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To cut or not to cut - The lousy MS Office ribbon
lanux128:
About screen real estate: it could be "auto hidden", so I don't see any problems here.-wasker (April 22, 2007, 09:33 PM)
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exactly, that was my point here.. :) not to mention the 'guided' keyboard shortcuts.. but the ribbon has become something of love-it or hate-it object.. :)
zridling:
MrCrispy I beg to differ. The problem with the ribbon is that it wasn't researched using Microsoft users, only a few Microsoft Office developers. No user called for a big, fat, steaming pile of icons that seem fit for a 1st grader (no insult intended) rather than a computer user. Microsoft Office is the de facto office suite software, and the "problem" they described was that users weren't using enough of Office's features. However, the ribbon isn't the answer. Brian Jones has let it slip a few times that the origin of the ribbon was to lock down Office's interface; to prevent broad customizations by users because it made tech support's job more difficult.
Think about that. Who's doing tech support for the entire world these days? Not someone in Redmond, but "Susan" or "Mark" in India.
I had a contract in 2006 to introduce Office 2007 by beta-testing it among twelve small businesses, and not a single one of them voted to move to it by the end of the year. They all voted to stay with Office 2003 or migrate to OpenOffice 2.x. On the contrary, new users were perplexed on where to find things. Experienced users even more so, because the new UI is just inefficient — if you can type. If you can't type more than a few words a minute, then keeping one hand on the mouse with the ribbon is a really, really slow way to create documents. It's not change people are afraid of, it's screwing up a good thing (as Vista did with so many UI elements) such as Word 2007's keyboard shortcuts!
;)
JeffK:
I can't type, and that's probably why the ribbon doesn't appear to slow me down. I like the improved right click menu in Excel 2007.
However I also have NovaMind mindmapping program which has an Office 2007 lookalike ribbon. And it does slow me down. It makes the ability to quickly add branches and subbranches to a mindmap quite slow and counter intuitive compared with similr applications IMHO.
Jeff
Carol Haynes:
I don't object to change (or the ribbon idea) what is daft is that they haven't offered it as an option!
If users could choose the ribbon or trad interface that would be ideal as it would cater for experienced users who like to customise or just find the old ways more efficient for them and also the '1st graders' with the nice pretty piccy interface.
Changing shortcuts is just plain stupid - talk about setting out to alienate their user base ! Good shortcuts become instinctive with use - changing them is like giving users a whole new keyboard with the need to learn to type again from scratch.
wasker:
MrCrispy I beg to differ. The problem with the ribbon is that it wasn't researched using Microsoft users, only a few Microsoft Office developers.-zridling (April 23, 2007, 01:57 AM)
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Oh yeah? I should check my badge -- maybe I'm 'softie already. :P
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