I wonder if the guy that came up with the ribbon idea is the same ass who originally came up with the idea of hiding most of each of the menus by default in Office 2003.
LOL, I hate that guy - I even have to turn that off on other people's computers it bothers me so much. I think they should let that guy do the same thing to the ribbon... have some of the buttons occasionally disappear!:)
My point is that some people defend the ribbon-only approach by saying that it would take too much effort to support both interfaces, yet the lower-volume Mac version supports both and it still seems to be profitable.
It was Microsoft saying "there's been a proliferation of new commands in Office and we can't just keep putting menus and sub menus like this forever"
Except that's exactly what the ribbon does, except it uses huge buttons instead of concise text. What the ribbon did was take away a static toolbar and a static menu, so you constantly have to hunt around for stuff, especially if you tend to resize windows a lot or move between computers with different size monitors (like a laptop). It is still basically a menu bar, only one level deep is constantly displayed. There are still submenus - they just look like a button with a downward pointing arrow on it now. Most of the benefits of the reorganized ribbon could have been achieved by reorganizing the menus and adding a context-sensitive menu bar (like the "Inspector" in the older versions of Mac office or the old pictures toolbar that would automatically appear when you were editing a picture).
The ribbon would have been a neat accessory, or even replacement for toolbars. But ditching the menus was stupid and hurt the productivity of long-time Office users. Since the Mac version of office still has a menu system alongside the ribbon, and it surely sells fewer units, I don't think expense of development has anything to do with it - MS is just being dictatorial.
Nah, UI is one of those topics that isn't "objectively right".
It can be if you have well-defined goals. At Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) they are probably words like "lower training time" and "looks awesome at Best Buy". I'd bet "more efficient for power users" is pretty low on the list. I can also see how those goals might be in direct conflict, and might result in a GUI that is frustrating for power users but actually preferred by casual users.
I don't see the ribbon as being much different from the old toolbar from a user perspective though.
That's how it should have been executed, but instead things move around and it is less customizable than the old toolbar system. And while there are some genuine improvements in Office 2007/2010, mostly they just used the ribbon to polish a turd. Usually a ribbon click brings you to the same old dialog box that you got in Office 6 in 1994. Some things are overdue and welcome - names manager in Excel for example. But other things just scream half-baked... like how you can't add a secondary axis title by right-clicking on the secondary axis in Excel. Instead you have to have the totally obscure keyboard shortcut memorized or you have to do the ribbon search game. In 2007, they had the gumption to put a copy command in the paste menu! Fortunately that has since been fixed, but it serves as an excellent example of how f'd up some of their decisions have been with this interface. Basically the only application I curse more often is Matlab.
Mainly, I've never been a huge fan of Windows keyboard shortcuts (it's VI vs Emacs or something), but my impression is that the ribbon now forces you into them to be productive.
The real irony in all of this (in the Alanis sense) is that the Mac version of Office has the ribbon as an option as well as the full menu set.
One of the virtues of mental arithmetic is that one gets a "feel" for numbers and magnitudes, and how they behave.
Agreed, but test time is too late for you to develop the feel - that should happen at instruction time and during exercises. If you still haven't developed the feel by the time the big test comes around, using a calculator or not on the test isn't really going to change anything.
Exactly my point. The US has socialized medicine, and it is rationed. Some of it is rationed via the insurance companies, some of it through government, some by cost, etc. It's a mess, and it is inefficient.
I'm pro socialized healthcare, and I think it is the humane, generous thing to do. But I do not recognize any kind of "right" to health care. If someone is charitable enough to give it to you, that is fantastic, but you have no "right" to be given free stuff.
It doesn't help that Windows uses swap regardless of how much RAM is free
Right, I wasn't really referring to the use of swap that you are experiencing - I was mostly talking about when a process gets out of control <cough>Firefox <cough> and the OS starts swapping like mad.
You are absolutely right... on the desktop. On laptops/tablets/phones you have the battery to contend with. Most of the time when I notice my battery bar go down really fast on my laptop it is some stupid flash thing hogging the CPU in an open web page. Sometimes it is some other poorly written application running wild. I can close it, but by then I've already lost time.
RAM is certainly not the bottleneck in terms of speed, but quantity is never excessive. In fact, most of the performance penalty you feel on low-end machines is when you run out of RAM and start swapping more heavily to the slow fixed disk.
I don't know about the physics guy, but Sal Khan does the math stuff himself, and it seems pretty solid at least up through calculus.
My point wasn't that Khan Academy was the end-all-be-all of learning, but that we don't need a TV channel with lectures on it because there are so many available on the internet.
You mean when it is docked into the keyboard/docking station? Because standalone the battery life is similar to the iPad. If you are willing to add bulk, there are iPad skins with batteries in them that cost about $60 and get battery life similar to a docked Transformer.
In the US you can get T-Mobile "Value" plans that have exactly the same options as the regular plans, but they cost $20 less per month. On a 2 year contract it will only save you like $120*, but then after that you are saving a full $20/month for each month that you keep your existing phone.
* Most of the smart phones can be financed at around $15/month IIRC.
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I wonder if the guy that came up with the ribbon idea is the same ass who originally came up with the idea of hiding most of each of the menus by default in Office 2003.
LOL, I hate that guy - I even have to turn that off on other people's computers it bothers me so much. I think they should let that guy do the same thing to the ribbon... have some of the buttons occasionally disappear! :)
That's also why it's stupid that developers want to make similar interfaces in Linux more "Mac like".
Not if those developers share the Mac team's goals.
