So… you’re upset because something looks a little different? Even going beyond MS Office, isn’t it pretty much always the case for any Windows program that clicking on whatever is in the top left corner does something? Even if you hover your cursor over it, it pops up a little thingie that tells you “this is what you click if you want to open/save documents, etc.”
Now, I’m not against criticizing Microsoft whenever possible, but this seems unwarranted to me…
Not really, unless you mean the menu that gives you restore, minimize and close options, but that’s hardly what MS have gone and stuck in that blob. Microsoft’s willingness to completely ignore their own interface guidelines is one of their more annoying traits; Office has completely separate file dialogs to the rest of Windows, for example, for no good reason whatsoever. And what possessed them to put the menu bar in IE7 below the navigation buttons, in complete contravention to every other Windows program in existence? Small things, but indicative of their approach.
I actually quite like the Ribbon in Office 2007, though. It’s an improvement on dropdown menus and the organisation is, for once, vaguely intuitive. Not revolutionary, but decent. It’ll annoy people who knew exactly where everything was hidden in previous versions, but makes it far easier for a relative novice to find what they’re looking for without googling.
Without hijacking I also think “fuck MSN”. They are closing their “groups” next Febuary so communities who have been together for ten years or so go to some shit heap called “Multiply”. With advertisements (which we have had before.)
Well, that would stand in support of my statement that clicking on whatever is in the top corner does something. It sounds like the OP didn’t attempt to do that, which is very confusing to me.
Aside from that whole added functionality and ease of use thing, you mean.
It does something, but nothing to do with the program itself. It contains no program-related options, and is merely a Windows control that duplicates the functions of the top-right buttons (min, max, restore, close). So it’s hardly surprising that the OP is, well, surprised to find it suddenly containing all sorts of program-related functionality.
No, I don’t mean; they contain no new functionality that I can see, they’re just different for no reason. And even if Microsoft does write better file dialogs for one program, why aren’t they in Windows itself? If Microsoft doesn’t eat its own dogfood as far as its APIs are concerned, why should they expect anyone else to?
Read the OP again. They thought the button was just a graphic and did nothing whatsoever. This is my concern, dude. Not to mention, the good old “File” dropdown menu from Word 03 that people seem to be pining for was in the upper left portion of the screen - why would it not make sense to check the items in the new interface that are in the upper left portion of the screen?
In Windows itself? Do you mean Vista, or XP? Either way, I’m fairly certain you can’t make any reasonable argument that the OS has, in any recent times, contained dropdown menues similar to those from Office 2003. Your comment makes little sense to me.
Fine, dude. The fact remains that it’s a considerable departure from long-established Windows conventions, and that quite a few people had no idea it was where half the functionality had been stuck. It looks nothing like a “File” dropdown, and there’s no particular reason people should expect it to behave like one, because it never did before. The whole point of having consistent interface guidelines is that people don’t have to go clicking every control on the screen in the hope that it does what they want. Microsoft changed two major UI elements in Office 2007: the ribbon made things more intuitively accessible, while the weird Office blob did exactly the opposite.
I think you’re confused; I’m not talking about the dropdown menus, I’m talking about the file open and save dialog boxes. And yes, they are similar to those elsewhere in Windows (either version) but they are not the same. Microsoft have, in parallel to Windows, developed a completely new set of controls that they use specifically for Office. I find it very odd that a software company in the business of providing APIs to developers all over the world does not use them for its own flagship software. It suggests there is something wrong with the ones they’re giving everyone else, and makes a mockery of everyone else’s attempts to produce consistent Windows applications. UI consistency is something Microsoft are utterly terrible at, and for proof see this screenshot of a range of Microsoft’s current offerings. There’s hardly a UI element the same in any of them. Why the schizophrenia?
Well, I would think the fact that even putting your mouse over it pops up a message that says “Click here to open, save, or print” just might be a particular reason. But to each their own, I suppose…
Until you can show me Vista’s “save dialog box” (or XP’s, for that matter), I’ll go ahead and assume I’m not the confused one.
No, it suggests that they found a setup that works better, and after figuring that out, decided to use it. What would be a mockery is if they found a way to improve their interface but DIDN’T implement it just because it doesn’t look exactly like the old one.
Again, making the user hover his mouse over every UI element until the correct hidden clue is revealed is not great interface design. Each to their own, blah blah.
