Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bob-san on October 21, 2010, 02:34:54 pm
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oh my....reverse compatibility...
but wait, they're still doing that, Win7 has that emulator thingy right?
on topic: congrats for the new job!
Win7 Pro+ has a WinXP virtual machine available.
Anyways, why is M$ pushing for the "ribbon" interface on everything? Wouldn't it be rather trivial to program a "classic" style that makes use of gigantic trees of menus?
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oh my....reverse compatibility...
but wait, they're still doing that, Win7 has that emulator thingy right?
on topic: congrats for the new job!
Win7 Pro+ has a WinXP virtual machine available.
Anyways, why is M$ pushing for the "ribbon" interface on everything? Wouldn't it be rather trivial to program a "classic" style that makes use of gigantic trees of menus?
I always thought it decreased the learning curve for new users, and made them feel like they were doing something edgy.
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Ribbon is awesome. I was a Word power user starting in kindergarten (lol macros at age 6) and I could never go back now.
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Ribbon is awesome. I was a Word power user starting in kindergarten (lol macros at age 6) and I could never go back now.
I've found Ribbon to be very frustrating, even having used it for the past 2._ years. I find Office 03 to be much easier to use, partially because I'm familiar with it and partially because I have descriptive words describing the function (instead of a flashy icon that's too small OR a large icon that takes up 6x the space) that I'm trying to use--instead of some icon or it being buried in menus or takes up an ungodly amount of resources.
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How peculiar, two people having different experiences!
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Oi... I hope they don't take away ribbon. I think it's fantastic! Unfortunately some people are stuck using file menus ;)
I still agree... options are good. If you HAVE to use menus then maybe there should be an option for it.
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Anyways, why is M$ pushing for the "ribbon" interface on everything?
:lol: I read this as I finished installing an update for Windows Live. When I opened Mail, guess what? It now has a ribbon!
Overall, I like the ribbon. It just seems easier than searching through trees of menus looking for what you want.
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I just don't get why they call it a ribbon, why isn't calling it what it is, a tabbed interface, good enough.
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Anyways, why is M$ pushing for the "ribbon" interface on everything?
:lol: I read this as I finished installing an update for Windows Live. When I opened Mail, guess what? It now has a ribbon!
Overall, I like the ribbon. It just seems easier than searching through trees of menus looking for what you want.
Windos 7's PAINT has the ribbon.
I kindof think it's pretty neat, the ribbon, little odd the first time you see it, but poke around, and its more intuitive, which is nice.
but I use openoffice, so it's still old-style menus with me, ironically.
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go away ribbon, i hate you
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Windos 7's PAINT has the ribbon.
I kindof think it's pretty neat, the ribbon, little odd the first time you see it, but poke around, and its more intuitive, which is nice.
but I use openoffice, so it's still old-style menus with me, ironically.
In Win7 Paint I find the ribbon to be less annoying and I can live with it, though overall Win7 Paint is considerably better than Win XP paint. Added functionality of arrows and other stuff that I can quickly put in my presentations, and other nice updates. But I still think that the ribbon slightly slows it down when compared to old system. And Paint is about as simple program as you can get. I forced the computer support to install Office 2003 because of the lack of Ribbon. Kazan, say my regards for the people who forced it there!
But the most boneheaded decision was to try and put the ribbon in CAD software! I still don't know anyone who uses it there, I recall from the company that the ribbon intake was at best around 10 %... And Optical software companies already ensuring us that the ribbon stays away.
Mika
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At school they simply used the ribbon in CAD lessons.
For all my distaste of the ribboning everywhere it felt better with the ribbon... somewhat. I tried the old way and struggled to find an option everyone else in the class took 2 seconds to find on the ribbon. But then again I could simply argue "I started with the ribbon first so obviously the ribbon would feel better in the long run" and stuff.
