ribbons

Perhaps you will enjoy my somewhat larger diatribe at:

http://www.projectpro.com/letters/usability.html


"me" wrote:

ribbons suck!!!!

"David Ziffer" David wrote in message
...
Perhaps you will enjoy my somewhat larger diatribe at:

http://www.projectpro.com/letters/usability.html


"me" wrote:

ribbons suck!!!!

You're right - it is a diatribe - an IGNORANT diatribe. NOBODY puts all
those toolbars into IE.
A large number of people have discovered that you can MINIMIZE the ribbon.

Thanks for reading, Gordon. It's nice to know that someone is reading, even if not appreciatively.

The IE toolbar example in my document is admittedly an exaggeration, but it is only a small one and it is intended to introduce a little humor into an otherwise dry subject. I have actaully seen real instances of IE with about half that many toolbars installed, by the way, being operated by people who truly had no idea how to remove them.

With regards to ribbons: I posit that if you have to hide the ribbon then you have defeated its purpose. Yes I have my ribbons minimized, as you suggest. So now to get to their features I have to click twice - the first time to make the ribbon appear. Is that a big inconvenience? I can tell you that it annoys me tremendously when I have to do it 500 times a day. I was much better off with the old-fashioned toolbars, which were small enough that I didn't feel inspired to eliminate them, and which I could select and design to suit my tastes.

If you read further into my article, you'll see that my main beef with ribbons is not the real estate they consume, but the inanity of using them to try to find things that are not immediately obvious. Microsoft has always been utterly pathetic at menu design, so that finding things was hard even under Office 2003. They could have used their resources to put intelligent words into their menus and to design a better hierarchy. Instead they kept the same lousy terminology that they put in their menus (or in some cases they made it worse, like hiding "table borders and shading" under "cell size"), but made it much harder to navigate by presenting 30 or 40 options at once rather than 4 or 5.

I really couldn't say it any better than a blogger named Brandon who put the following comment at http://www.nuttyasafruitcake.com:

"When I first installed Office 2007 I hated the new ribbons that replaced the old toolbars and drop-down menus. I doubly hated the new ribbons in Excel. Determined to not be one of ?those? users, I figured I would get used to the new layout. I endured the lost productivity of having to find where my commonly used functions were moved to. I figured once I conquered the learning curve I would be just as efficient as I used to be. Well, 18 months later I still can?t find anything without searching, and searching, and searching and I?ve finally given up. Office 2007 ribbons SUCK! I?m a power-user, and if after 18 months my productivity is still hurting because of Microsoft?s asinine decision to not include ?classic? menus, then it?s not my fault. Microsoft really dropped the ball. Whoever decided that the ribbons were an improvement needs to be taken out back and shot. I friggin? HATE the ribbons. HATE. HATE. HATE."



Gordon wrote:

You're right - it is a diatribe - an IGNORANT diatribe.
03-Dec-09

You're right - it is a diatribe - an IGNORANT diatribe. NOBODY puts all
those toolbars into IE.
A large number of people have discovered that you can MINIMIZE the ribbon.

Previous Posts In This Thread:


Submitted via EggHeadCafe - Software Developer Portal of Choice
COM and .NET Interoperability [aPress]
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorials...eroperabi.aspx

Looks like it clipped my reply above, so here is the rest, which is the aforementioned quote:

"When I first installed Office 2007 I hated the new ribbons that replaced the old toolbars and drop-down menus. I doubly hated the new ribbons in Excel. Determined to not be one of ?those? users, I figured I would get used to the new layout. I endured the lost productivity of having to find where my commonly used functions were moved to. I figured once I conquered the learning curve I would be just as efficient as I used to be. Well, 18 months later I still can?t find anything without searching, and searching, and searching and I?ve finally given up. Office 2007 ribbons SUCK! I?m a power-user, and if after 18 months my productivity is still hurting because of Microsoft?s asinine decision to not include ?classic? menus, then it?s not my fault. Microsoft really dropped the ball. Whoever decided that the ribbons were an improvement needs to be taken out back and shot. I friggin? HATE the ribbons. HATE. HATE. HATE."



David Ziffer wrote:

ignorant or not, it's my opinion ... and there's more to it
03-Dec-09

Thanks for reading, Gordon. It's nice to know that someone is reading, even if not appreciatively.

