Some line had to be drawn at which features were used most often; those that their user data said were used less frequently were the ones that were moved to other tabs (i.e, not the "Home" tab).
BTW, the "auto-fit" option is on the "Home" tab in Excel 2007; it's in the "Cells" group, under the "Format" button.
In Office 2007 applications that haven't been updated to use the ribbon, they have done exactly that - the "personalized menus" option is off by default now.
There is no "algorithm" in the ribbon, unlike in earlier (menu driven!) versions of Office.
Unlike the menus in, say, Office XP or Office 2003, where some items were "hidden" until you used them, in the ribbon EVERYTHING is there. It doesn't try to "adapt" to you. Sure, you have to re-learn where a lot of stuff is, but that was often the case before the ribbon came out as well (because more features kept getting squeezed into a menu-driven UI that just wasn't made for a program with that many options).
The only thing that changes in the ribbon are some contextual tabs that show up at the end, e.g., when you have selected a picture or a table. These tabs are meaningless normally, so they are hidden. But they don't re-arrange themselves based on your usage patterns - they are static and don't change.
Well.. yes, and no. Bob and Clippy were certainly the result of research I'm sure, but not the kind of research that went into the ribbon.
The ribbon was built using feedback from that program in Office which started in... Office XP I think... that let you send usage data back to Microsoft. So unlike all previous versions of office, with the ribbon Microsoft actual had REAL data to go on, from a much larger sample than they ever could have put together in their UI testing labs. And that can make a really, really big difference!
It's a link to Jensen Harris's Office 2007 blog, where he collects all the articles he wrote about the Office 2007 UI (the "ribbon"), explains WHY it is the way it is, provides (IMHO) rather insightful comparisons against the old menu & toolbar paradigm, and generally does a good job of explaining why they chose the ribbon over the "status quo" of toolbars and menus.
That said, a ribbon-based UI is not always the answer - like toolbars and menus, it can be abused by people who don't think UI design through carefully enough, but it is a clever and intuitive answer to "option overload."
Every last one of you honestly believes that downloading Angels and Demons is exactly the same thing as refusing to give up your seat on a bus because of the color of your skin? Honestly? HONESTLY?
No, that's what we call an ANALOGY, or for the nitpicky among us, a SIMILE.
Even though the poster did say "exactly like," its clear from context that they were not speaking literally.
No need to get so worked up about it. (Unless, y'know, you enjoy getting worked up like that.)
Lasik corrective surgery is for correcting nearsightedness or farsightedness - not sensitivity to high levels of contrast, which is what we're talking about here. (The specific problem of white text on a dark background is amplified by the way an LCD monitor produces its images as well - as does the specific environment in which you are viewing the monitor... but I digress.)
Because, if you're "dropping grades that would drag down a student's class average", what the heck is the point of having an average anyway? It's just going to artificially inflate the average. (Or, put another way, artificially prevent the average from being deflated.)
This sounds suspiciously like a plan to keep the school-at-large looking "good" to outsiders, by being able to cherry-pick which grades will be included in the average, rather than actually trying to "help" students who aren't doing as well.
What is that saying? "There's lies, damn lies, and statistics," or something like that...
A larger OS will of course use more resources. This does not surprise me in the least anyway since I am sure close to 1/3 of the people who buy new PC's get 1GB of ram or even less nowadays....and with less then 1gb and even 2gb of ram vista will bog down the system when running anything but word processing/email.
I think MS screwed up by launching vista so soon before the hardware was really ready for it. Many people may say it does nothing to improve computing, but I just think its a little before its time... (probably a first for MS anyway.)
I think you've got it exactly right. Even though it took MS *so* many years to get Vista out in the first place, they sort of over-shot the mark. And even if "requiring the latest hardware to run fast" has been par for the course with every previous Windows release, this time was different because of the LOOOOOOONG time frame between the release of XP and Vista - consumers got "used" to how fast XP was (because the hardware had improved so dramatically in its lifetime). And once the public gets that "perception" in their heads, it's really hard to make them think otherwise (short of some massive PR campaign the likes of which only Apple has traditionally been able to muster).
The mailman is just as much a spammer when he delivers junkmail. Do you charge him for using your mailbox ?