I guess showing the menu options at the stop is one step to me wanting to go back to an old way I didn't learn, if I could even call that a step... :doubt:
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The Ribbon is probably fine for your average user, especially new software users. I've used Office for a decade before I touched the Ribbon and naturally find the menus and similar to be far easier than the ribbon. Likewise, I was using Adobe CS_ and AutoCAD years before the Ribbon interface arrived and again find the old interface easier to use. What pisses me off more than anything about Ribbon is that it's hard-coded into Microsoft software. I would suspect that programming a "classic" UI would be an easy task--so easy that it'd be done for the sake of older users and the various power-users. It's the same arrogance (in my opinion) that caused so many Microsoft problems in the past.
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I know my dad hates the hell out of the Ribbon in whatever newer version of Office we have on the family PC. He's not exactly what you'd call a patient person, and he doesn't pick technology-related tricks up as quickly as, say, most of us here would, so I've had to deal with quite a bit of frustration on his part. :p I'm still all the way back on Office 2003 on this machine, so I've never had much experience with the thing.
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The Ribbon is probably fine for your average user, especially new software users. I've used Office for a decade before I touched the Ribbon and naturally find the menus and similar to be far easier than the ribbon.
Interesting, I used Office for longer than you and fell well into 'power user' territory and I like the Ribbon much better.
I can understand it's hard to retrain, but in the end you don't want to support an obsolete standard just because you're used to it.
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Just as long as they keep the ribbon out of Visual Studio....
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Just as long as they keep the ribbon out of Visual Studio....
As long as they don't change the hotkeys, a ribbon in VS probably wouldn't bother me much. That being said, its not like VS has screen space to waste on a ribbon as it is. :D
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The Ribbon is probably fine for your average user, especially new software users. I've used Office for a decade before I touched the Ribbon and naturally find the menus and similar to be far easier than the ribbon.
Interesting, I used Office for longer than you and fell well into 'power user' territory and I like the Ribbon much better.
I can understand it's hard to retrain, but in the end you don't want to support an obsolete standard just because you're used to it.
Everyone has different preferences; I found the menus et cetera to be more intuitive. With the old GUI (c. Office 2003), I found that I used the majority of the basic options and appreciated the ability to remove those that I didn't use and add those that I did. Things that I didn't do often were hidden a few clicks away but didn't clutter my workpace. Other parts, like Ruler On not being the default setting in 07, annoyed me daily when in the computer lab. Besides, when I zoom out a tiny bit or move the window to my primary screen, I can see two pages up-front with minimal scrolling. The Ribbon takes up twice the space on a good day and thrice or more on a bad day.
(http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/7554/59687504.png)
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I can understand it's hard to retrain, but in the end you don't want to support an obsolete standard just because you're used to it.
Obsolete by how exactly?
"Or are you just afraid of the change?" was something what my colleague asked me when I complained about the Ribbon (and that you can't configure it!) and Microsoft breaking some of the other compatibility things. I had to remind him that I could as easily break his elbow and after seeing his protests I asked if he was "just afraid of change" to get the point across.
The thing is, CAD program interfaces should not change quickly. Trust me on this, it is not only asking, but begging for trouble. The same stuff applies for other engineering programs. Seeing that the uptake on Ribbon on that field is around 10 % or less; well that gives you an idea how intuitive it is. Optical Design software houses have already promised they aren't going to try in any time soon.
I guess in the end it all goes down to whether the user wants a modeless UI or not. Ribbon goes for the modal UI, while menus are modeless and all options are accessible at the same time. Former research said - I read about this on internet and I don't care enough to find the reference, I'm simply not interested enough - that modeless UI is better. Due to the amount of clutter in nowadays Offices it seems that Microsoft has reconsidered their position.
My question is that why did they replace the text with icons that just take space? Graphical icons are a lot slower to interpret, while the meaning of a text is immediately evident. I'm yet to see a icon that could describe e.g. modulation transfer function as well as a button with a text "MTF" does.
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from your average end-luser standpoint context-sensitive (aka Modal) UIs are easier to use, and the technical reason to not support the old interface is that you're maintaining two interfaces - a guaranteed way to generate bugs.
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from your average end-luser standpoint context-sensitive (aka Modal) UIs are easier to use, and the technical reason to not support the old interface is that you're maintaining two interfaces - a guaranteed way to generate bugs.
Seeing the CAD software companies allow usage of them both, I don't see how Word or Excel could be any harder.
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Wait, there are probably a lot more Office users than Engineers...
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And? Kazan is still right, having two different kinds of UI will only lead to headaches on the developer side. Microsoft chose to avoid it by ditching one interface completely. If the devs of that CAD software are sure enough of themselves that they want to maintain both approaches, that's their business.
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And? Kazan is still right, having two different kinds of UI will only lead to headaches on the developer side. Microsoft chose to avoid it by ditching one interface completely. If the devs of that CAD software are sure enough of themselves that they want to maintain both approaches, that's their business.
AutoDesk has been supporting both approaches (and more) for quite a long time. To that company, the end-user (more often than not experienced draftsmen and engineers if not engineering/design students) has the choice to use the interface they prefer. If someone likes Ribbon, they can use it. Otherwise, they can use another default preset or setup their own variation and save it for later use. Two UI's lead to headaches, but should a company really insult the core users (business & education) by forcing a major change twice in a row? For the past 2-3 years now, every professor (including many Tech professors) has had problems using Office 2007's new UI, not to mention most technology students (and many tech-savvy) who refuse to use Office 07/10 in favor of Office 03. To be honest, with how long Microsoft has been developing their Office suite, I'm surprised that they'd not just copy the old UI and add anything new into the existing menus.
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you view a change of UI as an insult to the user? talk about eco-centric user.
i hope you like paying the extra (probably) 20% premium on the price for them to maintain and test and debug two UIs instead of one.
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I just don't really understand why they chose to make such a drastic change in the first place. I mean, essentially every single utility program over the past fifteen years or so has used some variation on the drop-down menu. The concept is innately familiar to end-users, to the point that even some of our grandparents are familiar with it. So why throw that all down the drain in favor of a vastly different system that doesn't resemble any other program on the market and requires a great deal of relearning? It'd be like Microsoft ditching the Start button just for the hell of it.
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Because it's better, and the pervasiveness of the previous system is exactly what's giving it so much inertia and the change has to start somewhere?
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you view a change of UI as an insult to the user? talk about eco-centric user.
i hope you like paying the extra (probably) 20% premium on the price for them to maintain and test and debug two UIs instead of one.
I view significant changes without care for actual user preferences to be an insult to the end-user. I really don't give a **** if you think I have an ego (since I do).
I would happily pay for a price premium to maintain, test, debug, & distribute a familiar GUI that many end-users (myself included) prefer. As it stands, the relative price of software has been dropping. Either way, I'd rather spend $120 on software that I can use well than $100 on software I abhor using.
I just don't really understand why they chose to make such a drastic change in the first place. I mean, essentially every single utility program over the past fifteen years or so has used some variation on the drop-down menu. The concept is innately familiar to end-users, to the point that even some of our grandparents are familiar with it. So why throw that all down the drain in favor of a vastly different system that doesn't resemble any other program on the market and requires a great deal of relearning? It'd be like Microsoft ditching the Start button just for the hell of it.
Them and the vast majority of other companies have been using the same style UI for >15 years and actually longer when you consider text-based OS's. Ironically, the way to access the programs prior to having a cursor is preserved even when irrelevant to actual use.
Ribbon, in its current incarnation, is a bloated piece of **** in my opinion. It's not customizable in the least and leaves users having to relearn nearly every aspect of the Office environment. It doesn't make sense to me and it certainly doesn't make me want to learn how to better use it. It's one step forward and a marathon's run back.
Because it's better, and the pervasiveness of the previous system is exactly what's giving it so much inertia and the change has to start somewhere?
Please, defend why it's better. What's so special about Ribbon that it'll improve productivity of existing users and new users alike? In personal experience, professors and students alike are constantly baffled by Ribbon while doing more advanced tasks.
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honestly bob.. i don't give a ****. take your curmudgeon-rant elsewhere, you're ripping my pond. I'm not on the ****ing Core OS team, i'm not on the ****ing UI team. I will be working on a part of their products that dinosaur engineers will never need to interact with - only other software engineers. Go bark up the right tree.
