DITCH THE RIBBON!

[John Jay Smith]

I said OUTLOOK has no ribbon (another stupid thing.. some with and some
without the ribbon? has ms gone made?) and as an OUTLOOK mvp you wont
be hit by the shockwave of complaints that will strike MS when the masses
find out that office 2007 is a pile of crap design wise (UI).

You will see... just wait...

"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"

I am afraid you are .... spitting... into the wind. There are thousands if
not hundreds of thousands of contrary opinions - why yours should matter
more than the rest is beyond me.

As for MVPs not using the same software and interface, where in the heck
did
you ever get that idea - oh, never mind, I forgot your rant and the
numerous
incorrect points in it, so I guess I should not be surprised.


--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, John Jay Smith asked:

| you do not understand. I am a person who welcomes change...
| once I see something new that is better, I have no problem
| thowing out the old ways and habits and using the new.
| I welcome and am looking for new things.
|
| But they have to be better. The office UI is not better, its worse.
| And a trillion times worse than it could have been.
|
| || You might be surprised at how the Office 2007 UI accommodates a lot
|| of what you listed. As Patrick suggested, read Jensen's blog. He
|| shares a lot of insight on the new UI and the "why" behind it.
||
|| FWIW, I was singing a similar tune about a year or so ago. Now I
|| think it was due to lack of knowledge. I *knew" the old UI with my
|| eyes closed and felt like complete newbies trying to use Office
|| 2007. All my years of learning the Office applications, I started
|| using Excel around 1985, was now worthless. It felt like I was
|| learning to walk all over again and actually, I completely
|| understand your whining because I was right there with you not too
|| long ago.
||
|| I started using Office 2007 more and more because I love some of
|| the new features, document themes which give you the ability to not
|| only change the format and overall look of an Office document in
|| seconds but to also include formatting for content you haven't even
|| added yet, such as pasting data from Excel in Word and have it
|| formatted to match my other tables in about two clicks: one for
|| paste and one for applying the format. I ability to just adding data
|| and not spending a bunch of time reformatting the darn thing is a
|| good thing for me. (This allows me more time to search for some of
|| the commands I can't seem to find. lol)
||
|| The new graphic effects and SmartArt are fantastic, insert an image
|| and experiment with some of the picture styles - those are pretty
|| awesome. And the galleries with the live preview - I like being able
|| to preview a format quickly and not repeatedly apply different
|| formatting over and over until I find what I'm looking for. Some of
|| my favorite new features are in Outlook, the new ability to overlay
|| multiple calendars and the instant search is *very* cool!
||
|| But if I want the new functionality I also need to adapt to the new
|| UI so I'm slowly making the compromise. I know this sounds like a
|| sales pitch, but believe me and there are others who will attest to
|| this, I was one of the first on the "this bites" band wagon and I'm
|| pretty sure there a few folks who are surprised to actually hear me
|| singing praises for once. <grin>
||
|| I still have my moments and want my old 'familiar' UI back but like
|| I said before, is it worth trading the new functionality? So the
|| more I use it the more I adjust.
||
|| What I recommend to those who hate the new UI, is to play around
|| with it for awhile and check out the new features and do a little
|| reading to get a better understanding for why they changed the UI.
|| Jensen Harris has a great series on this topic (if you only want to
|| read one the second link has a the best explanation):
|| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/09/26/473950.aspx
|| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/03/476412.aspx
|| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/10/479123.aspx
|| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/17/481809.aspx
|| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/24/484131.aspx
||
|| You can find more information on the Office preview site and the
|| Communities link has links to other blogs and articles:
|| http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/articles.mspx
||
|| Then, if the new functionally doesn't encourage you want to learn
|| Office 2007 then by all means, uninstall the beta and go back to
|| your old version.
||
|| Oh, and you may be happy to know Clippy, and all of his buddies, are
|| dead. ;-)
||
|| Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
|| assistance by email can not be acknowledged.
||
|| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|| Beth Melton
|| Microsoft Office MVP
||
|| Office 2007 Preview Site:
|| http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
|| Office 2007 Community Articles/Tutorials:
|| http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/article_archive.mspx
||
|| TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
|| MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
||
|| "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
|| ||| The old way was horrible because nothing could be locked.. the
||| toolbars changed all the time, and there was not enough guidance on
||| how to do stuff....
||| Of course I am ignoring clippy who should be resting in peace.
|||
||| I am sure I could find a better way to do this... using technology
||| of 2006-7 for crying out loud!
|||
||| First of all the interface should be able to lock down, like the XP
||| taskbar...
||| second it should be completely configurable in icon size,
||| placements and movement.
||| The size of these should be SCALABLE like in ZOOM action. Having
||| increments of 100% and not
||| only small - large etc. This should be done with a slider control
||| and mouse wheel.
||| Also you should be able to save workspaces and retrieve the
||| settings back or
||| go back to default. Oh come on this technology has been around for
||| years.. look
||| at corel draw for workspaces.
||| You should be able to tear off the toolbars into ONE
||| window (the toolbars should stick with each other in a group)
||| so you can place it to another monitor for multimonitor users..
||| so you can have the first monitor full screen to write on.
|||
||| I can think of a million ways to do it better than this
||| monstrosity.. if you lack imagination and eat what is
||| given to you by Microsoft.. you are in trouble! I would gladly
||| receive a check from MS if they wanted some ideas,
||| because they seem to lack all logic and ingenuity....
|||
||| There are so many people who have seen office 2007 and have said
||| they will stick to 2003... its not only me.
|||
||| I am right about this. There is no question about it. The only
||| question is if Microsoft will understand this blundering
||| mistake before they release office 2007 final, or they will have to
||| fix this in the next version, probably 2009?
||| If they get the message loud enough they will give a way to revert
||| back to office 2003 interface with SP1.
|||
||| |||| Please enlighten us. If you believe that the old interface was
|||| horrible and
|||| the new interface is even more horrible, show us your design that
|||| scales to
|||| the size of the resolution and that is not "horrible".
||||
|||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
||||
||||| You should be enlightened and get some better taste....
|||||
||||| as for blog 2, when you have higher resolutions you dont go ahead
||||| and make
||||| giant toolbars...
||||| rather you make the gui so it can be customized to the size that
||||| better fits
||||| you and your screen.
|||||
||||| BAD DESIGN! And vista is the same crappy design.... and IE7 and
||||| WMP11!
|||||
|||||
||||| |||||| Read the following articles and be enlightened!
||||||
|||||| The following article talks about how the size of the ribbon is
|||||| about the
|||||| same as the size of the combined size of the toolbars in previous
|||||| versions
|||||| of
|||||| Office:
|||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/17/577485.aspx
||||||
|||||| The following article talks about Fitts' Law and explains how the
|||||| size of
|||||| buttons needs to be increased because screen resolutions have
|||||| increased:
|||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/08/22/711808.aspx
||||||
|||||| The following article talks about the customisation of ribbon
|||||| and how only
|||||| 2% of users customised the toolbars in previous versions of
|||||| Office:
|||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx
||||||
|||||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
||||||
||||||| hularious comments from the cnet site... humour reveals the
||||||| truth!!!
|||||||
|||||||
||||||| Billion dollar company can't figure out if a ribbon bar is too
||||||| big
|||||||
||||||| Reader post by: bobby_brady
||||||| Posted on: August 25, 2006, 10:27 AM PDT
||||||| Story: Microsoft rolls up Office ribbon
||||||| Man, it really took beta testers to complain to them that the
||||||| ribbon bar
||||||| is
||||||| too big? Doesn't Microsoft actually use their own products?
|||||||
||||||| Can't they say something like "geez boss, this ribbon bar is too
||||||| big, we
||||||| should make it smaller, eh boss"?
|||||||
|||||||
http://news.com.com/5208-1012-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=20550&messageID=177937&start=-1
|||||||
|||||||
|||||||
|||||||
|||||||
||||||| "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
||||||| |||||||| again and again I have criticized how horrible the ribbon
|||||||| is... at least
|||||||| some very
|||||||| small steps are being made but Microsoft to make it less
|||||||| intrusive........
||||||||
||||||||
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+rolls+up+Office+ribbon/2100-1012_3-6109590.html?tag=nefd.top
||||||||
|||||||| Dont worry... they will have to improve it, make it an
|||||||| "option" or remove
|||||||| the damn monstrosity
|||||||| after they see the sales of office 2007 slump....