The mailman is just the middleman - like your ISP who delivers your mail to you. They didn't send it, the spammer did. Don't shoot the messenger, and all that.
To re-phrase your question: Junk mailers are just as much a spammer when they send you junk mail. Do you charge them for using your mailbox?
Yes. Well, actually the US Postal Service does. The point is, the spammer pays someone to send you junk mail. And that is enough of a deterrent to keep every spam-brained nutcase from sending everyone in the entire country 622 V1AG-RA offers every single day.
With email, the spammer pays (basically) nothing. YOU - the recipient, or your e-mail hosting provider, pay for the bulk of it - for the bandwidth, the disk space, and the time & effort to sort through the sheer volume of it.
Remember: spam wouldn't be such a problem if there weren't so damn much of it! (I know I'd be thrilled if I only got as much spam as I did snail-mail junk mail.)
<snip>
What, then, about a browser that can identify a drive-by, by pre-parsing the content behind the links it shows. Heuristics would do that Real Well, too; I can think of a zillion methods to do Just That off the top of my head. "If it ends up writing to disk, don't." How hard is THAT? <snip>
Harder than you'd think. I'm sorry to have to point this out, but security is not easy, no matter how much we'd like to think it is.
What I really want is an OS that boots, from cold, almost instantly, and from which I can run my games. You can already get what you really want. It's called a game console. Go back to using cartridges and you've got everything you want - almost instant cold boot and it plays your games.
And these are the clowns I'm supposed to trust with all my personal information in their joined-up-mega-database-and-ID-card scheme?
Yes.
And this is precisely the point that needs to be made. Whenever governments start throwing around words like "central" and "database," you need to point to events like this and ask "have we fixed this sort of thing yet?"
Until the answer is a resounding (and verifiable) "YES," I'd ask my government to keep their noses out of my personal information, thank-you-very-much.
Slashdot Mirror
Some line had to be drawn at which features were used most often; those that their user data said were used less frequently were the ones that were moved to other tabs (i.e, not the "Home" tab).
BTW, the "auto-fit" option is on the "Home" tab in Excel 2007; it's in the "Cells" group, under the "Format" button.
In Office 2007 applications that haven't been updated to use the ribbon, they have done exactly that - the "personalized menus" option is off by default now.
There is no "algorithm" in the ribbon, unlike in earlier (menu driven!) versions of Office.
Unlike the menus in, say, Office XP or Office 2003, where some items were "hidden" until you used them, in the ribbon EVERYTHING is there. It doesn't try to "adapt" to you. Sure, you have to re-learn where a lot of stuff is, but that was often the case before the ribbon came out as well (because more features kept getting squeezed into a menu-driven UI that just wasn't made for a program with that many options).
The only thing that changes in the ribbon are some contextual tabs that show up at the end, e.g., when you have selected a picture or a table. These tabs are meaningless normally, so they are hidden. But they don't re-arrange themselves based on your usage patterns - they are static and don't change.
Well.. yes, and no. Bob and Clippy were certainly the result of research I'm sure, but not the kind of research that went into the ribbon.
The ribbon was built using feedback from that program in Office which started in... Office XP I think ... that let you send usage data back to Microsoft. So unlike all previous versions of office, with the ribbon Microsoft actual had REAL data to go on, from a much larger sample than they ever could have put together in their UI testing labs. And that can make a really, really big difference!
The link you are probably looking for is this one:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/11/10/the-office-2007-ui-bible.aspx
It's a link to Jensen Harris's Office 2007 blog, where he collects all the articles he wrote about the Office 2007 UI (the "ribbon"), explains WHY it is the way it is, provides (IMHO) rather insightful comparisons against the old menu & toolbar paradigm, and generally does a good job of explaining why they chose the ribbon over the "status quo" of toolbars and menus.
That said, a ribbon-based UI is not always the answer - like toolbars and menus, it can be abused by people who don't think UI design through carefully enough, but it is a clever and intuitive answer to "option overload."
Every last one of you honestly believes that downloading Angels and Demons is exactly the same thing as refusing to give up your seat on a bus because of the color of your skin? Honestly? HONESTLY?