What? Go and look at it yourself; it’ll be used by just about every program on your computer except for Office. And what are the scare quotes for? Are you trying to imply I’m making up the existence of standard dialog boxes? What do you think I’m confused about? This conversation is getting fucking weird.
It provides the same functionality as the standard one, it just looks different. The point is that they completely re-implemented something they already provided, for no reason whatsoever. This does not speak of a company that gives much thought to interface consistency. And once again, if Microsoft invent a better Windows control, does it not behoove them to implement it in their API; y’know, the thing they force everyone else to use?
I don’t understand why you find this controversial, or why you seem to be trying to insist that I’m “confused”. It’s quite bizarre.
Sure, except that’s not what they did. They put the new icon for open/save/etc in the approximate place that the old file dropdown was, to make things easier for people who can’t RTFM. And then, they added something that pops up when the mouse is over said icon, for folks that somehow need even more of a clue.
You didn’t say in other programs. You said “in Windows” (not once, but twice). Windows. You know, the operating system. Windows Vista does not have a “save dialog box”. Windows XP does not have a “save dialog box”. Certain programs that run in XP or Vista might, but that’s not what you said. I’ll try to engage my psychic powers so I can respond to what you are thinking instead of what you are typing from here on out.
Incorrect. There are a number of functions that Word 03 didn’t have (quick parts and page themes are a couple of easy-to-find examples). Additionally, several functions are now laid out in a much easier to use way (see the “Mailings” tab for an excellent example of this).
See above.
Looking at the image you linked to previously, my immediate question is why my MS Word should have the same interface as either my Media Player or my Instant Messenger. They do different things; they don’t have the same functions.
What’s bizarre is your lack of recall regarding what you wrote. You were the one who insisted that I was confused - I provided reasoning as to why you might have that backwards.
Also, my precise point is that there isn’t anything controversial about the new MS Office interface. Not sure how that could possibly be unclear at this stage of the conversation…
There is a standard Win32 API. That API implements dialog boxes. In XP they look like one thing. In Vista they look like another. They are what are supposed to be used by every program that wants a file open dialog box. That is the point of common dialog boxes. I apologise for not realising I was dealing with a pedantic berk who didn’t understand that I was talking about GUI APIs. After all, I only used the term “API” right there in my post:
Yep, you’d have needed to be psychic to understand what I was on about all right.
Anyway, that’s more than enough of this silliness; I have to finish this Win32 app I’m writing, and since I’m apparently hallucinating most of the controls I’m using, it’s going to take longer than I thought.
Nope. I use ¶ sometimes, but it’s nothing like the wonder that is Reveal Codes. Reveal Codes shows you everything in a pane. It shows where a font change begins and ends. It shows where formatting begins and ends. I don’t know how many times I’ve pasted into Word only to see my text formatted as something completely horrible. Three paragraphs of normal text will be in the header format or something equally horrible because a space character between two paragraphs was formatted in something strange. In WP, you can find all those nasty little formatting oddities and either kill them or move them to where they need to be.
Yeah, neither of those statements could possibly be understood to mean something different than what you intended :rolleyes:
Feel free to namecall all you want, as long as you realize that degenerating to that level pretty much signifies that you lost the argument 
Yes, well if you take two sentences out of context and ignore the rest of someone’s posts, then you’re not going to have a clue what they’re on about, are you? The common dialogs are a part of Windows (look! Even Microsoft think so). The ones in Office are not a part of Windows. Office does not use the common dialogs Microsoft provide for everyone else. That is what I said, clearly. Even from just the two sentences you cherry-picked, anyone with half a clue would have known what I meant.
I didn’t realise conversations were supposed to have winners and losers. If it makes you feel happy though, you can have a gold star.
I do feel like I’m losing a bit of my soul each time I reply, though. Honestly, why are we having this argument? Do you even know? I could call you a better name if you like, I wasn’t really trying earlier. It’s got to be better than trying to explain to you the basics of Windows APIs; I feel like I’m trying to teach calculus to my cat.
Well, looking back at the thread… you said they changed the interface for no reason, to which I replied that the new interface includes added functionality and greater ease of use, at which point you got all uppity about it.
