Author Topic: Windows 7 -- ribbons for everyone! (Read 65701 times)

zridling · « **Reply #25 on:** September 19, 2008, 09:01 PM »

For me, the ribbon carries several disadvantages:

it's too 1st grade-looking, as if I'm too stupid to use a menu;
eats up a ridiculous amount of valuable screen space (float this thing as a sidebar since we're all using WIDEscreens now);
it diminishes the role -- and efficiency -- of keyboard shortcuts.

And as someone mentioned, it defeats the purpose when you only have two tabs in these simple apps. Seriously, does anyone use WordPad or MSPaint... ever?

Paul Keith · « **Reply #26 on:** September 20, 2008, 01:46 AM »

Carol: fortunatelly.. Not

I think most of what you mention really reminds me of some linux distributions, and there's a VERY good reason they don't prosper as much as windows: (i'm repeating myself) most people have no idea what it means to install software!
Most people really just want to get their stuff done, which ironically, is the "moto" of Apple.
Truth is, if windows did that, it'd loose pretty much all of its costumer base, as they'd turn to apple.
Actually, even though things are pretty simple in windows right now, loads and loads of people are moving to apple to have things even simpler!
-jgpaiva (September 19, 2008, 03:04 PM)

This thing could be easily solved if Windows ALSO came with a tweaker like nlite by default. Don't tell me MS is too stupid to create a user friendly GUI for casual users and power users alike.

I'm still skeptical about the Apple hype. Get their stuff done with Apple? How many exclusive features does Apple have that makes it easy to get things done with it?

fenixproductions · « **Reply #27 on:** September 20, 2008, 06:40 AM »

2zridling
I use MSPaint for making windows screenshots. I know that there are many better tools for such purpose but I always catch myself blindly pressing PrtScr, Win+R and writing "mspaint" to get screenshots done.

Hopefully: last time I used Wordpad was few years ago. I've replaced this app by QJot.

TucknDar · « **Reply #28 on:** September 20, 2008, 04:36 PM »

Wordpad must be the most useless app in Windows. There, a completely useless remark, but I just felt like it.

Paul Keith · « **Reply #29 on:** September 20, 2008, 05:26 PM »

Wordpad must be the most useless app in Windows. There, a completely useless remark, but I just felt like it.
-TucknDar (September 20, 2008, 04:36 PM)

Have you tried Windows Firewall for XP?

Curt · « **Reply #30 on:** September 20, 2008, 06:29 PM »

Windows 7 -- ribbons for everyone!
... "Yes, both Paint and WordPad have finally received the royal treatment. ...

Quite a number of Windows users have never been in touch with WordPad or even msPaint, because they simply don't know how or where to find them. My girl friend created some documents in Microsoft Works 9, and mailed them to her working address. She was surprised when she couldn't open these documents with the work's computer, so she re-send them back to her private address, but even bigger became the surprise when she couldn't open them at the very same PC on which they were created (because they were auto-re-named for security)! I tried to remind her of Wordpad and RTF files, but she claimed she had never even heard of Wordpad! "What does the button look like?", she asked. She was referring to the (missing) link on the desktop. "If I can't see it, how can I know about it?", she said. And she was right. And that is why Microsoft also were right, when they created the ribbon. We will just have to learn to love those ribbons; they are here to stay!

I think the ribbon is the number one best thing that has ever happened to Office - and I certainly bit it welcome to msPaint II. But I also think it is a much more delicate problem that many computer users don't have the slightest idea about programs that doesn't already have a shortcut on the desktop.

Edited:
TucknDar is of course totally wrong, regarding WordPad: Every text based program in the world can read a file created by WordPad. Therefore it is just about the most useFUL app on your PC, next to Notepad.

Paul Keith · « **Reply #31 on:** September 20, 2008, 06:48 PM »

Curt, the flaw in that statement is that the ribbon is not a software, it's a ui.

If your girlfriend saw the link then she might know where to find wordpad but it doesn't mean she would know how to use it and why .rtf is better than .doc

If your girlfriend saw the ribbon then she still wouldn't know where to find what she was looking for unless she becomes knowledgeable about the user interface after experimenting for some time.

It's two different distinct processes. The problem your girlfriend had with wordpad is exactly why the ribbon is bad. All she wanted was a link and she got a plate on her desktop that accustomed her to thinking all useful enough programs are on it. Imagine how worse that would be when the common user is brainwashed into relying on the ribbon. That would only further cripple them to anything but MS products

TucknDar · « **Reply #32 on:** September 21, 2008, 01:50 AM »

TucknDar is of course totally wrong, regarding WordPad: Every text based program in the world can read a file created by WordPad. Therefore it is just about the most useFUL app on your PC, next to Notepad.
-Curt (September 20, 2008, 06:29 PM)

So the fact that every text based program can read files created in WordPad makes it the most useful app? That argument doesn't make any sense to me... AFAIK pretty much every image program can open a bitmap created in MSPaint, so that makes it the most useful app on my PC next to Notepad and Wordpad? Now if WordPad could read files created in "every text based program" I would probably be of another opinion

I still think Wordpad is useless. It's not as simple as Notepad and not as powerful as Word (or OOO.org, TextMaker, etc.) so basically it's not useful for any purposes, IMO. How often do you use WordPad?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #33 on:** September 21, 2008, 04:36 AM »

WordPad serves the purpose that someone who doesn't want to install a full word processor can type the odd note or letter with some formatting. It does that pretty well.

Assuming of course the user even know it exists.

Curt · « **Reply #34 on:** September 21, 2008, 05:20 AM »

Assuming of course the user even know it exists.
-Carol Haynes (September 21, 2008, 04:36 AM)

Very good point :-)

TucknDar and Paul Keith are of course both right, and I was putting it much too strong. WordPad is not too useful as an editor. But for a couple of years I made it a habit of mine to save as .rtf, rather than as .doc, because WordPad is so much faster to open, than Word. Today I am leaning towards saving as .txt, if the file doesn't contain any images, because the (beginning of the) text then can be viewed in my tooltips. Sometimes I don't even have to open a file, but can read what I was searching for, in the tooltip.

But still I use WordPad several times a day.

zridling · « **Reply #35 on:** September 21, 2008, 10:15 AM »

I know there are good arguments on the other side, but I wish Microsoft would upgrade all these OS apps -- NotePad, Paint, WordPad -- and offer them as either a downloadable package for Windows users or within Automatic Updates if the user clicked the option. They don't have to be the greatest apps, but would a better, more feature-rich WordPad really take out other competition, since the only app competing anymore (for money) is WordPerfect?

Like mouser and others, I'd much rather see Microsoft scale "Windows" down to a core OS and let its customers decide what more they want to plugin to it.

Paul Keith · « **Reply #36 on:** September 21, 2008, 01:14 PM »

Well Windows Live Writer is an upgraded version of Wordpad. There even used to be a joke article in Wikihow on "How to Convince Yourself Not to Blog" which included using Wordpad instead of posting an article to a blog in order to satisfy your blogging needs.

tranglos · « **Reply #37 on:** September 21, 2008, 01:47 PM »

For me, the ribbon carries several disadvantages:

it's too 1st grade-looking, as if I'm too stupid to use a menu;
eats up a ridiculous amount of valuable screen space (float this thing as a sidebar since we're all using WIDEscreens now);
it diminishes the role -- and efficiency -- of keyboard shortcuts.
-zridling (September 19, 2008, 09:01 PM)

Completely agreed on points 2 & 3. Especially about the keyboard. Menus are dicoverable - you can browse them and find out the keyboard shortcuts. The ribbon has accelerators overlaid on its icons, so that the labels obscure the icons they are meant to describe, how silly is that?

On point 1 though - I agree too, but something like 90% users don't. Microsoft has collected a massive amount of raw data on how often which command is used and how it is accessed. Seems this is the information Office 2003 sends them when you check the option that says "Help improve Office by sending anonymous usage data" blah blah* - that data was used as a starting point when they were designing the ribbon. They know exactly how many people clicked the Save button in Word vs how many people used File->Save, or how many pressed Ctrl+S. Turns out very few people press Ctrl+S, and almost nobody uses the menus. Most people just click what's available on the two standard toolbars. And only 4% of users ever customize Word, and of those most just add a button or two.

I have no idea why that is, but it seems true from my experience also that many people faced with a program will just sit there and look, and it doesn't occur to them to click a menu here or check out what a command does there. They just don't do it. So the ribbon does a better job perhaps of letting people see what's available.

* I wonder though how many people un-check that box and if that number is high enough to skew the results. I think the option is checked by default, meaning that those "unadventurous" users would be more likely to leave it on, while control freaks like myself will tend to uncheck it. As a result, the data MS collects might be biased toward less experienced users.

Paul Keith · « **Reply #38 on:** September 21, 2008, 04:40 PM »

As a result, the data MS collects might be biased toward less experienced users.

Bingo. Less experienced users means users less likely to go look for an autosaving notepad or know about keyboard shortcuts.