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Because it's better, and the pervasiveness of the previous system is exactly what's giving it so much inertia and the change has to start somewhere?
Please, defend why it's better. What's so special about Ribbon that it'll improve productivity of existing users and new users alike? In personal experience, professors and students alike are constantly baffled by Ribbon while doing more advanced tasks.
It's better because I am a godlike being and I judge it to be so. Your professors and students alike have been trained for years on the previous interface and are thus confounded. Weaklings.
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Seriously guys, when my school's computers switched to '07, I hated it with a burning passion. I wanted to punch a whole through the monitor every day. Then after a couple months I got used to it, and now it's fine. Same with just about every other student I know here. You've had three YEARS to get used to a software interface change, it's not that hard.
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I do have to admit, the ribbon is no more frustrating than trying to figure out if what I want is under File, Edit, Format, or Insert. It just takes some getting used to. It's not like we can force MS or anybody else to go back.
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I remember being unhappy about the ribbon switching to the wrong tab every time I selected a different image in Word. Fortunately, I haven't needed Office at all since then.
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It doesn't seem more efficient at all. I don't really hate it, but I thought it was unnecessary.
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since youre on the ui team is there any way you can bring back the classic start menu. its why i haven't upgraded to 7 yet.
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since youre on the ui team is there any way you can bring back the classic start menu. its why i haven't upgraded to 7 yet.
i hope the bolded part was a joke
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I think we've all learnt a little something about the consequences of announcing where we work, at least if it's somewhere well known.
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Seriously guys, when my school's computers switched to '07, I hated it with a burning passion. I wanted to punch a whole through the monitor every day. Then after a couple months I got used to it, and now it's fine. Same with just about every other student I know here. You've had three YEARS to get used to a software interface change, it's not that hard.
What if I said I never had those three years? But a couple of minutes instead? Don't underestimate the pressures in the corporate world. And it is not like I wouldn't need to constantly learn new stuff that is actually related to my education and job, instead of Powerpoint or Excel.
And? Kazan is still right, having two different kinds of UI will only lead to headaches on the developer side. Microsoft chose to avoid it by ditching one interface completely. If the devs of that CAD software are sure enough of themselves that they want to maintain both approaches, that's their business.
First off, CAD software is a lot more complex than Word or Excel. I haven't heard of a single bug in those UIs, despite the possibility of using menus or ribbon. I just wonder how such a big corporation as Microsoft then doesn't have enough money to do both, come to think of it, menus were already available and tested in previous versions. All this means to me is that Office 2003 is likely the last Office suite I get from Microsoft. This is simply because it is not possible to trust them to keep things compatible and the UI consistent any more. I can as easily switch to something cheaper (read: free) and learn new UI on the go.
Though I heard that Office 2010 already has a File menu and customizable ribbon. Makes me wonder about the justifications given for the Ribbon in Office 2007. Office 2010 might be worth taking a look, but I suspect it will likely be Open Office that I'm gonna use in the future.
I think we've all learnt a little something about the consequences of announcing where we work, at least if it's somewhere well known.
Agreed.
since youre on the ui team is there any way you can bring back the classic start menu. its why i haven't upgraded to 7 yet.
There already is. A program called Classic Shell brings back the old start menu for Windows 7. It improved my OS usability a lot and I have installed that program on both the working computer and home computer. Highly recommended if you want to have the classic start menu.
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Haters gonna hate.
Also, never underestimate the amount of thought that has to go into designing a user interface for a userbase that is, by and large, computer illiterate vs the design work that goes into designing an interface for dedicated professionals.
The former is surprisingly hard, as anyone with a passing knowledge of UI design will tell you.
FRED, for example, is an Application where a Ribbon-type dynamic interface could be really beneficial.
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I would kill for a ribbon interface in FRED.
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[evil echoing demon voice]Do not touch the FRED interface!!!!!!![/evil echoing demon voice]
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Haters gonna hate.