My point is that some people defend the ribbon-only approach by saying that it would take too much effort to support both interfaces, yet the lower-volume Mac version supports both and it still seems to be profitable.
It was Microsoft saying "there's been a proliferation of new commands in Office and we can't just keep putting menus and sub menus like this forever"
Except that's exactly what the ribbon does, except it uses huge buttons instead of concise text. What the ribbon did was take away a static toolbar and a static menu, so you constantly have to hunt around for stuff, especially if you tend to resize windows a lot or move between computers with different size monitors (like a laptop). It is still basically a menu bar, only one level deep is constantly displayed. There are still submenus - they just look like a button with a downward pointing arrow on it now. Most of the benefits of the reorganized ribbon could have been achieved by reorganizing the menus and adding a context-sensitive menu bar (like the "Inspector" in the older versions of Mac office or the old pictures toolbar that would automatically appear when you were editing a picture).
The ribbon would have been a neat accessory, or even replacement for toolbars. But ditching the menus was stupid and hurt the productivity of long-time Office users. Since the Mac version of office still has a menu system alongside the ribbon, and it surely sells fewer units, I don't think expense of development has anything to do with it - MS is just being dictatorial.
Nah, UI is one of those topics that isn't "objectively right".
It can be if you have well-defined goals. At Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) they are probably words like "lower training time" and "looks awesome at Best Buy". I'd bet "more efficient for power users" is pretty low on the list. I can also see how those goals might be in direct conflict, and might result in a GUI that is frustrating for power users but actually preferred by casual users.
I don't see the ribbon as being much different from the old toolbar from a user perspective though.
That's how it should have been executed, but instead things move around and it is less customizable than the old toolbar system. And while there are some genuine improvements in Office 2007/2010, mostly they just used the ribbon to polish a turd. Usually a ribbon click brings you to the same old dialog box that you got in Office 6 in 1994. Some things are overdue and welcome - names manager in Excel for example. But other things just scream half-baked... like how you can't add a secondary axis title by right-clicking on the secondary axis in Excel. Instead you have to have the totally obscure keyboard shortcut memorized or you have to do the ribbon search game. In 2007, they had the gumption to put a copy command in the paste menu! Fortunately that has since been fixed, but it serves as an excellent example of how f'd up some of their decisions have been with this interface. Basically the only application I curse more often is Matlab.
Mainly, I've never been a huge fan of Windows keyboard shortcuts (it's VI vs Emacs or something), but my impression is that the ribbon now forces you into them to be productive.
The real irony in all of this (in the Alanis sense) is that the Mac version of Office has the ribbon as an option as well as the full menu set.
One of the virtues of mental arithmetic is that one gets a "feel" for numbers and magnitudes, and how they behave.
Agreed, but test time is too late for you to develop the feel - that should happen at instruction time and during exercises. If you still haven't developed the feel by the time the big test comes around, using a calculator or not on the test isn't really going to change anything.
Yup, and so does the US right now.
Exactly my point. The US has socialized medicine, and it is rationed. Some of it is rationed via the insurance companies, some of it through government, some by cost, etc. It's a mess, and it is inefficient.
I'm pro socialized healthcare, and I think it is the humane, generous thing to do. But I do not recognize any kind of "right" to health care. If someone is charitable enough to give it to you, that is fantastic, but you have no "right" to be given free stuff.
I know we like to hate everything on Slashdot, but it might help to include your specific grievance.
It doesn't have to make sense. People are not rational.
It doesn't help that Windows uses swap regardless of how much RAM is free
Right, I wasn't really referring to the use of swap that you are experiencing - I was mostly talking about when a process gets out of control <cough>Firefox <cough> and the OS starts swapping like mad.
Close... A laptop from around 2004 with a Pentium M and 256MB RAM.
You are absolutely right... on the desktop. On laptops/tablets/phones you have the battery to contend with. Most of the time when I notice my battery bar go down really fast on my laptop it is some stupid flash thing hogging the CPU in an open web page. Sometimes it is some other poorly written application running wild. I can close it, but by then I've already lost time.
RAM is certainly not the bottleneck in terms of speed, but quantity is never excessive. In fact, most of the performance penalty you feel on low-end machines is when you run out of RAM and start swapping more heavily to the slow fixed disk.
Right, because no town on earth would ever want the Mythbusters show produced locally...
I don't know about the physics guy, but Sal Khan does the math stuff himself, and it seems pretty solid at least up through calculus.
My point wasn't that Khan Academy was the end-all-be-all of learning, but that we don't need a TV channel with lectures on it because there are so many available on the internet.
My mistake - I don't finance them, and I thought the guy had told me $15 the last time I was in there. I'm sure it depends on how much you put down?
Most people aren't trying to be productive with their tablets.
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
You mean when it is docked into the keyboard/docking station? Because standalone the battery life is similar to the iPad. If you are willing to add bulk, there are iPad skins with batteries in them that cost about $60 and get battery life similar to a docked Transformer.
Exactly, but the smart phones cost about $15 to finance for 2 years:
24 x $15 = $360
$480 - 360 = $120
It's just an "Oh no, you didn't" song. :) I thought the Java crew was gonna come knocking on your door.
I don't have enough experience with tablets to add anything meaningful to this discussion...
In the US you can get T-Mobile "Value" plans that have exactly the same options as the regular plans, but they cost $20 less per month. On a 2 year contract it will only save you like $120*, but then after that you are saving a full $20/month for each month that you keep your existing phone.
* Most of the smart phones can be financed at around $15/month IIRC.
Oh no, you didn't.
L I E