4wd · « **Reply #39 on:** September 21, 2008, 06:21 PM »

I don't use Office so the only exposure to this Ribbon thing is that Raxco decided to install it on PerfectDisk2k8 and AFAICT it's just a waste of space.....

But if anyone running Office is interested, here is a free CustomUI Editor for it and some info on how to use it.

The EULA refers to the program ceasing to function after some date in 2006 but it installed and ran OK on my machine. Plus the info page was last updated in 2008.

And free Office 2k7 classic menu addin.

f0dder · « **Reply #40 on:** September 21, 2008, 07:56 PM »

Wordpad must be the most useless app in Windows. There, a completely useless remark, but I just felt like it.
-TucknDar (September 20, 2008, 04:36 PM)
Have you tried Windows Firewall for XP?
-Paul Keith (September 20, 2008, 05:26 PM)

I hope that was joke?

Paul Keith · « **Reply #41 on:** September 21, 2008, 08:36 PM »

Wordpad must be the most useless app in Windows. There, a completely useless remark, but I just felt like it.
-TucknDar (September 20, 2008, 04:36 PM)
Have you tried Windows Firewall for XP?
-Paul Keith (September 20, 2008, 05:26 PM)
I hope that was joke?
-f0dder (September 21, 2008, 07:56 PM)

What if I was serious?

Grorgy · « **Reply #42 on:** September 21, 2008, 10:01 PM »

In most of the programs I use with a ribbon you get the option to auto hide it, seems to give me more space than I had before. It seems a bit pointless in something like perfect disk, but you don't really need a lot of room for it anyway so it causes me no problem at all. I like the ribbon in office2007 because of the added functionality it has brought with it, the live previews and so on. Most if not all the commands I ever used are there somewhere and any that are missing I don't seem to be missing. A quick look in the help seems to suggest most of the keyboard shortcuts used prior to 2007 still work as well.

I somehow sense the feeling that 10 or 15 yrs ago some people would have been saying "These new menus! They won't catch on ya know, what's wrong with just knowing what to type in?" Times move on, the ribbon will probably disappear at some point and Vista will be looked on as the greatest thing microsoft ever did.

From the number of new programs and sites offering so much I would imagine that for most people the computer will remain a tool, if it doesn't work out of the box, what use is it to them? They want to look at their facebook page, send an email, chat to their friends and sometimes do some research for school or general interest and they will in time go to something that just works, why wouldn't you? People who like messing about with stuff, well they are another market and a much smaller one.

zridling · « **Reply #43 on:** September 21, 2008, 11:19 PM »

Grorgy, the problems you describe came about because Microsoft itself kept dumping more and more bloat into MS Office and marketing them as "features." Office 2003 was very similar Office 97 on purpose -- once you mastered MS Office, you had the skill. People didn't gripe about new menus, but they did bitch about those insane personalized menus. Again, the reason personalized menus were introduced was because Microsoft kept loading Office with more stuff they claimed users wanted when in reality they were giving everyone and anyone what they wanted. The menus had become so complex that they were collapsing under the sheer weight of the program's features and functions. It didn't help that apps within the same suite didn't naturally share keyboard shortcuts for the same functions.

Thus, there was no reason for anyone to even bother with a competing app, and OpenOffice didn't become attractive until ODF came along with version 2.0. You certainly were not going to get more features by using WordPerfect, for example.

f0dder · « **Reply #44 on:** September 22, 2008, 12:51 AM »

Wordpad must be the most useless app in Windows. There, a completely useless remark, but I just felt like it.
-TucknDar (September 20, 2008, 04:36 PM)
Have you tried Windows Firewall for XP?
-Paul Keith (September 20, 2008, 05:26 PM)
I hope that was joke?
-f0dder (September 21, 2008, 07:56 PM)
What if I was serious?
-Paul Keith (September 21, 2008, 08:36 PM)

Then I'd have to ask 'why?'.

The Windows firewall protects against incoming attacks, which is what a software firewall should be doing. It's pretty light on resources, doesn't generally get in your way, doesn't cause stability problems, and works out of the box.

rjbull · « **Reply #45 on:** September 22, 2008, 03:45 AM »

a better, more feature-rich WordPad
-zridling (September 21, 2008, 10:15 AM)

That's what Jarte is supposed to be.

Paul Keith · « **Reply #46 on:** September 22, 2008, 04:02 AM »

Wordpad must be the most useless app in Windows. There, a completely useless remark, but I just felt like it.
-TucknDar (September 20, 2008, 04:36 PM)
Have you tried Windows Firewall for XP?
-Paul Keith (September 20, 2008, 05:26 PM)
I hope that was joke?
-f0dder (September 21, 2008, 07:56 PM)
What if I was serious?
-Paul Keith (September 21, 2008, 08:36 PM)
Then I'd have to ask 'why?'.

The Windows firewall protects against incoming attacks, which is what a software firewall should be doing. It's pretty light on resources, doesn't generally get in your way, doesn't cause stability problems, and works out of the box.
-f0dder (September 22, 2008, 12:51 AM)

Actually if it did, no one would be recommending other software firewalls like ZoneAlarm. What the firewall did was add a whole lot of headaches to novice users who didn't know how to configure the firewall while not being on par enough with other firewalls that it didn't really make XP secure while also causing stability problems.

From the wikipedia entry alone:

Windows Firewall turned out to be one of the two most significant reasons (the other being DCOM activation security)[4] that many corporations did not upgrade to Service Pack 2 in a timely fashion. Around the time of SP2's release, a number of Internet sites were reporting significant application compatibility issues, though the majority of those ended up being nothing more than ports that needed to be opened on the firewall so that components of distributed systems (typically backup and antivirus solutions) could communicate.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #47 on:** September 22, 2008, 04:14 AM »

The main reasons people buy third party firewalls are:

market inertia - Windows firewall was new so people stuck to names they had trusted before
marketing - all the main manufacturers said Windows Firewall was crap and people believed them
ignorance - if you can't cope with Windows Firewall HTF are you going to deal with ZoneAlarm ?
Windows XP SP2 Firewall doesn't protect outgoing connections (leaktests). True but then most of the 3rd party apps don't out of the box (and most don't really even after extensive tweaking - they only appear to with smoke and mirrors). Those that do are usually complex to set up and even more complex to manage in use.

If you live behind a Router firewall Windows Firewall is perfectly adequate for most people and doesn't screw up your system like many of the 3rd party apps.

Paul Keith · « **Reply #48 on:** September 22, 2008, 04:34 AM »

* market inertia - Windows firewall was new so people stuck to names they had trusted before

True but you're omitting the fact that these were also the users most likely to look in depth into their firewalls which leads us to:

* marketing - all the main manufacturers said Windows Firewall was crap and people believed them

Which would make sense if you didn't just clearly point out that the firewall is at the end only as secure as having a router firewall thus rendering it insecure and all that fear didn't come from marketing alone. Windows has a reputation for being insecure.

* ignorance - if you can't cope with Windows Firewall HTF are you going to deal with ZoneAlarm ?

Exactly so why give casual users a ticking time bomb that they might break?

* Windows XP SP2 Firewall doesn't protect outgoing connections (leaktests). True but then most of the 3rd party apps don't out of the box (and most don't really even after extensive tweaking - they only appear to with smoke and mirrors). Those that do are usually complex to set up and even more complex to manage in use.

Agreed to the best of my understanding which isn't much.

If you live behind a Router firewall Windows Firewall is perfectly adequate for most people and doesn't screw up your system like many of the 3rd party apps.

I think the better question here is if you live behind a router firewall, do you even need Windows firewall or is it just adequate for the very reason that you no longer need it except for risking the stability of your system?

f0dder · « **Reply #49 on:** September 22, 2008, 04:53 AM »

Spot on the sugar, Carol!

Imho outbound filtering is pretty useless for a software firewall. When you reach the point where you need it, your system is already compromised and you're SOL. As soon as untrusted code is running on your computer, that untrusted code can bypass the firewall... sure, limited user accounts etc. help mitigate this problem, but the trick is not getting untrusted code on your system in the first place. OK, if you're paranoid you can use a software firewall to check if apps "phone home", but frankly I've more or less stopped caring.

Windows Firewall does the trick of filtering incoming connections. And yes, you probably do need this even when you're behind a NAT'ing router without DMZ (which has nothing to do with firewall, btw, even if the end effects are somewhat the same). Why do you need this? In case a friend brings over an infected computer, or you have a significant other on your LAN that might get catch something nasty.

End-users generally don't need to mess with the firewall, especially since most proper apps these days add exceptions during install or config time. Putting a firewall with outbound filtering on a regular Joe's computer is a pretty insane thing to do, and would probably result in worse security since they'd just click yes to all those "omg, something happened I don't have a rule for!" popups.

The Windows Firewall is quite adequate, it's stable, and it's light on resources. The bad things said about it has mostly been out of ignorance, FUD, or marketing interests from the various software firewall vendors. If you need outbound filtering, you need a proper firewall box, not a software firewall on client machines.