Now what sort of comment is that?
Also, never underestimate the amount of thought that has to go into designing a user interface for a userbase that is, by and large, computer illiterate vs the design work that goes into designing an interface for dedicated professionals.
The former is surprisingly hard, as anyone with a passing knowledge of UI design will tell you.
The question is, should you let user to shoot himself in the foot but provide a really good Undo (approach that I call "Siberia teaches"), or limit user options with a Ribbon like interface?
By the way, I should draft my own UI in my Ph. D. work (haven't progressed that well due to complex enough problems in my day job)... rest assured it will not have anything like Ribbon there.
I find it weird that Microsoft says modal UI = good, while the older guys from 80s say modal UI = bad. What could have happened during twenty years so that the opinion is reversed?
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I have no opinion on the use of a modal interface in CAD programs. I do a ton of heavy-lift data processing in Excel in combination with a command-line program, however, and the Ribbon is a godsend there.
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Haters gonna hate.
Now what sort of comment is that?
Just a general comment about the whole "Vista's UI suuuucks", "Windows 7's Taskbar suuuucks" and "Ribbon suuuuucks" crowd.
The question is, should you let user to shoot himself in the foot but provide a really good Undo (approach that I call "Siberia teaches"), or limit user options with a Ribbon like interface?
I fail to see what one thing has to do with another. Ribbons are not limiting your options, they are supposed to provide quick and easy access to the functions that, based on the current context, you are most likely to use.
By the way, I should draft my own UI in my Ph. D. work (haven't progressed that well due to complex enough problems in my day job)... rest assured it will not have anything like Ribbon there.
But is that due to you disliking the Ribbon on principle, or because you have evaluated the options available?
I find it weird that Microsoft says modal UI = good, while the older guys from 80s say modal UI = bad. What could have happened during twenty years so that the opinion is reversed?
It's very simple. Modal dialogues represent a break in the User's workflow. A writer working on a document who has to use the mouse to open a drop-down menu, go to an option, open a dialogue, make a few choices, and go back to the main window isn't writing the document he wants to write. Keeping all control elements clustered on the "main" level of your application means that the user doesn't have to switch into a modal dialogue to adjust something.
Note how the Ribbon does just that? The Ribbon is a way to move controls from modal dialogues into the main UI on an as-needed basis.
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and if you like modal? then where does that put you?
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a whiny ***** who is annoying someone who has no control or relation to what you're *****ing about
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I would kill for a ribbon interface in FRED.
I would kill for a drastically re-done FRED.
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I <3 ribbon.
thats all.
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Haters gonna hate.
Now what sort of comment is that?
it is a meme, it's meaning is that you are dedicated to not liking something and that trying to change your mind would be a waste of time.
i.e. there is no way to convince you that it's good because you are operating from a position of "it's bad" and anyone saying otherwise must be wrong
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I find it weird that Microsoft says modal UI = good, while the older guys from 80s say modal UI = bad. What could have happened during twenty years so that the opinion is reversed?
Research (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx)!
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since youre on the ui team is there any way you can bring back the classic start menu. its why i haven't upgraded to 7 yet.
oops i misread. oh well. still i cant be assed to upgrade my windows till they bring back the classic start menu (and i dont need no 3rd party hack). i may end up using windows vista until reactos hits beta :D
as much as i want to hate windows, ive realized that i actually like the windows way of doing things (at least when compared to the linux way of doing things). at least until they change something. change == EVIL! ui needs to be consistent. even if something is less efficient, less productive, whatever. if you changed the ui with every version of windows, it would leave lots of people scratching their heads. i was really pissed off at vista for renaming all the icons in the control panel. i mean 90% of the panels were essentially the same from xp and 2000, the only thing they changed other than the picture on the icon was the name. such a superficial and arbitrary thing, which my no means effects the performance of the system. the only think it did is made it take 4 times longer to find the thing i was looking for. i was using one of my sister's computers last month, with win 7. and i found myself at the command prompt because i couldn't find anything. it was actually less trouble to type commands than to figure out what all they changed. i always claimed to be old skool, but this is ridiculous.
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Yes, it really is. Knee-jerk reactions usually are incredibly ridiculous.
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Changing the UI does mean having to relearn how to do things you could do almost automatically before. The control panel is a good example. After so many years using XP I actually have to search for control panels I could find easily now that I have Vista.
It's a tedious and largely unnecessary annoyance.
More important though is the fact that many FAQs and Guides to XP are now obsolete or needlessly confusing because of this. That's a significant annoyance when a program has an old guide that is no longer relevant and you have try to figure out where the control panel option you need to change lives in this particular iteration of the OS.
Now this is not be a reason to prevent change. I'm no Luddite, but it does mean that more care should be taken when choosing what to change. I often get the feeling that Windows changes things not because it makes the OS better but simply in order to make it different. That's not a good thing for an OS to do cause I'm of the opinion that an OS should be quiet and let you actually use the computer rather than getting in the way.
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So? Vista (which did most of the UI changes) is 3 years old now. Not my fault if people didn't use the time to adapt.
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This is gonna cause a small inferno, but I've never used OS X for any significant period of time and yet I can sit down at a Mac and find what I need (whether it's a file or a function) very quickly and very reliably.
Whatever those guys are doing, it works.
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So? Vista (which did most of the UI changes) is 3 years old now. Not my fault if people didn't use the time to adapt.
Who cares how old Vista is, not everyone ran out and bought Vista the second it came out. Not everyone bought Windows 7 either. There are perfectly legitimate reasons why someone could be using either of those two OS's for the first time ever today! So what are you saying bringing up the age of Vista? That people who don't immediately run out and buy a new version of Windows (regardless of whether or not they have a computer capable of running it) somehow deserve to have problems with it? What about people who did immediately get Vista, do their complaints have more validity simply because they happened to be at the right point in the endless computer upgrade cycle to get it?
My overall point is simple. Why should I have to adapt to do exactly the same task I was doing before?
If I've spent time learning how to do something why should I have to now learn a different way of doing things (which isn't any better or easier) just because someone though it looked more flashy. Now if the way of doing things is better, that's another matter. But as I said, many things in Vista and 7 aren't better, they're just different.
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My overall point is simple. Why should I have to adapt to do exactly the same task I was doing before?
If I've spent time learning how to do something why should I have to now learn a different way of doing things (which isn't any better or easier) just because someone though it looked more flashy. Now if the way of doing things is better, that's another matter. But as I said, many things in Vista and 7 aren't better, they're just different.
I agree fully with your point--it's one that I think I've been making without saying it flat out. There's very few features in Office 07/10 that weren't available in Office 03. I've effectively mastered all of the important tasks (in my experiences) in 2003, so why should I have to be unproductive for 6 months to learn a new Office environment to do the same exact task I was doing before? Further, from what I've seen, the real difference between 03 & 07 is that 07 supports a wider (and perhaps more noticeable) color pallet and it's easier to change chart types. The color pallet is a nice feature, I'll admit, but it's not enough reason to relearn a hundred or a thousand new tasks.
As for Windows Vista & Se7en, I've run both extensively now. I'll be honest; I like MS's shift to "search". They made searching the start menu very fast & easy and the control panel, once you got a handle on the name of the section, was also fine with me. I like the stock gadgets and a lot of other little things, but that doesn't mean I don't have grievances. My first and largest grievance is that hung processes CANNOT be forced to close if the soft closing command goes ignored. Most notably, Civilization IV enters endless loops (that my Wolfdale @ 3.5+GHz can't exit in 24+ hours) and, while the window can be closed, the rest of the application is kept in RAM. Partially my own fault (since I disabled Page File), but extremely annoying to have 1GB of useless program that can't be relaunched sitting in RAM.
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This is gonna cause a small inferno, but I've never used OS X for any significant period of time and yet I can sit down at a Mac and find what I need (whether it's a file or a function) very quickly and very reliably.
