Microsoft UI design...

It's an improvement to Office XP. Thanks

I agree with the one comment made on that page - it's too much blue and there is very little distinction between different areas of the UI. The black version is much better.

The top horizontal bar is called a 'ribbon', and it's got to be one of the worst UI throwbacks I've seen yet.

It's not a toolbar - you only get one at a time, ala a tabbed interface.

It's not a menu - it doesn't use descriptive terms to explain what things are, or do.

So you lose all the discoverability of menus, and you lose the instant access of toolbars. Brilliant.

You know what the reasoning behind this was? "Our users say that it's too hard to find things in menus."

Now, what's wrong with this reason? It's too hard to find things in THEIR menus. So instead of doing the intelligent thing, and reorganizing their menus... they're getting rid of them completely.

Yup, look closely, there's no menu bar at all in those screenshots. The claim is that you can revert to the old menus if you want to, but you either get the shitty old menus, or you get this new abomination. Lovely!

Thank god I don't use Office.

The 'Office' icon on the top left corner is the menu bar. You click on it, the menu opens.

Oh for god's sake, you're kidding.

I hope this interface is a preview of things to come in Vista...that way people will for sure switch to OS X.

edit: The Office icon, AFAICT, is just a 'File' menu.

No, I'm not. One click, you get the menu.

Oh for god's sake... *THAT'S* it??

So they basically ditched the entire menu system... except for one... which they left in for the hell of it... but it doesn't look like a menu...


Man, they are *GOOD*.

I have 2 big problems with Word as is.

1. I can't find anything in the menus. For example: Why is Autocorrect right in the Tools menu, but to turn off spelling and grammar checks I have to go Tools-->Spelling and Grammar-->Options. I don't see why these things are separate, and why the one is 200% easier to access than the other.

2. The icons are totally counterintuitive. I don't know what those little fuckers are supposed to represent. I'm so glad that Vista is copying OS X's icons.

This new solution seems to do nothing in terms of these two problems but aggravate them. Just look at how they 'group' buttons with similar functionalities. In one screenshot Paragraph and Text are separate "toolbars" but in another they bunched together in "Basic Text".

BTW, I can't seem to find the last thread about this, Kickaha... Remember? I posted some Word icons that looked like Miró?

--B

I shrink from disagreeing with Kickaha, but I don't think the ribbon is an inherently terrible idea. It's essentially graphical menus. You only see one menu at a time, after all, and you can discover the options here by clicking through the tabs - just as easily as clicking through the menu headers. You might even argue it's more discoverable, since with inspired icon design you can take in all the options under a menu at a glace.

The problem I see is that Office's menus got utterly unusable because there were way, way too many items in them, with zero attempt at rational organization. MS tried to deal with the clutter by "expandable" menus, which was the single worst innovation in the history of menus. With ribbons, the problem is worse: graphics take up much more space and don't lend themselves to submenus. I don't see how MS will provide the same content - there just isn't room. And if there's not room in the graphical menu, where will the left-out options go? There's no place else to put them. This is where discovery goes out the window. If a function isn't on the default ribbon, the user will have to wade through screen after screen of ribbon-customizing configuration menus to find it. Good luck.

Edit: Actually, we all know how MS will handle it. They won't. There will still be no attempt at rational organization, and they will address the space issue by leaving out the most useful functions and cramming the rest in by using cryptic 8x8 icons that you have to mouse-over-and-wait to decipher. And thus, a potentially useful idea (one not that different from Apple's inspector) will become another hideous lesson in UI disasters.

Why are you guys complaining so much? If you don't like it, no one is going to force you to use it. Seriously, it doesn't look *that* bad. It needs some improvement, sure, but it'll still be useable. It will just take some time to get used to like all programs do. Anyone that actually uses the current version of Office should know where everything is and what it does so it doesn't really matter if it's in the "correct" menu or not because they will know where it is. It took me all of one week to get used to these "unorganized" menus and I'm only 15.

The more they make word look like a web-service, the faster they will loose their business to other web-services.

Key word there is 'inspired'. A couple of keywords in a menu item is direct info. An icon has to be interpreted, and then that translation to concept remembered. I still say text menus are better for discoverability. *shrug*

Toolbars and such have a place for fast access and efficiency, but they suck for discoverability. The ribbons are just glorified (and hamstrung) toolbars.


