which I rename to .xml or .sql or whatever bit of code I'm in. I also use it for new Office docs.

So what do you do? Fire up your editor or IDE, create a new document, then navigate to where you want it saved?

Guess it depends on where you are. If I have Word open. I'll use that app to create a new doc. But if I'm in the folder where I want the new doc? Why open up Word just to navigate back to the folder where I started? It's quicker to right-click, new Word doc, double click, and I'm there.

Where did MS get this telemetry data anyway?

[BillDaCatt]

Because I suspect that they got their telemetry data from one or more of those annoying "user experience" trackers that I always opt out of... as do many people who make their living on a computer.

If so, then I'm guessing their data set is missing some crucial telemetry from the people who use explorer more than anyone else.

I'm completely in favor of improving the functionality of explorer but it seems like every time they make an improvement they permanently remove a function I frequently used.

Removing the giant preview bar at the bottom = good.

Replacing it as well as the menu with a piece of shit ribbon that takes up even more space? = That's fucked up and stupid!

And for the pro-ribbon folks out there: I want the speed and functionality of the Windows NT 4.0 Explorer (pre-IE4 integration) and its simple index, with the security and stability of Windows 7. And I really don't know why we can't have it both ways. Let's have the ribbon and/or the standard menu be optional. Just because most interfaces are looking more and more like kiosks, doesn't mean that all of us like the change. I'm posting this with Google Chrome and if it had a menu, I would turn it on.

"Easy Access"

[Undead Waffle]

I like the "easy access" menu in the middle of the ribbon. Does this contain the old menu structure under it?

Ribbons Suck

[Lovelander]

Microsoft is going down the road that the American auto industry did back in the 70s and 80s. Bad styling, superfluous trim, crappy quality and and the new feature is 20 cup holders. hey start fixating on design issues that the customer cares nothing about. Does anyone know if Open Office might start supporting a file manager? Any suggestions for other open source file managers?

Re:Upcoming news.... Fuck you, Windows.

[b4dc0d3r]

When I search for things to delete, I can't trust that the file list won't change under me. I delete files 1 by 1.

In outlook, searches complete with the focus being put on the first result. I have deleted more emails than I've found as a result.

Searches don't even work. I've posted before about not being able to find things. Dir /b /s is my favorite thing in the world.because Vista's search is *not*.

I use Vista at work, and cannot wait till I get off of it. Meanwhile, if I can't find a better file manager, I'm writing one. It sucks, on eggs. 7 I haven't had a lot of experience with. I have it at home, but usually work on the work notebook rather than turning on the home PC. And I can watch TV if I'm using the notebook.

-Search does not return the expected results
-Search updates itself in the middle of an operation
-Explorer changes focus. Try hitting 'Tab' a few times and see how may flashes you get. The more, the worse the programmer is.
-Explorer is like punching yourself in the nuts, if you have nuts. Otherwise, it is like ripping out your uterus. If you have neither, understand that it is unpleasant.

In short, go fuck yourself, Windows, and your stupid file manager. If there is nothing better, I will write it. If there is, I will improve it.

I *will* be better than you. Because you suck, and I don't.

For once I'm not bothered

[BeanThere]

Because even though I hate the ribbon, no actual power user really USES Windows Explorer as a file manager.

Throw on a fresh pair of panties

[j33px0r]

I'm tired of the belly aching from computer geeks that they can't adapt to a new system. Is it that challenging to give a new GUI an hour or two? As if the old windows system was that great to navigate.

Let me guess, you know how to use VI but the ribbon is too complex? Which CLI makes sense to a new user?

The next thing that I'm going to hear is that the interface with Zork and Kings Quest was intuitive. Of course, I do patiently wait for that trend to return.

File Mangler?

[jameskojiro]

Wasn't File Manager decommissioned after Windows NT 4.0?

So are they bringing it back or just enhancing Explorer?

Will IE get the ribbon?

[mcn]

Before Netscape, buttons were small.
Netscape make it big, with icons and text in one button.
Then IE followed the same, and few iterations later, text goes to the side, and few iterations later, text gone again.
So, will IE get the ribbon? If MS is so adamant about ribbonizing, I expect IE to do the same.

Re:Will IE get the ribbon?

[DavidD_CA]

Probably not. Applications where you tend to consume content don't have the ribbon. This is true of Notepad, Explorer, Media Player*, etc.

But applications where the user is likely to create content, in a variety of ways, have ribbons.

* Except for the portion of the screen where you are working with playlists.

But will Explorer still suck?

[westyvw]

Ribbon is not so bad, but does waste space. However the rest of Explorer is pretty lame. Tabs? Search and open folders (but not in search mode?) Ability to dock with applications? Split Views? Anything? Anything...you know...USEFUL?

The file manager is the worst part of Windows 7...

[Delusion_]

...and the first to be replaced. So, whatever Microsoft decides to do with the file manager is pretty irrelevant to me. I say this as someone generally pretty happy with Windows 7 otherwise.

They love the CLI!?!?!?

[Mathinker]

From one of the articles:

It also includes a hidden feature that we love, Open command prompt, and a really useful new command, Open command prompt as administrator, both of which launch a command prompt with the path set to the currently selected folder.

This should have been a headline all for itself: Microsoft UI specialists "come out" about CLI preference.

nice marketing

[hvdh]

How many files can a explorer show (vertically) on a 768p display?

Vista: 22 files
Windows 7: 24 files (hey, improvement!)

omitted for clarity / marketing reasons:
Windows XP: 34 files

Still no tabs?