Whatever those guys are doing, it works.
thats always been the mac mantra. i actually liked most of the macs ive ever used. only thing i dont like about macs is you have less control over your hardware and os (though thats likely changed since osx).
So? Vista (which did most of the UI changes) is 3 years old now. Not my fault if people didn't use the time to adapt.
vista at least gave you the option of doing things the old way in several places. makes me wonder if ms didnt intend vista as a transition os to win 7 from the start. the problem with change is that anything that can change can be changed back, or changed again.
seems to me the first word in ui design should be consistency. consistency tells me that ctrl+c will copy something. i dont have to even think about it because ive done it so often in the past. if somebody came along and decided that ctrl+c should be cut, and went to the trouble of calculating the length of time it took to issue the command and cross reference that with the statistical frequency that the command was issued, and the results showed that it was faster. you could argue that the command change will improve productivity. what it doesnt account for is that when does something frequently enough it becomes so automatic that you dont need to think to do it, this someone comes along and changes it. you now have to stop and think, and re drill into your head something that was a mere reflex before the upgrade. some people may take to the change instantly, others do not.
when i was in highschool i used to type flawlessly, then somewhere along the line i switched over to one of those ergonomic keyboards which was curved to improve confort. it pretty much over night destroyed my typing skills. when i switched back to a normal keyboard i was worse still. i dont think i ever recovered from that. nobody ever thought to change over to devorak keyboards for much the same reason. it would render something which was automatic into something you must dedicate brain power to, and away from the task at hand.
now the little changes really dont concern me, what concerns me is that in the fast moving technological world, things change faster than people's skills do. users will be forced to relearn conditioned responses more frequently. change too much in a short enough span of time, and you will just slow down the users. seems like pissing in the wind.
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eventually though you will adapt (or die of old age) the question is will the increases in productivity outweigh the loss of productivity in the long run, and unfortunately the answer is yes, if it is conclusively faster, then it's just a matter of time until it has paid for its self and then it's granting more productivity.
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Not if they keep changing the UI and everyone has to relearn everything every couple of years.
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Not if they keep changing the UI and everyone has to relearn everything every couple of years.
And who did that?
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Whoever nuke and bob are having their hypothetical argument about. :p
I was pointing out the rather large flaw in Bob's logic. Productivity will eventually increase after a UI change but there will only be an overall increase if the frequency of the changes is low.
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^ this pretty much makes my point.
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This discussion is in dire need of a link to this. (http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html)
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^ this pretty much makes my point.
Seconded.
This is gonna cause a small inferno, but I've never used OS X for any significant period of time and yet I can sit down at a Mac and find what I need (whether it's a file or a function) very quickly and very reliably.
Whatever those guys are doing, it works.
I have never used a Mac for more than minute, but I could figure out how to do basic stuff with it. Interestingly, I can't do the same with the Ribbon, though. And plain Windows 7 UI is slower for me than the Classic XP. Although search itself has radically improved in Win 7 and can now actually find stuff! Too bad I don't often need to search for anything.
I fail to see what one thing has to do with another. Ribbons are not limiting your options, they are supposed to provide quick and easy access to the functions that, based on the current context, you are most likely to use.
Relevant parts bolded. After checking some of the links, Ribbon is based on statistical information on how the program is averagely used. What happens when you don't use it with average patterns and it is not customizable? Answer: it is actually going to be slower. Worse, in computer aided design, the usage is pretty much random, and then non-modal design is actually more efficient.
So? Vista (which did most of the UI changes) is 3 years old now. Not my fault if people didn't use the time to adapt.
I don't have time to f*** around with the computer all day long when I'm supposed to do design or research work. You know, to get actually something done to pay the salaries of the tech support. The actual answer to your question is that Vista didn't work well enough. You can't have a half working OS in a computer with which you are supposed to present something in customer meetings. No, you need to have something that absolutely works, and for that reason XP is actually still dominant in corporate world. I expect Microsoft got it right with Windows 7 and it is eventually going to replace the aging XP. I halfway expect that the UI **** storm hasn't even landed yet. Time will prove me wrong, though, and that's within one or two years.
eventually though you will adapt (or die of old age) the question is will the increases in productivity outweigh the loss of productivity in the long run, and unfortunately the answer is yes, if it is conclusively faster, then it's just a matter of time until it has paid for its self and then it's granting more productivity.
The data from AutoCAD users speaks against Ribbon. And now there seems to be changes coming on to the UI. It cannot be disputed that the Office UI might need a remake, but even Microsoft has had to back off from their Office 2007 Ribbon. I'm looking at the proposed OpenOffice 3 new UI designs that seem to be more logical to me. Will be interesting to see how it fares.
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if this ribbon i keep hearing about is anything like the new start menu, im going to hate it. i do not like dynamic interfaces. i like every button and command to be where its always been. i dont like digging for commands that i know are there. i like things to be predictable.
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if this ribbon i keep hearing about is anything like the new start menu, im going to hate it. i do not like dynamic interfaces. i like every button and command to be where its always been. i dont like digging for commands that i know are there. i like things to be predictable.
Ribbon is this:
(http://smansa2007.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/office-2010-ms-word-2010.png)
Or in other words... Everything is grouped logically into tabs that you can switch between without needing to click on file menus, find the appropriate sub menu, select that, and then click on whatever it was that you needed. It's sort of like the experience with Flash or Dreamweaver except the interface is much tighter.
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If I saw a screen like that I'd be instantly doing scans for viruses/malware.
Seriously it looks like a browser screen with several BHO apps.
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if this ribbon i keep hearing about is anything like the new start menu, im going to hate it. i do not like dynamic interfaces. i like every button and command to be where its always been. i dont like digging for commands that i know are there.
Seconded. I don't like dynamic interfaces, but in a way Ribbon is supposed to be fixed and static. It is context sensitive, but it doesn't try to select those tools that it expects you to need like Office 2003 did (everybody disabled this property) which resulted functions moving positions. I'd still need to find the "Don't do anything that I don't tell you to do" -button from 2003. OpenOffice 2.2 has been easier in that respect.
So in Office 2007, or Ribbon UI in general, the commands and buttons are there where they have always been. But they are not all visible at the same time. As a reader's exercise for those unfamiliar with the Ribbon, try to find load and save from that picture. Those who have tried Ribbon need not to reply.
To make a point here, I'm not trying to kill the fun from those people who like Ribbon. So I would recommend trying it, as your mileage may vary from mine.
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I get a feeling you are all going to hate the rise of predictive interfaces...
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Ever tried to write a text message with a predictive input?
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Yes. Works just fine 95% of the time.
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Yes, and I can't live without it?
And remember that predictive text is only in its infancy. From here on out, it will just keep getting better.
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Ah, I forgot that you guys don't really need to conjugate words. Your prepositions make that a lot easier. But postpositions then...
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There are no postpositions in portuguese?
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:wtf:
You lost me.
I'm not Portuguese, and if I remember right, neither are you?
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Check my profile?
Most of my experience with predictive text has been in portuguese, I've not tried much in english so I can't vouch for it. But again, this area is still rather new and with smartphone ownership rising it's obvious it will get better with time.
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I meant to implicate that if you have prepositions in the language, working predictive input becomes hell a lot easier. However, if your language happens to use postpositions and word conjugation, you are far more better without it.
Check here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_verb_conjugation) for the worst nightmare of programming verb conjugation. Yes, that is just the beginning. A fast overview of the whole grammar :eek2: can be found from here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language_grammar).
For your own security (=mental health), don't read too far on it. I put it here that you know what sort of things are lurking in the shadows if you think predictive text input is going to be easy. I must confess though, that I personally find the Indo-European languages lacking power of expression. Swedish, German and English expressions (not grammar or conjugation) appear somewhat standardized to me. Sometimes it just feels like writing a phrase after phrase.
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I never said it was easy, but that there are going to be strides in the area and that it will be massified? Yes, there will and it will.
And predictive text is just the tip of the iceberg. I'd wager there's going to be (if there isn't already) research into making menus and menu items predictive in programs such as Word.