BINGO. It had nothing to do with menus per se, it was just that they didn't know what the heck to do with them. Now they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.


Exactly. As a *supplement* to menus, toolbars are spiffy. I use them, and appreciate them. But MS is trying to replace both toolbars and menus with these new ribbons, and I see nothing but pain for the user. But then, their customer base is used to that, so the poor bastards won't know the difference. \


Ayup, that's my prediction. And you're right, it's not *that* different from the Inspector - except that Apple leaves the menus where they are, and gives them honest to god organization that makes sense. Different tools and UI widgets for different reasons. MS doesn't seem to get that.

Best Answer to this point. Well, the guys here argueing about
that particular Office issue reveal the real flaw Office
and therefor Microsoft has: you almost always have to learn (re-learn).
And this is what you shouldn't have to do anymore regarding modern
software - to learn. A modern GUI shouldn't distract an users
workflow. Ribbons seem to me way too much distraction from the
work i want to accomplish.
Hopefully i can hide them entirely, like i do with any toolbar in
Word. I just have my sole doc sheet visible.
And hopefully i can accomplish everything by using keys either.

I don't really think anyone knows how "good" or "bad" the new UI will be until it's deployed. However, people ARE forced to use specific versions of Office. Certain businesses require the same version of Office due to compatibility reasons. Some organizations accept documents in only certain formats so you have to stay up to date. Colleges usually run the latest version of Office on their lab computers and won't put anything else on it.

When your time is more valuable, I think a lot of people don't want to (re)learn how to do things. They want to get the job done as quickly as possible because there are far more important things than learning the latest and greatest features of a program. Imagine if you're working and your boss requires you to fill out a nontrivial form for every task you've completed. And then the form keeps changing every so often. The new forms would slow down productivity significantly. That's why you have so many complaints.

Well, that and MS going around spouting "menus are haaaaaaard!" is just idiotic. But, a lot of clueless people will listen, and then make ignorant judgments about other UIs based on that. "Oh wow, your Mac still uses *menus*? Those are so haaaaaaard!"

When in reality, MS is just screwing over the users again.

Oh yeah, because with non-Microsoft software, no matter how many new menus and features and GUI changes - you know it, automagically!

I dislike Microsoft's GUI work as much as any other sane, rational person, but give me a break.

The trick is to consolidate features and group them logically into menus. Both of these are things MS never figured how to do correctly. Apple isn't the best at doing that kind of thing either but they're leaps and bounds better than MS.

The other trick is to keep things simple. When I see features like Word Art and shitty drawing tools in a word processor, I can't help but roll my eyes. It's TOO fucking MUCH.

Apple knows when to seperate an app. This is exactly why we don't see something like Entourage or MSN Messenger from Apple. They're bloated software that try to do a zillions things that don't necessarily have anything to do with each other.

The same can be said about the Office suite. MS thought it would be a good idea to have shared libraries (drawing, web tools, stat tools) inside all their Office suite apps, but that just adds bloat.

How many here actually use the drawing tools is Office on a regular basis? And how many here think these tools are good? I thought so (and if you answered yes to both questions, pack your bags and go to Hollywood because you've got a promising career in comedy.)

Again, I'm not saying Apple is perfect...Apple is also adding junk that can better spun off to another app or a 'Font' and 'Color' type applet available to all apps...junk such as graph tools and graphics tools. But they've not reached the point MS has reached in bloatedness.

Not automatically, but almost so. Back in the nineties
generally Apple software was designed to accomplish
certain tasks in the simpliest and most intuitive way. If you "learned"
one app you knew the other app yet.
Okay Apple messed around with this simple Guide of
usability. Time changed.
Though, I didn't say other software companies than MS
are king in UI development. But i keep standfast saying MS is
king in messing up UI Guidelines. MS software
almost always seems to me like bloated apps
which claim to be boss in everything, but put
the custumer in a mere loss. Everytime.

No, it's offering the spacially minimized nature of a textual menu, while incorporating a visual/spacial element that has the power of toolbar to provide the user with quick information and visually identifiable functions, yet can easily be switched between modes of operation. The same thing is used in Dreamweaver, and it works great.

And btw, who uses menus or toolbars anyways? Keyboard all the way, I don't care how they choose to dumb it down for those mouse-clickers.

Same here Btw, are you back (sooner than i thought)
or are you just packing your bags to board the ship
soon?

The huge problem with Windows is lack of uniformity: the interface can vary so much on Windows that it's nearly impossible for a user to make heads or tails of anything. The user can't learn one app and feel comfortable in another app because a large majority of them have fundamentally different behaviors.

Examples:

On the Mac, all apps have a menu bar and they are generally instantiated once no matter how many documents you open in that app.

On Windows, apps can have a menu bar...or they don't necessarily have to...and they can be built upon the MDI concept or not (for multiple documents or multiple window interfaces). They can throw away all concepts of uniformity by not having menu bars nor toolbars.

How the fuck is a user's interface experience going to be good if you have to relearn how to use a new program?

On the Mac, you *know* to look in the menus for functionality that aren't directly available within the document or app windows. On the Mac you know that quitting an app will close all documents opened or created by that app. You don't necessarily know this in Windows...

On Windows, you've got lots of custom GUIs. OS X isn't the best for UI consistency (two different metal themes, two different Aqua themes, Pro themes, GarageBand custom theme, etc.) but these themes are a fuck of a lot more similar than the Window Media Player and MSN Messenger's custom theme (thankfully toggleable) and this new Office theme.

MS is dangerously walking towards huge UI inconsistencies. It might be the Holy Grail user interface to some of you...but unless APIs are created so that other developers can create familiar UIs for their apps, the whole thing is a flop.

That giant office icon in the corner is like a second Start button specifically for Office stuff. I don't get either, although at least the Start button is trivially obvious for the idiots out there.

Meanwhile I can't see how this release will be good for the average user, the people who keeping buying the MS stuff because its what they know. in this version everything is moved around and is using non-standard interface elements. Way to show you know your customer and know what they want!

So long.

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!! I knew Office 12 would be bad but DAMN.....

I predict that few if any will upgrade and within 12 months, you will see office 13, with a more sencible gui

This seems dead on. Even within the Office Suite this is far too common. My personal beef (which seems to happen to me at least once a week on my Windows box at work) is how closing a document in Word only closes that one document. However, closing out a document in Excel quits the entire program. What? Does no one check up on this stuff?

Although the same could be said for iTunes and iPhoto so it's not all Microsoft's doing.

I guess that if you make a very long file name the document gets punctured.

These colors remind me at my sisters bedroom when she was little. But I think pregnant women will like the new Office

Not to mention the save button. At least they could have
come up with something that doesn't refer back to that kind
of past technology. Leap ahead is the all new word, iirc
In MSs world it sur(e)ly means Leap back or Leave to hack
or leave to grieve . Well.

does this generation even know what a floppy disk is?

Good question, well my little button doesn't know
what a floppy is. Oddly enough, for her it is somewhat
similar to cassette tape. She never encountered one
in person. Weird world we do live, don't we?

I don't know which is worse, the menu growing wider or ellipsis.


Yeah, not lickable (or likable!) for sure. Think the Paperclip guy will be replaced with a teddy bear?

Hello Kitty would be hip, but this is MS

PR NewsWire: Mar 15 2006:
MS, Jim Davis team up for next generation UI.

(Redmond) Microsoft and Jim Davis Enterprises today announced a co-licensing agreement for their intellectual creative properties. "We are thrilled to announce that that lovable Garfield will be our next Helpful Little Finder icon in Vista," said Bill Gates. "We think he's just adorable, and really captures the essence of the Vista experience."

In return, Jim Davis will receive free rights to produce copies of the new UI in whatever form he desires. "I think this is fantastic - I've been looking for something to jazz up the liner of my catbox, and this is perfect."

I'ts like a kid's playground!!!
reminds me of those word processing programs for kids...

Microsoft reminds me of the Soviet Union. They have hordes of brilliant people designing all of their stuff, but it still manages to be second rate in all aspects. I can only attribute this to the kind of culture the company fosters, as well as the sort of people who want to go work for Microsoft in the first place. They clearly make the mistake of planning their features in too much depth, which absolves the designer from the creative process.

Wow, that post was deep, Splineguy!

To look at the garbled shit that is that Office's UI, and recall that it's primary function is a word processor*, it makes me laugh. Maniacally.

Sorry if you've seen this, but this video is SO concise: Microsoft redesigns the iPod's packaging

*a $500USD word processor

Man, this is good