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

And I expect all the complaints will come from your email addy.

As for why the Outlook main window does not sport the new ribbon (and since
you consider yourself so much of a designer of GUIs), how do you propose to
implement a ribbon based solely on the Tools->Options menu item?

Go figure that one out and then come back and b*tch some more.

Outlook recieved some of th mot intensive GUI improvements but the main
Window will take a complete Office rev to fix since it got too involved to
fix with a simple update.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.
"John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
|I said OUTLOOK has no ribbon (another stupid thing.. some with and some
| without the ribbon? has ms gone made?) and as an OUTLOOK mvp you wont
| be hit by the shockwave of complaints that will strike MS when the masses
| find out that office 2007 is a pile of crap design wise (UI).
|
| You will see... just wait...
|
| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"
| | >I am afraid you are .... spitting... into the wind. There are thousands
if
| > not hundreds of thousands of contrary opinions - why yours should matter
| > more than the rest is beyond me.
| >
| > As for MVPs not using the same software and interface, where in the heck
| > did
| > you ever get that idea - oh, never mind, I forgot your rant and the
| > numerous
| > incorrect points in it, so I guess I should not be surprised.
| >
| >
| > --
| > Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
| >
| > Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
| > unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
| > reading.
| >
| > After furious head scratching, John Jay Smith asked:
| >
| > | you do not understand. I am a person who welcomes change...
| > | once I see something new that is better, I have no problem
| > | thowing out the old ways and habits and using the new.
| > | I welcome and am looking for new things.
| > |
| > | But they have to be better. The office UI is not better, its worse.
| > | And a trillion times worse than it could have been.
| > |
| > | | > || You might be surprised at how the Office 2007 UI accommodates a lot
| > || of what you listed. As Patrick suggested, read Jensen's blog. He
| > || shares a lot of insight on the new UI and the "why" behind it.
| > ||
| > || FWIW, I was singing a similar tune about a year or so ago. Now I
| > || think it was due to lack of knowledge. I *knew" the old UI with my
| > || eyes closed and felt like complete newbies trying to use Office
| > || 2007. All my years of learning the Office applications, I started
| > || using Excel around 1985, was now worthless. It felt like I was
| > || learning to walk all over again and actually, I completely
| > || understand your whining because I was right there with you not too
| > || long ago.
| > ||
| > || I started using Office 2007 more and more because I love some of
| > || the new features, document themes which give you the ability to not
| > || only change the format and overall look of an Office document in
| > || seconds but to also include formatting for content you haven't even
| > || added yet, such as pasting data from Excel in Word and have it
| > || formatted to match my other tables in about two clicks: one for
| > || paste and one for applying the format. I ability to just adding data
| > || and not spending a bunch of time reformatting the darn thing is a
| > || good thing for me. (This allows me more time to search for some of
| > || the commands I can't seem to find. lol)
| > ||
| > || The new graphic effects and SmartArt are fantastic, insert an image
| > || and experiment with some of the picture styles - those are pretty
| > || awesome. And the galleries with the live preview - I like being able
| > || to preview a format quickly and not repeatedly apply different
| > || formatting over and over until I find what I'm looking for. Some of
| > || my favorite new features are in Outlook, the new ability to overlay
| > || multiple calendars and the instant search is *very* cool!
| > ||
| > || But if I want the new functionality I also need to adapt to the new
| > || UI so I'm slowly making the compromise. I know this sounds like a
| > || sales pitch, but believe me and there are others who will attest to
| > || this, I was one of the first on the "this bites" band wagon and I'm
| > || pretty sure there a few folks who are surprised to actually hear me
| > || singing praises for once. <grin>
| > ||
| > || I still have my moments and want my old 'familiar' UI back but like
| > || I said before, is it worth trading the new functionality? So the
| > || more I use it the more I adjust.
| > ||
| > || What I recommend to those who hate the new UI, is to play around
| > || with it for awhile and check out the new features and do a little
| > || reading to get a better understanding for why they changed the UI.
| > || Jensen Harris has a great series on this topic (if you only want to
| > || read one the second link has a the best explanation):
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/09/26/473950.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/03/476412.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/10/479123.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/17/481809.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/24/484131.aspx
| > ||
| > || You can find more information on the Office preview site and the
| > || Communities link has links to other blogs and articles:
| > || http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/articles.mspx
| > ||
| > || Then, if the new functionally doesn't encourage you want to learn
| > || Office 2007 then by all means, uninstall the beta and go back to
| > || your old version.
| > ||
| > || Oh, and you may be happy to know Clippy, and all of his buddies, are
| > || dead. ;-)
| > ||
| > || Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
| > || assistance by email can not be acknowledged.
| > ||
| > || ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| > || Beth Melton
| > || Microsoft Office MVP
| > ||
| > || Office 2007 Preview Site:
| > || http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
| > || Office 2007 Community Articles/Tutorials:
| > ||
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/article_archive.mspx
| > ||
| > || TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
| > || MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
| > ||
| > || "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
| > || | > ||| The old way was horrible because nothing could be locked.. the
| > ||| toolbars changed all the time, and there was not enough guidance on
| > ||| how to do stuff....
| > ||| Of course I am ignoring clippy who should be resting in peace.
| > |||
| > ||| I am sure I could find a better way to do this... using technology
| > ||| of 2006-7 for crying out loud!
| > |||
| > ||| First of all the interface should be able to lock down, like the XP
| > ||| taskbar...
| > ||| second it should be completely configurable in icon size,
| > ||| placements and movement.
| > ||| The size of these should be SCALABLE like in ZOOM action. Having
| > ||| increments of 100% and not
| > ||| only small - large etc. This should be done with a slider control
| > ||| and mouse wheel.
| > ||| Also you should be able to save workspaces and retrieve the
| > ||| settings back or
| > ||| go back to default. Oh come on this technology has been around for
| > ||| years.. look
| > ||| at corel draw for workspaces.
| > ||| You should be able to tear off the toolbars into ONE
| > ||| window (the toolbars should stick with each other in a group)
| > ||| so you can place it to another monitor for multimonitor users..
| > ||| so you can have the first monitor full screen to write on.
| > |||
| > ||| I can think of a million ways to do it better than this
| > ||| monstrosity.. if you lack imagination and eat what is
| > ||| given to you by Microsoft.. you are in trouble! I would gladly
| > ||| receive a check from MS if they wanted some ideas,
| > ||| because they seem to lack all logic and ingenuity....
| > |||
| > ||| There are so many people who have seen office 2007 and have said
| > ||| they will stick to 2003... its not only me.
| > |||
| > ||| I am right about this. There is no question about it. The only
| > ||| question is if Microsoft will understand this blundering
| > ||| mistake before they release office 2007 final, or they will have to
| > ||| fix this in the next version, probably 2009?
| > ||| If they get the message loud enough they will give a way to revert
| > ||| back to office 2003 interface with SP1.
| > |||
| > ||| | > |||| Please enlighten us. If you believe that the old interface was
| > |||| horrible and
| > |||| the new interface is even more horrible, show us your design that
| > |||| scales to
| > |||| the size of the resolution and that is not "horrible".
| > ||||
| > |||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
| > ||||
| > ||||| You should be enlightened and get some better taste....
| > |||||
| > ||||| as for blog 2, when you have higher resolutions you dont go ahead
| > ||||| and make
| > ||||| giant toolbars...
| > ||||| rather you make the gui so it can be customized to the size that
| > ||||| better fits
| > ||||| you and your screen.
| > |||||
| > ||||| BAD DESIGN! And vista is the same crappy design.... and IE7 and
| > ||||| WMP11!
| > |||||
| > |||||
| > ||||| | > |||||| Read the following articles and be enlightened!
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about how the size of the ribbon is
| > |||||| about the
| > |||||| same as the size of the combined size of the toolbars in previous
| > |||||| versions
| > |||||| of
| > |||||| Office:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/17/577485.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about Fitts' Law and explains how the
| > |||||| size of
| > |||||| buttons needs to be increased because screen resolutions have
| > |||||| increased:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/08/22/711808.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about the customisation of ribbon
| > |||||| and how only
| > |||||| 2% of users customised the toolbars in previous versions of
| > |||||| Office:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
| > ||||||
| > ||||||| hularious comments from the cnet site... humour reveals the
| > ||||||| truth!!!
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Billion dollar company can't figure out if a ribbon bar is too
| > ||||||| big
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Reader post by: bobby_brady
| > ||||||| Posted on: August 25, 2006, 10:27 AM PDT
| > ||||||| Story: Microsoft rolls up Office ribbon
| > ||||||| Man, it really took beta testers to complain to them that the
| > ||||||| ribbon bar
| > ||||||| is
| > ||||||| too big? Doesn't Microsoft actually use their own products?
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Can't they say something like "geez boss, this ribbon bar is too
| > ||||||| big, we
| > ||||||| should make it smaller, eh boss"?
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| >
http://news.com.com/5208-1012-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=20550&messageID=177937&start=-1
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
| > ||||||| | > |||||||| again and again I have criticized how horrible the ribbon
| > |||||||| is... at least
| > |||||||| some very
| > |||||||| small steps are being made but Microsoft to make it less
| > |||||||| intrusive........
| > ||||||||
| > ||||||||
| >
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+rolls+up+Office+ribbon/2100-1012_3-6109590.html?tag=nefd.top
| > ||||||||
| > |||||||| Dont worry... they will have to improve it, make it an
| > |||||||| "option" or remove
| > |||||||| the damn monstrosity
| > |||||||| after they see the sales of office 2007 slump....
| >
| >
|
|