The IE toolbar example in my document is admittedly an exaggeration, but it is only a small one and it is intended to introduce a little humor into an otherwise dry subject. I have actaully seen real instances of IE with about half that many toolbars installed, by the way, being operated by people who truly had no idea how to remove them.

With regards to ribbons: I posit that if you have to hide the ribbon then you have defeated its purpose. Yes I have my ribbons minimized, as you suggest. So now to get to their features I have to click twice - the first time to make the ribbon appear. Is that a big inconvenience? I can tell you that it annoys me tremendously when I have to do it 500 times a day. I was much better off with the old-fashioned toolbars, which were small enough that I didn't feel inspired to eliminate them, and which I could select and design to suit my tastes.

If you read further into my article, you'll see that my main beef with ribbons is not the real estate they consume, but the inanity of using them to try to find things that are not immediately obvious. Microsoft has always been utterly pathetic at menu design, so that finding things was hard even under Office 2003. They could have used their resources to put intelligent words into their menus and to design a better hierarchy. Instead they kept the same lousy terminology that they put in their menus (or in some cases they made it worse, like hiding "table borders and shading" under "cell size"), but made it much harder to navigate by presenting 30 or 40 options at once rather than 4 or 5.

I really couldn't say it any better than a blogger named Brandon who put the following comment at http://www.nuttyasafruitcake.com:

"When I first installed Office 2007 I hated the new ribbons that replaced the old toolbars and drop-down menus. I doubly hated the new ribbons in Excel. Determined to not be one of ?those? users, I figured I would get used to the new layout. I endured the lost productivity of having to find where my commonly used functions were moved to. I figured once I conquered the learning curve I would be just as efficient as I used to be. Well, 18 months later I still can?t find anything without searching, and searching, and searching and I?ve finally given up. Office 2007 ribbons SUCK! I?m a power-user, and if after 18 months my productivity is still hurting because of Microsoft?s asinine decision to not include ?classic? menus, then it?s not my fault. Microsoft really dropped the ball. Whoever decided that the ribbons were an improvement needs to be taken out back and shot. I friggin? HATE the ribbons. HATE. HATE. HATE."

Previous Posts In This Thread:


Submitted via EggHeadCafe - Software Developer Portal of Choice
View Status and Control Services in ASP.NET
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorials...control-s.aspx

When I first installed Office 2007 I hated the new ribbons that replaced the old toolbars and drop-down menus. I doubly hated the new ribbons in Excel. Determined to not be one of ?those? users, I figured I would get used to the new layout. I endured the lost productivity of having to find where my commonly used functions were moved to. I figured once I conquered the learning curve I would be just as efficient as I used to be. Well, 18 months later I still can?t find anything without searching, and searching, and searching and I?ve finally given up. Office 2007 ribbons SUCK! I?m a power-user, and if after 18 months my productivity is still hurting because of Microsoft?s asinine decision to not include ?classic? menus, then it?s not my fault. Microsoft really dropped the ball. Whoever decided that the ribbons were an improvement needs to be taken out back and shot. I friggin? HATE the ribbons. HATE. HATE. HATE.



David Ziffer wrote:

continuation ...
03-Dec-09

Looks like it clipped my reply above, so here is the rest, which is the aforementioned quote:

"When I first installed Office 2007 I hated the new ribbons that replaced the old toolbars and drop-down menus. I doubly hated the new ribbons in Excel. Determined to not be one of ?those? users, I figured I would get used to the new layout. I endured the lost productivity of having to find where my commonly used functions were moved to. I figured once I conquered the learning curve I would be just as efficient as I used to be. Well, 18 months later I still can?t find anything without searching, and searching, and searching and I?ve finally given up. Office 2007 ribbons SUCK! I?m a power-user, and if after 18 months my productivity is still hurting because of Microsoft?s asinine decision to not include ?classic? menus, then it?s not my fault. Microsoft really dropped the ball. Whoever decided that the ribbons were an improvement needs to be taken out back and shot. I friggin? HATE the ribbons. HATE. HATE. HATE."

Previous Posts In This Thread:


Submitted via EggHeadCafe - Software Developer Portal of Choice
JavaScript VML Task Flow Designer
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorials...task-flow.aspx

The problem is your use of that bogus "egghead cafe" site. They just
slurp off the public newsgroup for microsoft.office.

David wrote:

Looks like it clipped my reply above, so here is the rest, which is the aforementioned quote: