Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Ignores Usability With All-Caps Menu in Visual Studio
mikejuk writes "The recent release of Visual Studio 2012 contained a UI element that few believed could make it into the final version — ALL-CAPS menus. After lots of user criticism and disbelief, Microsoft has moved swiftly to do something about it — by tweaking the typography. '... we explored designs with and without uppercase styling. In the end we determined it to be a very effective way of providing structure and emphasis to the top menu area in Visual Studio 2012.' This must be a new meaning of the word 'structure,' because putting the menu items into all-caps means that they are all the same height. When each menu items starts with a cap then there is structure because you can see the change in height, marking the start of the next menu item. The idea that putting a menu into all caps adds structure is something that is very difficult to see. If you wanted to put structure into a menu, well how about color? Oh wait, I forgot the design department dumped color in favour of the 'everything-is-grey UI.' Developers are the people who invented CamelCase to make sure that the structure of run together words would stand out better — and now we are asked to believe that making a menu all-caps adds structure. I don't think so."
As I understand it road signs (or many of them) in the UK used to be in caps but studies showed that mixed-case was much easier to read (which mattered more as cars got faster) since we're looking for familiar patterns.
Looks like Microsoft will need to re-learn this lesson...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
How come they haven't created a 'ribbon menu' for Visual Studio? Perhaps this is tacit admission that the Ribbon Menu sucks and is inefficient.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I understand that if you are someone who knew exactly where every option was then the ribbon would be a step back. But from my point of view it makes it much easier to find features that were previously buried in the menus.
The point of the ribbon is to expose useful features to the user so they actually use them.
UK road signs were changed to their current style after testing in 1958, there's a nice summary on the BBC. This new mixed upper and lower case style became legally required on 01 January 1965.
So yes indeed, typographical designers understood this in the UK quite a while before it was a widely discussed computer interface debate..
Part of GP's complaint is that he doesn't necessarily know or can discern the meaning of the symbols. Also, it took me roughly 20 minutes to find the icons on the title bar the first time I used 2007 because I was not expecting there to be icons on the title bar.
He effected a bored affect.
The ribbon bar in Office 2010 is the most unusable piece of crap ever. I had to memorize where all the stuff was before, now I have to re-memorize where all the stuff is because everything is in a new location that is not very intuitive.
How hard is it to make an interface where I can just TYPE what I want to do? I want to type "line spacing" and have it bring me to the place where I change line spacing. Microsoft with their billions of dollars can't figure out how to do that? Is this a joke? So instead I have to press F1, type "line spacing" and have it show me the tips on how to do the special dance to get to where I want. In a world where the computer has 3 billion cycles per second I shouldn't have to waste my cycles trying to remember what awkward button sequence I have to perform to get the reward.