 

[Patrick Schmid]

The biggest problem with the ribbon is between the keyboard and the
chair. You saw something you had never seen before, didn't understand
the design philosophy and decided that it is crap. Well done.
It took me a month to get comfortable with the ribbon UI. And quite
frankly, I don't want to go back.

The most serious design issue with the ribbon is its lack of
customization.

Let me reiterate that the biggest problem is retraining users. How long
did you look at it? 5 minutes? Come back in a few weeks when you have
some experience with it.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Did you actually read it or did you just look at the pretty pictures?
It says in there:
"Why measure the out-of-the-box experience? Given that fewer than 2% of
Office 2003 users customize their UI according to the data reported
through the Customer Experience Improvement Program, the out-of-the-box
experience is the one most users will see.

Furthermore, the out-of-box-experience is the mainstream experience
which paints the old UI in the most positive light, primarily because it
includes only the default toolbars--not all of the other ones which
regularly appear as part of using the product."

So according to the only statistical data available, >98% of all users
have the out-of-the-box UI experience. I applaud you for championing the
minority.

How about you stop blasting this group with your uninformed comments
(Outlook has 10+ ribbons e.g., not none like you claimed) until you
actually read the UI blog - and I mean READ not only looked at the
pretty pictures - and played with the new ribbon UI for a few weeks.
Then come back and let's have an intelligent and informed conversation
on this topic in which you use a real name, email address or website
like all the people replying to your posts.

Patrick Schmid

 

[John Jay Smith]

ok stick with your horrible gui.. but dont say I didnt warn you about
what will happen after the release of office 2007.

all Microsoft is doing with these bad designs is opening doors for
new innovation from elseware that will have flexibility of thought.

when something is outdated new things spring out to replace them.

I was just hoping that innovation would come from microsoft.

Seems that microsoft is getting old...


"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"

And I expect all the complaints will come from your email addy.

As for why the Outlook main window does not sport the new ribbon (and
since
you consider yourself so much of a designer of GUIs), how do you propose
to
implement a ribbon based solely on the Tools->Options menu item?

Go figure that one out and then come back and b*tch some more.

Outlook recieved some of th mot intensive GUI improvements but the main
Window will take a complete Office rev to fix since it got too involved to
fix with a simple update.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.
"John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
|I said OUTLOOK has no ribbon (another stupid thing.. some with and some
| without the ribbon? has ms gone made?) and as an OUTLOOK mvp you wont
| be hit by the shockwave of complaints that will strike MS when the
masses
| find out that office 2007 is a pile of crap design wise (UI).
|
| You will see... just wait...
|
| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"
| | >I am afraid you are .... spitting... into the wind. There are
thousands
if
| > not hundreds of thousands of contrary opinions - why yours should
matter
| > more than the rest is beyond me.
| >
| > As for MVPs not using the same software and interface, where in the
heck
| > did
| > you ever get that idea - oh, never mind, I forgot your rant and the
| > numerous
| > incorrect points in it, so I guess I should not be surprised.
| >
| >
| > --
| > Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
| >
| > Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
| > unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
| > reading.
| >
| > After furious head scratching, John Jay Smith asked:
| >
| > | you do not understand. I am a person who welcomes change...
| > | once I see something new that is better, I have no problem
| > | thowing out the old ways and habits and using the new.
| > | I welcome and am looking for new things.
| > |
| > | But they have to be better. The office UI is not better, its worse.
| > | And a trillion times worse than it could have been.
| > |
| > | | > || You might be surprised at how the Office 2007 UI accommodates a lot
| > || of what you listed. As Patrick suggested, read Jensen's blog. He
| > || shares a lot of insight on the new UI and the "why" behind it.
| > ||
| > || FWIW, I was singing a similar tune about a year or so ago. Now I
| > || think it was due to lack of knowledge. I *knew" the old UI with my
| > || eyes closed and felt like complete newbies trying to use Office
| > || 2007. All my years of learning the Office applications, I started
| > || using Excel around 1985, was now worthless. It felt like I was
| > || learning to walk all over again and actually, I completely
| > || understand your whining because I was right there with you not too
| > || long ago.
| > ||
| > || I started using Office 2007 more and more because I love some of
| > || the new features, document themes which give you the ability to not
| > || only change the format and overall look of an Office document in
| > || seconds but to also include formatting for content you haven't even
| > || added yet, such as pasting data from Excel in Word and have it
| > || formatted to match my other tables in about two clicks: one for
| > || paste and one for applying the format. I ability to just adding
data
| > || and not spending a bunch of time reformatting the darn thing is a
| > || good thing for me. (This allows me more time to search for some of
| > || the commands I can't seem to find. lol)
| > ||
| > || The new graphic effects and SmartArt are fantastic, insert an image
| > || and experiment with some of the picture styles - those are pretty
| > || awesome. And the galleries with the live preview - I like being
able
| > || to preview a format quickly and not repeatedly apply different
| > || formatting over and over until I find what I'm looking for. Some of
| > || my favorite new features are in Outlook, the new ability to
overlay
| > || multiple calendars and the instant search is *very* cool!
| > ||
| > || But if I want the new functionality I also need to adapt to the new
| > || UI so I'm slowly making the compromise. I know this sounds like a
| > || sales pitch, but believe me and there are others who will attest to
| > || this, I was one of the first on the "this bites" band wagon and I'm
| > || pretty sure there a few folks who are surprised to actually hear me
| > || singing praises for once. <grin>
| > ||
| > || I still have my moments and want my old 'familiar' UI back but like
| > || I said before, is it worth trading the new functionality? So the
| > || more I use it the more I adjust.
| > ||
| > || What I recommend to those who hate the new UI, is to play around
| > || with it for awhile and check out the new features and do a little
| > || reading to get a better understanding for why they changed the UI.
| > || Jensen Harris has a great series on this topic (if you only want to
| > || read one the second link has a the best explanation):
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/09/26/473950.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/03/476412.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/10/479123.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/17/481809.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/24/484131.aspx
| > ||
| > || You can find more information on the Office preview site and the
| > || Communities link has links to other blogs and articles:
| > || http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/articles.mspx
| > ||
| > || Then, if the new functionally doesn't encourage you want to learn
| > || Office 2007 then by all means, uninstall the beta and go back to
| > || your old version.
| > ||
| > || Oh, and you may be happy to know Clippy, and all of his buddies,
are
| > || dead. ;-)
| > ||
| > || Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
| > || assistance by email can not be acknowledged.
| > ||
| > || ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| > || Beth Melton
| > || Microsoft Office MVP
| > ||
| > || Office 2007 Preview Site:
| > || http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
| > || Office 2007 Community Articles/Tutorials:
| > ||
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/article_archive.mspx
| > ||
| > || TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
| > || MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
| > ||
| > || "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
| > || | > ||| The old way was horrible because nothing could be locked.. the
| > ||| toolbars changed all the time, and there was not enough guidance
on
| > ||| how to do stuff....
| > ||| Of course I am ignoring clippy who should be resting in peace.
| > |||
| > ||| I am sure I could find a better way to do this... using technology
| > ||| of 2006-7 for crying out loud!
| > |||
| > ||| First of all the interface should be able to lock down, like the
XP
| > ||| taskbar...
| > ||| second it should be completely configurable in icon size,
| > ||| placements and movement.
| > ||| The size of these should be SCALABLE like in ZOOM action. Having
| > ||| increments of 100% and not
| > ||| only small - large etc. This should be done with a slider control
| > ||| and mouse wheel.
| > ||| Also you should be able to save workspaces and retrieve the
| > ||| settings back or
| > ||| go back to default. Oh come on this technology has been around for
| > ||| years.. look
| > ||| at corel draw for workspaces.
| > ||| You should be able to tear off the toolbars into ONE
| > ||| window (the toolbars should stick with each other in a group)
| > ||| so you can place it to another monitor for multimonitor users..
| > ||| so you can have the first monitor full screen to write on.
| > |||
| > ||| I can think of a million ways to do it better than this
| > ||| monstrosity.. if you lack imagination and eat what is
| > ||| given to you by Microsoft.. you are in trouble! I would gladly
| > ||| receive a check from MS if they wanted some ideas,
| > ||| because they seem to lack all logic and ingenuity....
| > |||
| > ||| There are so many people who have seen office 2007 and have said
| > ||| they will stick to 2003... its not only me.
| > |||
| > ||| I am right about this. There is no question about it. The only
| > ||| question is if Microsoft will understand this blundering
| > ||| mistake before they release office 2007 final, or they will have
to
| > ||| fix this in the next version, probably 2009?
| > ||| If they get the message loud enough they will give a way to revert
| > ||| back to office 2003 interface with SP1.
| > |||
| > ||| | > |||| Please enlighten us. If you believe that the old interface was
| > |||| horrible and
| > |||| the new interface is even more horrible, show us your design that
| > |||| scales to
| > |||| the size of the resolution and that is not "horrible".
| > ||||
| > |||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
| > ||||
| > ||||| You should be enlightened and get some better taste....
| > |||||
| > ||||| as for blog 2, when you have higher resolutions you dont go
ahead
| > ||||| and make
| > ||||| giant toolbars...
| > ||||| rather you make the gui so it can be customized to the size that
| > ||||| better fits
| > ||||| you and your screen.
| > |||||
| > ||||| BAD DESIGN! And vista is the same crappy design.... and IE7 and
| > ||||| WMP11!
| > |||||
| > |||||
| > ||||| | > |||||| Read the following articles and be enlightened!
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about how the size of the ribbon is
| > |||||| about the
| > |||||| same as the size of the combined size of the toolbars in
previous
| > |||||| versions
| > |||||| of
| > |||||| Office:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/17/577485.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about Fitts' Law and explains how
the
| > |||||| size of
| > |||||| buttons needs to be increased because screen resolutions have
| > |||||| increased:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/08/22/711808.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about the customisation of ribbon
| > |||||| and how only
| > |||||| 2% of users customised the toolbars in previous versions of
| > |||||| Office:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
| > ||||||
| > ||||||| hularious comments from the cnet site... humour reveals the
| > ||||||| truth!!!
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Billion dollar company can't figure out if a ribbon bar is too
| > ||||||| big
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Reader post by: bobby_brady
| > ||||||| Posted on: August 25, 2006, 10:27 AM PDT
| > ||||||| Story: Microsoft rolls up Office ribbon
| > ||||||| Man, it really took beta testers to complain to them that the
| > ||||||| ribbon bar
| > ||||||| is
| > ||||||| too big? Doesn't Microsoft actually use their own products?
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Can't they say something like "geez boss, this ribbon bar is
too
| > ||||||| big, we
| > ||||||| should make it smaller, eh boss"?
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| >
http://news.com.com/5208-1012-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=20550&messageID=177937&start=-1
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
| > ||||||| | > |||||||| again and again I have criticized how horrible the ribbon
| > |||||||| is... at least
| > |||||||| some very
| > |||||||| small steps are being made but Microsoft to make it less
| > |||||||| intrusive........
| > ||||||||
| > ||||||||
| >
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+rolls+up+Office+ribbon/2100-1012_3-6109590.html?tag=nefd.top
| > ||||||||
| > |||||||| Dont worry... they will have to improve it, make it an
| > |||||||| "option" or remove
| > |||||||| the damn monstrosity
| > |||||||| after they see the sales of office 2007 slump....
| >
| >
|
|

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

That "horrible gui" to you is heaven in my eyes. I have been using the beta
for over a year now and have gotten so used to the Ribbon that I actually
miss it when I am at the office using Office 2000 and now 2003.

No one is going to give you any amount of input to make you change your mind
so I won't even try. However, your determined blind eye will miss the sales
figures for Office 2007, both to enterprises and to home users.

I am sure Microsoft will meet your biased expectations, and you will say it
is a failure, despite all evidence to the contrary.
--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook}
Please post all followup questions to the newsgroups only to keep the
discussion intact.

ok stick with your horrible gui.. but dont say I didnt warn you about
what will happen after the release of office 2007.

all Microsoft is doing with these bad designs is opening doors for
new innovation from elseware that will have flexibility of thought.

when something is outdated new things spring out to replace them.

I was just hoping that innovation would come from microsoft.

Seems that microsoft is getting old...


"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"

And I expect all the complaints will come from your email addy.

As for why the Outlook main window does not sport the new ribbon (and
since
you consider yourself so much of a designer of GUIs), how do you propose
to
implement a ribbon based solely on the Tools->Options menu item?

Go figure that one out and then come back and b*tch some more.

Outlook recieved some of th mot intensive GUI improvements but the main
Window will take a complete Office rev to fix since it got too involved to
fix with a simple update.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.
"John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
|I said OUTLOOK has no ribbon (another stupid thing.. some with and some
| without the ribbon? has ms gone made?) and as an OUTLOOK mvp you wont
| be hit by the shockwave of complaints that will strike MS when the
masses
| find out that office 2007 is a pile of crap design wise (UI).
|
| You will see... just wait...
|
| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"
| | >I am afraid you are .... spitting... into the wind. There are
thousands
if
| > not hundreds of thousands of contrary opinions - why yours should
matter
| > more than the rest is beyond me.
| >
| > As for MVPs not using the same software and interface, where in the
heck
| > did
| > you ever get that idea - oh, never mind, I forgot your rant and the
| > numerous
| > incorrect points in it, so I guess I should not be surprised.
| >
| >
| > --Â
| > Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
| >
| > Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
| > unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
| > reading.
| >
| > After furious head scratching, John Jay Smith asked:
| >
| > | you do not understand. I am a person who welcomes change...
| > | once I see something new that is better, I have no problem
| > | thowing out the old ways and habits and using the new.
| > | I welcome and am looking for new things.
| > |
| > | But they have to be better. The office UI is not better, its worse.
| > | And a trillion times worse than it could have been.
| > |
| > | | > || You might be surprised at how the Office 2007 UI accommodates a lot
| > || of what you listed. As Patrick suggested, read Jensen's blog. He
| > || shares a lot of insight on the new UI and the "why" behind it.
| > ||
| > || FWIW, I was singing a similar tune about a year or so ago. Now I
| > || think it was due to lack of knowledge. I *knew" the old UI with my
| > || eyes closed and felt like complete newbies trying to use Office
| > || 2007. All my years of learning the Office applications, I started
| > || using Excel around 1985, was now worthless. It felt like I was
| > || learning to walk all over again and actually, I completely
| > || understand your whining because I was right there with you not too
| > || long ago.
| > ||
| > || I started using Office 2007 more and more because I love some of
| > || the new features, document themes which give you the ability to not
| > || only change the format and overall look of an Office document in
| > || seconds but to also include formatting for content you haven't even
| > || added yet, such as pasting data from Excel in Word and have it
| > || formatted to match my other tables in about two clicks: one for
| > || paste and one for applying the format. I ability to just adding
data
| > || and not spending a bunch of time reformatting the darn thing is a
| > || good thing for me. (This allows me more time to search for some of
| > || the commands I can't seem to find. lol)
| > ||
| > || The new graphic effects and SmartArt are fantastic, insert an image
| > || and experiment with some of the picture styles - those are pretty
| > || awesome. And the galleries with the live preview - I like being
able
| > || to preview a format quickly and not repeatedly apply different
| > || formatting over and over until I find what I'm looking for. Some of
| > || my favorite new features are in Outlook, the new ability to
overlay
| > || multiple calendars and the instant search is *very* cool!
| > ||
| > || But if I want the new functionality I also need to adapt to the new
| > || UI so I'm slowly making the compromise. I know this sounds like a
| > || sales pitch, but believe me and there are others who will attest to
| > || this, I was one of the first on the "this bites" band wagon and I'm
| > || pretty sure there a few folks who are surprised to actually hear me
| > || singing praises for once. <grin>
| > ||
| > || I still have my moments and want my old 'familiar' UI back but like
| > || I said before, is it worth trading the new functionality? So the
| > || more I use it the more I adjust.
| > ||
| > || What I recommend to those who hate the new UI, is to play around
| > || with it for awhile and check out the new features and do a little
| > || reading to get a better understanding for why they changed the UI.
| > || Jensen Harris has a great series on this topic (if you only want to
| > || read one the second link has a the best explanation):
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/09/26/473950.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/03/476412.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/10/479123.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/17/481809.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/24/484131.aspx
| > ||
| > || You can find more information on the Office preview site and the
| > || Communities link has links to other blogs and articles:
| > || http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/articles.mspx
| > ||
| > || Then, if the new functionally doesn't encourage you want to learn
| > || Office 2007 then by all means, uninstall the beta and go back to
| > || your old version.
| > ||
| > || Oh, and you may be happy to know Clippy, and all of his buddies,
are
| > || dead. ;-)
| > ||
| > || Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
| > || assistance by email can not be acknowledged.
| > ||
| > || ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| > || Beth Melton
| > || Microsoft Office MVP
| > ||
| > || Office 2007 Preview Site:
| > || http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
| > || Office 2007 Community Articles/Tutorials:
| > ||
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/article_archive.mspx
| > ||
| > || TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
| > || MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
| > ||
| > || "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
| > || | > ||| The old way was horrible because nothing could be locked.. the
| > ||| toolbars changed all the time, and there was not enough guidance
on
| > ||| how to do stuff....
| > ||| Of course I am ignoring clippy who should be resting in peace.
| > |||
| > ||| I am sure I could find a better way to do this... using technology
| > ||| of 2006-7 for crying out loud!
| > |||
| > ||| First of all the interface should be able to lock down, like the
XP
| > ||| taskbar...
| > ||| second it should be completely configurable in icon size,
| > ||| placements and movement.
| > ||| The size of these should be SCALABLE like in ZOOM action. Having
| > ||| increments of 100% and not
| > ||| only small - large etc. This should be done with a slider control
| > ||| and mouse wheel.
| > ||| Also you should be able to save workspaces and retrieve the
| > ||| settings back or
| > ||| go back to default. Oh come on this technology has been around for
| > ||| years.. look
| > ||| at corel draw for workspaces.
| > ||| You should be able to tear off the toolbars into ONE
| > ||| window (the toolbars should stick with each other in a group)
| > ||| so you can place it to another monitor for multimonitor users..
| > ||| so you can have the first monitor full screen to write on.
| > |||
| > ||| I can think of a million ways to do it better than this
| > ||| monstrosity.. if you lack imagination and eat what is
| > ||| given to you by Microsoft.. you are in trouble! I would gladly
| > ||| receive a check from MS if they wanted some ideas,
| > ||| because they seem to lack all logic and ingenuity....
| > |||
| > ||| There are so many people who have seen office 2007 and have said
| > ||| they will stick to 2003... its not only me.
| > |||
| > ||| I am right about this. There is no question about it. The only
| > ||| question is if Microsoft will understand this blundering
| > ||| mistake before they release office 2007 final, or they will have
to
| > ||| fix this in the next version, probably 2009?
| > ||| If they get the message loud enough they will give a way to revert
| > ||| back to office 2003 interface with SP1.
| > |||
| > ||| | > |||| Please enlighten us. If you believe that the old interface was
| > |||| horrible and
| > |||| the new interface is even more horrible, show us your design that
| > |||| scales to
| > |||| the size of the resolution and that is not "horrible".
| > ||||
| > |||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
| > ||||
| > ||||| You should be enlightened and get some better taste....
| > |||||
| > ||||| as for blog 2, when you have higher resolutions you dont go
ahead
| > ||||| and make
| > ||||| giant toolbars...
| > ||||| rather you make the gui so it can be customized to the size that
| > ||||| better fits
| > ||||| you and your screen.
| > |||||
| > ||||| BAD DESIGN! And vista is the same crappy design.... and IE7 and
| > ||||| WMP11!
| > |||||
| > |||||
| > ||||| | > |||||| Read the following articles and be enlightened!
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about how the size of the ribbon is
| > |||||| about the
| > |||||| same as the size of the combined size of the toolbars in
previous
| > |||||| versions
| > |||||| of
| > |||||| Office:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/17/577485.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about Fitts' Law and explains how
the
| > |||||| size of
| > |||||| buttons needs to be increased because screen resolutions have
| > |||||| increased:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/08/22/711808.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about the customisation of ribbon
| > |||||| and how only
| > |||||| 2% of users customised the toolbars in previous versions of
| > |||||| Office:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
| > ||||||
| > ||||||| hularious comments from the cnet site... humour reveals the
| > ||||||| truth!!!
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Billion dollar company can't figure out if a ribbon bar is too
| > ||||||| big
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Reader post by: bobby_brady
| > ||||||| Posted on: August 25, 2006, 10:27 AM PDT
| > ||||||| Story: Microsoft rolls up Office ribbon
| > ||||||| Man, it really took beta testers to complain to them that the
| > ||||||| ribbon bar
| > ||||||| is
| > ||||||| too big? Doesn't Microsoft actually use their own products?
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Can't they say something like "geez boss, this ribbon bar is
too
| > ||||||| big, we
| > ||||||| should make it smaller, eh boss"?
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| >
http://news.com.com/5208-1012-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=20550&messageID=177937&start=-1
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
| > ||||||| | > |||||||| again and again I have criticized how horrible the ribbon
| > |||||||| is... at least
| > |||||||| some very

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Oh, and the final nail, please read one more item before you crow even louder
over old, mis-reported informaion:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/08/28/728064.aspx

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook}
Please post all followup questions to the newsgroups only to keep the
discussion intact.

ok stick with your horrible gui.. but dont say I didnt warn you about
what will happen after the release of office 2007.

all Microsoft is doing with these bad designs is opening doors for
new innovation from elseware that will have flexibility of thought.

when something is outdated new things spring out to replace them.

I was just hoping that innovation would come from microsoft.

Seems that microsoft is getting old...


"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"

And I expect all the complaints will come from your email addy.

As for why the Outlook main window does not sport the new ribbon (and
since
you consider yourself so much of a designer of GUIs), how do you propose
to
implement a ribbon based solely on the Tools->Options menu item?

Go figure that one out and then come back and b*tch some more.

Outlook recieved some of th mot intensive GUI improvements but the main
Window will take a complete Office rev to fix since it got too involved to
fix with a simple update.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.
"John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
|I said OUTLOOK has no ribbon (another stupid thing.. some with and some
| without the ribbon? has ms gone made?) and as an OUTLOOK mvp you wont
| be hit by the shockwave of complaints that will strike MS when the
masses
| find out that office 2007 is a pile of crap design wise (UI).
|
| You will see... just wait...
|
| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]"
| | >I am afraid you are .... spitting... into the wind. There are
thousands
if
| > not hundreds of thousands of contrary opinions - why yours should
matter
| > more than the rest is beyond me.
| >
| > As for MVPs not using the same software and interface, where in the
heck
| > did
| > you ever get that idea - oh, never mind, I forgot your rant and the
| > numerous
| > incorrect points in it, so I guess I should not be surprised.
| >
| >
| > --Â
| > Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
| >
| > Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
| > unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
| > reading.
| >
| > After furious head scratching, John Jay Smith asked:
| >
| > | you do not understand. I am a person who welcomes change...
| > | once I see something new that is better, I have no problem
| > | thowing out the old ways and habits and using the new.
| > | I welcome and am looking for new things.
| > |
| > | But they have to be better. The office UI is not better, its worse.
| > | And a trillion times worse than it could have been.
| > |
| > | | > || You might be surprised at how the Office 2007 UI accommodates a lot
| > || of what you listed. As Patrick suggested, read Jensen's blog. He
| > || shares a lot of insight on the new UI and the "why" behind it.
| > ||
| > || FWIW, I was singing a similar tune about a year or so ago. Now I
| > || think it was due to lack of knowledge. I *knew" the old UI with my
| > || eyes closed and felt like complete newbies trying to use Office
| > || 2007. All my years of learning the Office applications, I started
| > || using Excel around 1985, was now worthless. It felt like I was
| > || learning to walk all over again and actually, I completely
| > || understand your whining because I was right there with you not too
| > || long ago.
| > ||
| > || I started using Office 2007 more and more because I love some of
| > || the new features, document themes which give you the ability to not
| > || only change the format and overall look of an Office document in
| > || seconds but to also include formatting for content you haven't even
| > || added yet, such as pasting data from Excel in Word and have it
| > || formatted to match my other tables in about two clicks: one for
| > || paste and one for applying the format. I ability to just adding
data
| > || and not spending a bunch of time reformatting the darn thing is a
| > || good thing for me. (This allows me more time to search for some of
| > || the commands I can't seem to find. lol)
| > ||
| > || The new graphic effects and SmartArt are fantastic, insert an image
| > || and experiment with some of the picture styles - those are pretty
| > || awesome. And the galleries with the live preview - I like being
able
| > || to preview a format quickly and not repeatedly apply different
| > || formatting over and over until I find what I'm looking for. Some of
| > || my favorite new features are in Outlook, the new ability to
overlay
| > || multiple calendars and the instant search is *very* cool!
| > ||
| > || But if I want the new functionality I also need to adapt to the new
| > || UI so I'm slowly making the compromise. I know this sounds like a
| > || sales pitch, but believe me and there are others who will attest to
| > || this, I was one of the first on the "this bites" band wagon and I'm
| > || pretty sure there a few folks who are surprised to actually hear me
| > || singing praises for once. <grin>
| > ||
| > || I still have my moments and want my old 'familiar' UI back but like
| > || I said before, is it worth trading the new functionality? So the
| > || more I use it the more I adjust.
| > ||
| > || What I recommend to those who hate the new UI, is to play around
| > || with it for awhile and check out the new features and do a little
| > || reading to get a better understanding for why they changed the UI.
| > || Jensen Harris has a great series on this topic (if you only want to
| > || read one the second link has a the best explanation):
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/09/26/473950.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/03/476412.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/10/479123.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/17/481809.aspx
| > || http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/24/484131.aspx
| > ||
| > || You can find more information on the Office preview site and the
| > || Communities link has links to other blogs and articles:
| > || http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/articles.mspx
| > ||
| > || Then, if the new functionally doesn't encourage you want to learn
| > || Office 2007 then by all means, uninstall the beta and go back to
| > || your old version.
| > ||
| > || Oh, and you may be happy to know Clippy, and all of his buddies,
are
| > || dead. ;-)
| > ||
| > || Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
| > || assistance by email can not be acknowledged.
| > ||
| > || ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| > || Beth Melton
| > || Microsoft Office MVP
| > ||
| > || Office 2007 Preview Site:
| > || http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
| > || Office 2007 Community Articles/Tutorials:
| > ||
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/article_archive.mspx
| > ||
| > || TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
| > || MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
| > ||
| > || "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
| > || | > ||| The old way was horrible because nothing could be locked.. the
| > ||| toolbars changed all the time, and there was not enough guidance
on
| > ||| how to do stuff....
| > ||| Of course I am ignoring clippy who should be resting in peace.
| > |||
| > ||| I am sure I could find a better way to do this... using technology
| > ||| of 2006-7 for crying out loud!
| > |||
| > ||| First of all the interface should be able to lock down, like the
XP
| > ||| taskbar...
| > ||| second it should be completely configurable in icon size,
| > ||| placements and movement.
| > ||| The size of these should be SCALABLE like in ZOOM action. Having
| > ||| increments of 100% and not
| > ||| only small - large etc. This should be done with a slider control
| > ||| and mouse wheel.
| > ||| Also you should be able to save workspaces and retrieve the
| > ||| settings back or
| > ||| go back to default. Oh come on this technology has been around for
| > ||| years.. look
| > ||| at corel draw for workspaces.
| > ||| You should be able to tear off the toolbars into ONE
| > ||| window (the toolbars should stick with each other in a group)
| > ||| so you can place it to another monitor for multimonitor users..
| > ||| so you can have the first monitor full screen to write on.
| > |||
| > ||| I can think of a million ways to do it better than this
| > ||| monstrosity.. if you lack imagination and eat what is
| > ||| given to you by Microsoft.. you are in trouble! I would gladly
| > ||| receive a check from MS if they wanted some ideas,
| > ||| because they seem to lack all logic and ingenuity....
| > |||
| > ||| There are so many people who have seen office 2007 and have said
| > ||| they will stick to 2003... its not only me.
| > |||
| > ||| I am right about this. There is no question about it. The only
| > ||| question is if Microsoft will understand this blundering
| > ||| mistake before they release office 2007 final, or they will have
to
| > ||| fix this in the next version, probably 2009?
| > ||| If they get the message loud enough they will give a way to revert
| > ||| back to office 2003 interface with SP1.
| > |||
| > ||| | > |||| Please enlighten us. If you believe that the old interface was
| > |||| horrible and
| > |||| the new interface is even more horrible, show us your design that
| > |||| scales to
| > |||| the size of the resolution and that is not "horrible".
| > ||||
| > |||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
| > ||||
| > ||||| You should be enlightened and get some better taste....
| > |||||
| > ||||| as for blog 2, when you have higher resolutions you dont go
ahead
| > ||||| and make
| > ||||| giant toolbars...
| > ||||| rather you make the gui so it can be customized to the size that
| > ||||| better fits
| > ||||| you and your screen.
| > |||||
| > ||||| BAD DESIGN! And vista is the same crappy design.... and IE7 and
| > ||||| WMP11!
| > |||||
| > |||||
| > ||||| | > |||||| Read the following articles and be enlightened!
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about how the size of the ribbon is
| > |||||| about the
| > |||||| same as the size of the combined size of the toolbars in
previous
| > |||||| versions
| > |||||| of
| > |||||| Office:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/17/577485.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about Fitts' Law and explains how
the
| > |||||| size of
| > |||||| buttons needs to be increased because screen resolutions have
| > |||||| increased:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/08/22/711808.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| The following article talks about the customisation of ribbon
| > |||||| and how only
| > |||||| 2% of users customised the toolbars in previous versions of
| > |||||| Office:
| > |||||| http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx
| > ||||||
| > |||||| "John Jay Smith" wrote:
| > ||||||
| > ||||||| hularious comments from the cnet site... humour reveals the
| > ||||||| truth!!!
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Billion dollar company can't figure out if a ribbon bar is too
| > ||||||| big
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Reader post by: bobby_brady
| > ||||||| Posted on: August 25, 2006, 10:27 AM PDT
| > ||||||| Story: Microsoft rolls up Office ribbon
| > ||||||| Man, it really took beta testers to complain to them that the
| > ||||||| ribbon bar
| > ||||||| is
| > ||||||| too big? Doesn't Microsoft actually use their own products?
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| Can't they say something like "geez boss, this ribbon bar is
too
| > ||||||| big, we
| > ||||||| should make it smaller, eh boss"?
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| >
http://news.com.com/5208-1012-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=20550&messageID=177937&start=-1
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > |||||||
| > ||||||| "John Jay Smith" <-> wrote in message
| > ||||||| | > |||||||| again and again I have criticized how horrible the ribbon
| > |||||||| is... at least
| > |||||||| some very

 

[Harlan Grove]

Milly wrote...

Oh, and the final nail, please read one more item before you crow even louder
over old, mis-reported informaion:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/08/28/728064.aspx

....

Objectivity from the father of the ribbon?

There are many who'll like the ribbon, and many who'll hate the ribbon.
Either way, there's going to be some [re]training cost that Microsoft
is shy about addressing. The fact that some, pehaps many, MVPs have
taken a liking to the ribbon and learned it fairly quickly isn't
necessarily indicative of the average user's learning curve. It's to be
expected that experts would learn a new UI quicker than others.

One bit of misinformation that ribbon proponents, especially Jensen
Harris, engaged in a few months ago was comparing the size of the
ribbon to the size of the DEFAULT 2003 UI, with menu bar and several
tool bars stacked on top of each other. Some people may stick with that
default, but many users get rid of some of those toolbars while some
shrink the UI down to just the menu bar. And while it's been possible
since the beginning to collapse the ribbon, it took Microsoft a while
to figure out there'd be some users who'd want the ribbon to
autocollapse all the time (like me). The autocollapsing ribbon is just
another menu, this time really wide rather than really tall, and as
such it'll be bearable.

However, there are a few Excel applications that also get rid of the
2003 & prior menu bar in favor of a few command buttons in worksheets.
That sort of Excel application will become impossible in Excel 2007
unless there's some hush-hush property to hide the new UI entirely.
Floating toolbars are also a thing of the past. You can still have all
the custom toolbars you want . . . as long as you live with finding all
of them in the Add-Ins tab in the ribbon.

I'll grant there are reasons to believe the ribbon is a better menu,
but there are also reasons to bemoan the fact that going forward
EVERYTHING will need to crammed into the ribbon. One size fits all has
never proven to be a winning design strategy.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

There are many who'll like the ribbon, and many who'll hate the
ribbon.

Either way, there's going to be some [re]training cost that Microsoft
is shy about addressing. The fact that some, pehaps many, MVPs have
taken a liking to the ribbon and learned it fairly quickly isn't
necessarily indicative of the average user's learning curve. It's to be
expected that experts would learn a new UI quicker than others.

I actually would disagree with that statement. From what I have seen
since November, the more experienced users are the ones who have the
most trouble with the new UI. Beginner and a lot of average users can
figure out fairly quickly where all the things they normally use are in
the ribbon. In addition, they benefit from the much better
discoverability of features that the ribbon offers.
However, the users who know a program in and out, use keyboard
shortcuts, floating toolbars, etc are the ones who have the highest
learning curve. It's really the power users that get into trouble with
the new UI.
I am a power user, and it took me a month to learn the new UI to a
reasonable degree. I have been using it since November, and now I
honestly have trouble using Office 2003. There are a lot of people,
including lots of MVPs, that are not happy at all.
Outlook: most users seem to be happy and the few rough spots the Outlook
ribbons still have should be taken care of in B2TR.
PPT: Most users are happy, esp. once the B2TR changes are made available
Access: I haven't seen much complaining about the ribbon for Access
Word: I have heard from a few book authors (ironically writing Office
2007 books) that the ribbon is not very efficient for them to use.
Excel: Lots of people are unhappy with the ribbon in Excel. It doesn't
seem to be so much the ribbon itself, but rather the limit to one
toolbar, no floating toolbars, no easy ribbon customization, etc. I know
that you are an Excel power user, so I am not surprised at all that you
are in the unhappy camp.

One bit of misinformation that ribbon proponents, especially Jensen
Harris, engaged in a few months ago was comparing the size of the
ribbon to the size of the DEFAULT 2003 UI, with menu bar and several
tool bars stacked on top of each other. Some people may stick with that
default, but many users get rid of some of those toolbars while some
shrink the UI down to just the menu bar. And while it's been possible

According to Microsoft's statistical data though, >98% of all users use
the default 2003 UI. The data is of course skewed in favor of this
argument, because the people who are most likely to change their UI are
also the ones most likely to switch off the tool that reports the data
to MS (or have it switched off on a corporate level). Unfortunately the
number also ignores the many users who didn't upgrade to 2003, which is
again an issue especially pertinent to Excel.

However, there are a few Excel applications that also get rid of the
2003 & prior menu bar in favor of a few command buttons in worksheets.
That sort of Excel application will become impossible in Excel 2007
unless there's some hush-hush property to hide the new UI entirely.

Actually such a property has existed since Beta 1. It's
startFromScratch=true in RibbonX. See the blog on my website for
information on RibbonX and ribbon customization in general.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Harlan Grove]

Patrick Schmid wrote...
....

since November, the more experienced users are the ones who have the
most trouble with the new UI. Beginner and a lot of average users can
figure out fairly quickly where all the things they normally use are in
the ribbon. In addition, they benefit from the much better
discoverability of features that the ribbon offers.
However, the users who know a program in and out, use keyboard
shortcuts, floating toolbars, etc are the ones who have the highest
learning curve. It's really the power users that get into trouble with
the new UI.

....

Debatable. People who are used to using the keyboard and seldom if ever
the mouse shouldn't have trouble with Excel 2007 since it seems to have
a compatibility mode for key sequences beginning with [Alt]+letter as
opposed to [Alt] alone. Gotta wonder how long that'll last.

I was thinking more about the intermediate users, those with a few
years of experience with Office but not decades of experience using
spreadsheets and word processors. The sort of people who wouldn't have
learned to use keyboards back in the dark ages when mice were rare if
ever to be seen at all, and who know where things are in the current
menu but will have to hunt for things in the ribbon menu. For them
it'll be a trade-off between finding new (to them) commands more easily
but a struggle to find some commands they already know.

Excel: Lots of people are unhappy with the ribbon in Excel. It doesn't
seem to be so much the ribbon itself, but rather the limit to one
toolbar, no floating toolbars, no easy ribbon customization, etc. I know
that you are an Excel power user, so I am not surprised at all that you
are in the unhappy camp.

....

In a nutshell, the ribbon breaks MANY existing Excel
models/applications with no simple fixes. FWLIW, the ribbon allows more
than one custom toolbar, but all custom toolbars appear in the Add-Ins
tab.

According to Microsoft's statistical data though, >98% of all users use
the default 2003 UI. The data is of course skewed in favor of this
argument, because the people who are most likely to change their UI are
also the ones most likely to switch off the tool that reports the data
to MS (or have it switched off on a corporate level). . . .

....

Unsubstantiated 'statistics' are the cream of USENET!

Any urls for these statistics?

I work in a department of heavy Excel users, so no surprise perhaps
that none of us use the default UI. Also very likely the company did
switch off reporting back to MSFT.

Actually such a property has existed since Beta 1. It's
startFromScratch=true in RibbonX. See the blog on my website for
information on RibbonX and ribbon customization in general.

OK, but I had meant an Excel object model property that could have been
set/modified by VBA. I realize Microsoft would dearly love to wean
Office developers from VBA so that they could sell more VSTO units, but
the claimed reason of security and maintainability rings hollow. The
single best thing MSFT could do for Office users would be to separate
VBA statements and Excel OM methods/properties into security categories
like safe (e.g., OM's Cells.Count property), dangerous (e.g., VBA's
Shell and Declare statements and OM's Application.ExecuteXL4Macro
method), and suspect (example: VBA's ChDir and OM's
Application.EnableEvents property), then have highly protected means of
restricting Office macro execution to only safe code, only safe and
suspect code or any code, and make it impossible for this setting to be
changed while ANY Office application were running. It'd be nice to be
able to include udfs using only safe properties and VBA code without
having the macro security dialog appearing for medium macro security or
dealing with certification.

So does your approach completely eliminate the ribbon as in, e.g., a
maximized Excel worksheet's top row appears immediately below the
application window's title bar when row/column headers are disabled?

 

[Patrick Schmid]

...

since November, the more experienced users are the ones who have the
most trouble with the new UI. Beginner and a lot of average users can
figure out fairly quickly where all the things they normally use are in
the ribbon. In addition, they benefit from the much better
discoverability of features that the ribbon offers.
However, the users who know a program in and out, use keyboard
shortcuts, floating toolbars, etc are the ones who have the highest
learning curve. It's really the power users that get into trouble with
the new UI.

...

Debatable. People who are used to using the keyboard and seldom if ever
the mouse shouldn't have trouble with Excel 2007 since it seems to have
a compatibility mode for key sequences beginning with [Alt]+letter as
opposed to [Alt] alone. Gotta wonder how long that'll last.

At least for 2007. They might change this of course in Office 14 (#13 is
being skipped).

I was thinking more about the intermediate users, those with a few
years of experience with Office but not decades of experience using
spreadsheets and word processors. The sort of people who wouldn't have
learned to use keyboards back in the dark ages when mice were rare if
ever to be seen at all, and who know where things are in the current
menu but will have to hunt for things in the ribbon menu. For them
it'll be a trade-off between finding new (to them) commands more easily
but a struggle to find some commands they already know.

Valid point.

...

In a nutshell, the ribbon breaks MANY existing Excel
models/applications with no simple fixes. FWLIW, the ribbon allows more
than one custom toolbar, but all custom toolbars appear in the Add-Ins
tab.