[monkeyhybrid]

It took MS years to get tabs into IE so I guess I should not be too surprised, but tabs in a file manager GUI are very, very useful and something I miss sorely when I'm forced to use Windows for the occasional task.

Curious..

[techman2]

I find it interesting that they are so determined to put the ribbon interface everywhere, yet they went the opposite way with IE9 and reduce interface clutter...

Design your own ribbon

[gsslay]

Step 1: Take a random selection of clearly labelled and ordered commands off your menus.
Step 2: Give each an opaque icons of varying sizes.
Step 3: Mix them up in a goo made from the tears of a frustrated users
Step 4: Spread them evenly over your Windows (TM) interface like sick on toast.
Step 5: Laugh like an evil genius at the millions of wasted hours spent trying to find things.

The Future!

[ElusiveJoe]

Imagine, how amazing it would be if it could also auto-complete your commands! Like your start typing P-A-S and hit Tab and it completes it to "paste"! And you could also type in "help paste" and it would show you info about this command! With such an awesome interface we don't even need buttons or menus, just an empty screen with input prompt!

*sigh*

I guess such an advanced interface like this won't be available until Windows 9.

This is worse...

[tryptogryphic]

than a terrible idea could ever possibly be. This whole retarded change in interface in the name of 'innovation' in my mind, is analogous to how Bob Rock wanted to do something 'different' with the St. Anger album by Metallica. Producing a well formed, hard turd in a toilet.

The ribbon makes me want to commit a crime.

[Zaphod-AVA]

I want to break into the homes of the designers of the ribbon UI, take away all their cabinets, closets, and dressers, spead all their belongings on the floor in piles, grin, and congatulate them on their newly organized home where they can find everything more easily.

Number One benefit...

[TemporalBeing]

...pushing people off of Windows and onto Android, iOS, Mac, and Linux. Is that in-line with their goals? Probably not, but it is certainly a huge benefit.

slashdot are the 0.4% of the explorer users

[carlosap]

Slashdot hates windows, love linux, and kinda love mac. So bad comments as expected. Enterprises are going to think twice before upgrading windows 8, as they always do in major versions. But for average Joe, is going to be ok to have the new shinny windows box in perhaps a new laptop.

Re:'Art' for Arts sake ?

[Randy_Leatherbelly]

oops , i didn't mean to post that anonymously ..it was me. thought i was logged in LOL /Randy

What about tablets?

[SanityLapse]

I know we all hate the ribbon in Office, but I do see one use case where there could be a benefit: tablets.

If Windows 8 is intended to be tablet friendly, it can't rely too much on right-click operations for common tasks. Yes, you can right-click in Windows 7 with a click and hold, but it sucks. On a touch-based interface you either need a hardware Menu button like Android does it, or you need to be able to get to common commands directly from the file manager.

If they can just figure out a decent way to select multiple files using only the touchscreen, I can see this as potentially useful.

Almost like Ubuntu Unity

[vandamme]

...but not quite as good. At least I can boot into Gnome 3 if I want.

Or Gnome 2.

Or Enlightenment.

Or ....hmmm, so many choices...

OMG BIG shiny icons FTW!

[EXrider]

Not that I would ever care to use MS Office or the Explorer shell on a tablet device, but I can see how this would be somewhat useful for touchscreen input; however I HATE the way everything is transitioning from well organized text-based contextual menus, to big shiny icons that take up a ton of space, its like everyone has forgotten how to f'ing read. It makes it damn near impossible to walk somebody through a task over the phone when there's no text label on the things that you're telling them to look for and click on. Slightly offtopic, yet somewhat relevant; I also despise the proliferation of videos everywhere on the internet replacing well written articles of text and photos. Its like the computer industry is starting to cater to the caliber of people (illiterate) that write Youtube comments and post on Yahoo groups, awesome.

yep , stupid move M$

[drharencewrong]

I quit using explorer years ago after windows XP explorer has to hiccup and crash all the time, it just won't stay running for me. go get an alternative I guess, AGAIN.... 2xexplorer is still working well, 7zip file manager is way ahead of them, look at their big buttons, winrar too... I hope they put all their buttons in one big toolbar to utilize my widescreen (buttons all the way!) ribbons suck. they work for Office , I know ppl who like it in there, but for a sH*TTY file manager to begin with, they just pile on the SH*T more

Solution: Get your Menus Back w/ Add-In

[partofthepuzzle]

Wow, certainly interesting to see how frustrated so many users are with the Ribbon. About 3 years ago, after spending months suffering with it, when I stumbled across a 3rd party Office add-in product that brings back the classic MS Office menus (updated with the features from the newer versions), into any or all of the Office 2007and 2010 applications, of your choice. If you really want to go Office old school, you can (optionally) remove the Ribbon completely. It's worked extremely well for me.

They charge for most of their products but they also offer a free version for personal, non-commercial use, that works for the basic Office apps ( Word, Excel & Powerpoint). Link to the free Classic Menu for Office 2010 download:

http://www.extendoffice.com/download/classic-menu-for-office.html

Link to the free Classic Menu for Office 2007:

Classic Menu for Office 2007

The also offer an Office Tab product appears to be an implementation of a Tabbed, Multiple Document Interface for Office 2007 and 2010. Same deal, the Basic version of Tabs for Word, Excel & Powerpoint is free for personal, non commercial use. A the link to the free Office Tab download:

http://www.extendoffice.com/download/office-tab-free-edition.html

Hope this helps!