I never thought it was possible, but as it turns out, Microsoft has managed to produce some pretty good commercials for its brand new operating system, Windows 7. They are quite product-oriented, and carry the slogan "I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea".
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Member since:2006-05-13
Nope. Photoshop. Illustrator. Proof you are wrong.
Not everyone has a 30" monitor you need to offset the disgusting amount of screen real estate that garbage ribbon takes.
Also, WYSIWIG, nah, not even on 30" in portrait with the ribbon sucking up space.
For people who actually WORK on a computer, Ribbon is nothing.
Have fun with the new mspaint ribbon. Its great, right? Not enough to make anyone ditch a real program for it.
We should all upgrade to 7 for that.
Edited 2009-10-22 23:13 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
While I could be as vitriolic about the Ribbon as mickrussom,(even after nine months of use), I will tone it down a bit.
While the Ribbon solves the problem of getting the most options in the users eyesight, it is not without its costs. Trying to present everything is like serving all courses at once at a restaurant. The Ribbon is horribly cluttered.
Office 2007's Ribbon is also poorly separated on contextual actions. There is some duplication and there is some randomness in the allocation of actions to the separate tabs. As an example, why are text layout and copy/clip/paste + search and replace "Start" items? I mostly start with an empty document and only after typing a body of text, will I start putting in bold/underlined/italic emphasis. Plus, when you start, what is there to copy/clip/paste?
What also vexes me is the increase in the number of actions I need to perform to complete a task. I need to traverse a lot more distance with the mouse, switching through tabs and hitting the right button. Some actions also take more clicks than the old conventional menu.
Then there are extra contextual tabs which only appear with certain tasks such as inserting pivot tables. Even more traversing en mouse clicking.
The Ribbon is ultimately a "Noob Interface". It gets all options in the face of someone who doesn't know where to look. The problem with that, is that it also gets all the options in the face of someone who already knows very well what he wants. Someone who'd like some control and ability to create real custom interfaces and have stuff that is rarely needed out of the way. The quick launch bar is a very poor substitute.
Member since:2005-07-22
An ever changing UI is hardly a way to optimally use a program. They screwed it because they need to put as much "features" as possible with each release to keep selling their shit. True is 99% of people don't ever user more than Bold, Save as, Underline, Change Typography, Align, and a couple of other expected features. I don't think a program should have so much features, it makes it very difficult to learn/master. Don't even mention having to relearn how to use a damn word processor with each new release.
And idiots keep saying something like LaTeX is too hard to learn.
Member since:2006-01-02
Um, the team that built the ribbon based its design on telemetry data of which features people actually use. People in the real world definitely do use more than the five features you listed. If you think the discoverability of features in Word is bad for typical users, how do you think they'd cope with the comparative brick wall that is a compiled document format?
Member since:2008-08-25
The Troff I learnt 15 years ago still works today, and well into the future. The ~6 week learning curve that just keeps on giving
There is just no incentive, commericial or otherwise, to go fiddling with something that works so well.
Unlike a certain bundle of popular office applications.
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2005-07-06
If you mean the UI works because people just happen to know where the features they need to use are, then sure it works because people learned where the features they need are.
But if you mean works as in that 90% of all features requests from already existed in the existing software, then no, the old UI did NOT work.
The whole point of ribbon is to bring all features of the software to the user contextually rather than the user having to go around and find what they need, often times getting frustrated because they can't find it.
Does it suck that in the new version you can no longer find what you need? Sure, but if you take the time to learn it, those problems will be gone, and you'll probably even find that you know how to do more faster.