Maybe a better option would be explaining why you even brought up the API in response to a statement about usability and functionality from a user perspective…
Looking back at the thread, I complimented the Ribbon, and made mild complaints about the Office Blob. I think the Ribbon is an improvement, I think the Blob is not. This is a fairly mild position, I hope you’ll agree.
Because users use what is written with the API. I brought up the example of Office using entirely custom controls as an example of Microsoft’s lack of effort being put in to creating a consistent UI across the operating system they themselves wrote. It was supposed to be an illustration, no more. API use is an important part of making a computing environment consistent, and my point is that if Microsoft (who wrote the OS and made the UI guidelines) completely ignore out their own API and rules, why should anyone try and adhere to them? Don’t believe me? Read this guy’s article (link goes to inner page of a multi-part series). He’s much more irritable than I am, too.
The point of that image I linked to is not that all the applications should look the same as a whole - it’s that the controls they use are all different; some subtly, some completely. There’s no reason for it, and it’s why you get threads like this. Good interface design does not happen in a vacuum, and usability is not just a matter of saying, “hey, I think this blob looks pretty - let’s use that!”
Sure, your initial statement was mild. This being the pit, our entire disagreement has been pretty darn mild…
Ok, but that doesn’t explain why you would bring it up in response to a statement that the new interface adds functionality and ease of use. And the new interface does have additional functionality and is easier to use. For goodness sakes, my sister teaches a class full of autistic elementary school kids, and they figured out the interface just fine. Nothing you say about the API changes that.
Well, we can both agree that guy’s irritable, at least 
But the image doesn’t convey that - all it shows is that those apps *look *different.
It illustrates Microsoft’s tendency to reinvent the wheel for each new application, which is precisely what the Office Blob typifies, and is what the OP was complaining about. Like I said before, UI consistency across multiple applications is a consideration if people are expected to simply pick up and start using something. When I’m writing a program, I don’t put the file menu at the bottom right, I don’t put my options in weird places, and I make sure that all sorts of other long-standing conventions are followed unless I’ve got a good reason to ignore them. Microsoft, inexplicably, do not. They regularly chuck out convention for no reason.
Consider the Ribbon. It’s a UI departure, but a good one: categories are clearly labelled, and expose functionality that was previously hidden away in obscure toolbars and context menus. Any fool can see that the Page Layout tab will get you a set of controls relating to page layout, and for the most part the icons therein are intuitive, giving ample indication of their function. Like I said, the Ribbon is a genuine improvement, and one which many programs would do well to ape.
The Office Blob does exactly the opposite; it takes an extremely familiar item (the file menu has to be one of the three most common GUI elements on any OS) and replaces it with something completely new, for no reason. There’s no reason whatsoever that some of the nifty things the blob does couldn’t have been just put in the File menu. It’s a retrograde step. Not a massive one, but it makes the interface less intuitive. I am solely talking about the Blob here; I’m saying that in this instance, Microsoft have subverted an incredibly well-established convention for no reason except that the Blob looked pretty. This is not good UI design. The Ribbon is (IMO) good UI design. On balance, Word 2007 is probably an improvement, because you’ve only got to find out what the Blob does once while the Ribbon is in constant use. That still does not make the Blob a good idea.
Well, yes (we’re talking about a GUI, after all), but they look different on two levels. They are all different in construction, because they do different things. That’s fine. But they are all made of different parts, which is inexplicable. Visio (an Office app) has a different menu bar to Word (an Office app). Visio doesn’t have the Office Blob despite being an Office app - it seems to survive just fine with the File menu. Its toolbars are different to those of Word. Both of them have completely different toolbars to Expression Blender (whose interface looks completely different to any Windows app I’ve seen). Word uses a different File Open dialog to Visio, which uses a different one to Visual Studio; none of them use the Common File Open dialog. This litany goes on and on, and it decreases usability of the Windows ecosystem as a whole.
Lest you think I’m making this stuff up, Microsoft have a 763-page set of guidelines that attempt to bring some sort of order to this craziness (and which they themselves studiously ignore). They know UI consistency is important, and they try and lay down some ground rules. There’s a “Top Rules” section. Rule 2?
“Use common controls and common dialogs”
It then goes on to give examples, notably the File Open Dialog. Which Office does not use.
I rest my case, yer honour.
FWIW, I fully agree with Badger.
I’ll just go ahead and put the above in again, since you ignored it…