Not really toolbars for me then. Also, you can't create any new toolbars
without VBA in 2007 (as the UI for the toolbars is no longer there).

...

Unsubstantiated 'statistics' are the cream of USENET!

Any urls for these statistics?

I figured you had already seen the statistic, as you complained about
Jensen's article
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/17/577485.aspx
He cites that fewer than 2% customize the UI.

OK, but I had meant an Excel object model property that could have been
set/modified by VBA. I realize Microsoft would dearly love to wean
Office developers from VBA so that they could sell more VSTO units, but
the claimed reason of security and maintainability rings hollow. The
single best thing MSFT could do for Office users would be to separate
VBA statements and Excel OM methods/properties into security categories
like safe (e.g., OM's Cells.Count property), dangerous (e.g., VBA's
Shell and Declare statements and OM's Application.ExecuteXL4Macro
method), and suspect (example: VBA's ChDir and OM's
Application.EnableEvents property), then have highly protected means of
restricting Office macro execution to only safe code, only safe and
suspect code or any code, and make it impossible for this setting to be
changed while ANY Office application were running. It'd be nice to be
able to include udfs using only safe properties and VBA code without
having the macro security dialog appearing for medium macro security or
dealing with certification.

The problem is that to alter the 2007 UI, you can't use VBA at all. You
need to use XML (RibbonX) that is embedded in the xlsx file. So you can
change the UI without VSTO, but you can't do it straight from VBA. I've
got a post on my blog that details how to do this with Word, which is
the exact same method one has to use for Excel.
BTW, the macro security handling has been altered in Excel 2007 as well.
Look up the Excel 12 blog for details.

So does your approach completely eliminate the ribbon as in, e.g., a
maximized Excel worksheet's top row appears immediately below the
application window's title bar when row/column headers are disabled?

Not exactly. You get the title bar plus an empty bar below it. It takes
up as much space as when you minimize the ribbon. The problem seems to
be that the Office button spans two rows and hence the second row that
normally contains the ribbon tabs needs to stay visible.


Patrick Schmid

 

[Beth Melton]

I've always disagreed with Microsoft's "statistics" on UI
customization. I suspect they didn't take into account templates or
add-ins (I'm not referring to third-party add-ins) that customize the
UI or when one uses VBA to customize the UI. I believe the statistic
are based on the use of the Customize dialog box.

And I know it's been stated, those that are savvy enough to customize
the UI are also savvy enough to not opt into CEIP. I know I didn't
even when I fully understood it. (Well...apparently I didn't fully
understand since I didn't realize it would end up resulting in the
lack of customization. <g>) I've asked numerous times if they could
provide the percentage of registered Office users compared to the
users who opted into CEIP.

The inability to easily customize the ribbon (and the QAT doesn't cut
it) and the lack of floating toolbars is my one complaint for Office
2007 and why can't say I love the new UI. I've accepted it - but I
still can't say I love it. While I appreciate all of your hard work,
Patrick, in building the add-in to customize the ribbon, IMHO that's
something that we should have never needed to begin with - ease in
customization should be a standard function.

~Beth Melton

 

[Patrick Schmid]

still can't say I love it. While I appreciate all of your hard work,

Patrick, in building the add-in to customize the ribbon, IMHO that's
something that we should have never needed to begin with - ease in
customization should be a standard function.

I wished I didn't have to write such an add-in. I too would expect user
customization to be a built-in feature.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Harlan Grove]

Patrick Schmid wrote...
....

I wished I didn't have to write such an add-in. I too would expect user
customization to be a built-in feature.

Not cynical enough. I believe I read at some point in the Excel blog
that one of the selling points for Office 2007, at least to large
corporations, would be reduced support costs from having to assist
users who customized too much.

However, Microsoft approached this in typical Microsoft fashion. Did
they provide a group policy setting that would prevent UI customization
while providing UI customization tools for individual Office buyers or
the lucky few in large corporations allowed the priviledge of
customizing their UI? Of course not. No group policy setting to make
this secure. Instead, we'll get many people trying (and many likely
failing) to use your add-in. Fewer people may try to customize their
UI, but many of those who do will screw things up much worse than they
ever did with Tools > Customize.

Apparently Microsoft doesn't try to learn lessons from Linux
developers. The Gnome 2.0 interface introduced a menu based on an XML
scheme, but the Gnome Project failed to include a menu editor. Users
were left to edit the XML. Much fun, failure and flames ensued. This
bit of history is set to repeat when Office 2007 goes on sale.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

...

Not cynical enough. I believe I read at some point in the Excel blog
that one of the selling points for Office 2007, at least to large
corporations, would be reduced support costs from having to assist
users who customized too much.

The UI blog touted this as advantage as well.

However, Microsoft approached this in typical Microsoft fashion. Did
they provide a group policy setting that would prevent UI customization
while providing UI customization tools for individual Office buyers or
the lucky few in large corporations allowed the priviledge of
customizing their UI? Of course not. No group policy setting to make
this secure. Instead, we'll get many people trying (and many likely

That solution would have been desirable. They could have prevented many
accidental customizations by making customization a feature in Options,
so that users had to go there and do it explicitly.

failing) to use your add-in. Fewer people may try to customize their
UI, but many of those who do will screw things up much worse than they
ever did with Tools > Customize.

I hope I'll be able to prevent that. Customization can be switched off
with one mouse click in the UI of my add-in. In addition, I'll look into
providing a GPO to disable the add-in automatically.

Apparently Microsoft doesn't try to learn lessons from Linux
developers. The Gnome 2.0 interface introduced a menu based on an XML
scheme, but the Gnome Project failed to include a menu editor. Users
were left to edit the XML. Much fun, failure and flames ensued. This
bit of history is set to repeat when Office 2007 goes on sale.

Interesting. I didn't know about that one.

Patrick Schmid

 

[John Jay Smith]

no one has addressed the stupid Perl

noone has addressed how computer syppor people are going to give
instructions via telephone
with this stupid 2007 interface...

let me give you an example of what i mean:

winXP = go to start then all programs bla bla..

on vista :
-Go to start.
- I see no start anywhere...
- Oh you are using Vista?
-Yeah...Im new to computers....
-Ok great...see the perl?
-what perl?
-that round thing with a flag in it...
-Where? I dont see no flag...
-In the lower left corner of your screen. That rectangular thing that has 4
colors inside..
-Thats a flag? I dont think its a flag.. And you call this the Perl? It
doesnt look like a perl....
-Well JUST PRESS that DAMN THINGY!!!


Not take this and apply it to the perl in office and the horrible
ribbon.....

its gonna be a circus!!!!

 

[Paul Ballou]

John Jay Smith

If you provide feedback in a positive way then you can get people to listen.
The only thing your doing is complaining and most people aren't going to
listen to someone complain and those who do usually do so only to prove the
complainers points wrong some of the time....In the future make your
feedback in a positive way and I'm sure you can get lot more people to
listen and may even make some positive things happen

--
Paul Ballou
MVP Office
http://office.microsoft.com/home
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/
http://www.ballousgiftshop.com

Life would be easier if we could view the source code

no one has addressed the stupid Perl

noone has addressed how computer syppor people are going to give
instructions via telephone
with this stupid 2007 interface...

let me give you an example of what i mean:

winXP = go to start then all programs bla bla..

on vista :
-Go to start.
- I see no start anywhere...
- Oh you are using Vista?
-Yeah...Im new to computers....
-Ok great...see the perl?
-what perl?
-that round thing with a flag in it...
-Where? I dont see no flag...
-In the lower left corner of your screen. That rectangular thing that has
4 colors inside..
-Thats a flag? I dont think its a flag.. And you call this the Perl? It
doesnt look like a perl....
-Well JUST PRESS that DAMN THINGY!!!


Not take this and apply it to the perl in office and the horrible
ribbon.....

its gonna be a circus!!!!

 

[John Jay Smith]

Well who says I am not using BOTH stategies?

You do things your way.. and Ill do things my way....

ok?

John Jay Smith

If you provide feedback in a positive way then you can get people to
listen. The only thing your doing is complaining and most people aren't
going to listen to someone complain and those who do usually do so only to
prove the complainers points wrong some of the time....In the future make
your feedback in a positive way and I'm sure you can get lot more people
to listen and may even make some positive things happen

--
Paul Ballou
MVP Office
http://office.microsoft.com/home
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/
http://www.ballousgiftshop.com

Life would be easier if we could view the source code