No, that's what we call an ANALOGY, or for the nitpicky among us, a SIMILE. Even though the poster did say "exactly like," its clear from context that they were not speaking literally. No need to get so worked up about it. (Unless, y'know, you enjoy getting worked up like that.)
Incidentally, they also own the land.
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me
Nicely done. :-)
Now, if only we could be confident about exactly where our taxes are going...
*sigh* Too true, too true...
Lasik corrective surgery is for correcting nearsightedness or farsightedness - not sensitivity to high levels of contrast, which is what we're talking about here. (The specific problem of white text on a dark background is amplified by the way an LCD monitor produces its images as well - as does the specific environment in which you are viewing the monitor... but I digress.)
Agreed. White text on a dark background is painful on the eyes.
Because, if you're "dropping grades that would drag down a student's class average", what the heck is the point of having an average anyway? It's just going to artificially inflate the average. (Or, put another way, artificially prevent the average from being deflated.)
This sounds suspiciously like a plan to keep the school-at-large looking "good" to outsiders, by being able to cherry-pick which grades will be included in the average, rather than actually trying to "help" students who aren't doing as well.
What is that saying? "There's lies, damn lies, and statistics," or something like that...
A larger OS will of course use more resources. This does not surprise me in the least anyway since I am sure close to 1/3 of the people who buy new PC's get 1GB of ram or even less nowadays....and with less then 1gb and even 2gb of ram vista will bog down the system when running anything but word processing/email.
I think MS screwed up by launching vista so soon before the hardware was really ready for it. Many people may say it does nothing to improve computing, but I just think its a little before its time... (probably a first for MS anyway.)
I think you've got it exactly right. Even though it took MS *so* many years to get Vista out in the first place, they sort of over-shot the mark. And even if "requiring the latest hardware to run fast" has been par for the course with every previous Windows release, this time was different because of the LOOOOOOONG time frame between the release of XP and Vista - consumers got "used" to how fast XP was (because the hardware had improved so dramatically in its lifetime). And once the public gets that "perception" in their heads, it's really hard to make them think otherwise (short of some massive PR campaign the likes of which only Apple has traditionally been able to muster).
You need to get the blue key before you can get to level 5. (Tip: 2 + 2 != 5, except for exceedingly large values of 2.)
No, really, the red ring IS a feature! It's better than the blue ring, after all!
Or how about: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
The mailman is just the middleman - like your ISP who delivers your mail to you. They didn't send it, the spammer did. Don't shoot the messenger, and all that.
To re-phrase your question: Junk mailers are just as much a spammer when they send you junk mail. Do you charge them for using your mailbox?
Yes. Well, actually the US Postal Service does. The point is, the spammer pays someone to send you junk mail. And that is enough of a deterrent to keep every spam-brained nutcase from sending everyone in the entire country 622 V1AG-RA offers every single day.
With email, the spammer pays (basically) nothing. YOU - the recipient, or your e-mail hosting provider, pay for the bulk of it - for the bandwidth, the disk space, and the time & effort to sort through the sheer volume of it.
Remember: spam wouldn't be such a problem if there weren't so damn much of it! (I know I'd be thrilled if I only got as much spam as I did snail-mail junk mail.)
No, no, the correct responses are:
Yeah, but can it run Linux?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
I, for one, welcome our Excel-based 3D Graphics overlords... etc... etc... etc...
What, then, about a browser that can identify a drive-by, by pre-parsing the content behind the links it shows. Heuristics would do that Real Well, too; I can think of a zillion methods to do Just That off the top of my head. "If it ends up writing to disk, don't." How hard is THAT?
<snip>
Harder than you'd think. I'm sorry to have to point this out, but security is not easy, no matter how much we'd like to think it is.
Enjoy.
Close. Mine was the Atari 7800 with Pole Position... oh the memories...
I was just thinking of that myself. Thank goodness these things are extinct, so we don't have to start building electrified scorp barriers.
How about just "ugly bags of mostly water?"
Yes.
And this is precisely the point that needs to be made. Whenever governments start throwing around words like "central" and "database," you need to point to events like this and ask "have we fixed this sort of thing yet?"
Until the answer is a resounding (and verifiable) "YES," I'd ask my government to keep their noses out of my personal information, thank-you-very-much.