[Not so OT] MS Office UI Developments
Tonight the local CHI meeting, I listened to a presentation by Jensen Harris, a key designer behind the new Microsoft Office user interface. He presented a history of Word and Office and how it evolved into Office 2003, and then went into a live demo of the new office apps sporting the ribbon interface and contextual interaction. Mr. Harris acknowledged they (MS) are taking a risk in changing the UI/interaction of the apps. And it was great to hear someone so close to the project speak in detail about how it's supposed to work and why they chose to do what they're doing. A couple of things jumped out at me while watching the presentation: 1) the Runtime guys were on a similar track with their somewhat-context-sensitive inspector thing (but there are way too many sub-level choices to be made in the palette) 2) the fact that Rev developers can create rich menus by using stacks would seem to bode well for a future of making apps that run alongside the Office experience (regardless of how valid you think MS's UI direction is) In the last few minutes of his talk, Mr. Harris demoed a UI treatment that I personally find very interesting and appealing: a floating contextual palette of sorts. Initially it comes up ghosted (translucent), positioned out of the way from the item you are editing; the palette gets more opaque as you mouse toward it, and becomes more transparent as you mouse away from it. Pretty cool stuff. There were a lot of good points made, and one that was quite refreshing to hear: "Remove to simplify." I wrote down a bunch of points that seemed like they might worth posting, but Mr. Harris also has a blog where you can read his personal comments about development of the project: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh Regards, Scott Rossi Creative Director Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] W: http://www.tactilemedia.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: [Not so OT] MS Office UI Developments
Fascinating... Judy --will read blog in the a.m. ... On Wed, 14 Dec 2005, Scott Rossi wrote: > Tonight the local CHI meeting, I listened to a presentation by Jensen > Harris, a key designer behind the new Microsoft Office user interface. > I wrote down a bunch of points that seemed like they might worth posting, > but Mr. Harris also has a blog where you can read his personal comments > about development of the project: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: [Not so OT] MS Office UI Developments
Scott, that's funny, we had a meeting with our MS TAM (tech. account mgr) for our MS support contract. His presentation was made in Office 12 beta (never crashed) - and his words struck me as quite funny - MS imposes new products on the poor MS employees PC - "they should eat their own dog food" he said was the inhouse policy... We just saw powerpoint's UI briefly before the presentation he made. The UI is definitely simpler although some things seemed out of place (tabs in toolbars for example). My feeling remains the same, it was nothing we couldn't do in rev ;) Menus with a WinXP or newer UI do need a custom stack menu approach but it is not impossible. What is missing in rev is making that menu stack API a bit more interactive or rev-event capable so we can add revolutionaries' intelligence ;) just a thought -=- Xavier Bury Clearstream Services TNS NT LAN Server [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 14/12/2005 09:11:03: > Tonight the local CHI meeting, I listened to a presentation by Jensen > Harris, a key designer behind the new Microsoft Office user interface. He > presented a history of Word and Office and how it evolved into Office 2003, > and then went into a live demo of the new office apps sporting the ribbon > interface and contextual interaction. Mr. Harris acknowledged they (MS) are > taking a risk in changing the UI/interaction of the apps. And it was great > to hear someone so close to the project speak in detail about how it's > supposed to work and why they chose to do what they're doing. > > A couple of things jumped out at me while watching the presentation: > > 1) the Runtime guys were on a similar track with their > somewhat-context-sensitive inspector thing (but there are way too many > sub-level choices to be made in the palette) > > 2) the fact that Rev developers can create rich menus by using stacks would > seem to bode well for a future of making apps that run alongside the Office > experience (regardless of how valid you think MS's UI direction is) > > In the last few minutes of his talk, Mr. Harris demoed a UI treatment that I > personally find very interesting and appealing: a floating contextual > palette of sorts. Initially it comes up ghosted (translucent), positioned > out of the way from the item you are editing; the palette gets more opaque > as you mouse toward it, and becomes more transparent as you mouse away from > it. Pretty cool stuff. > > There were a lot of good points made, and one that was quite refreshing to > hear: > > "Remove to simplify." > > I wrote down a bunch of points that seemed like they might worth posting, > but Mr. Harris also has a blog where you can read his personal comments > about development of the project: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh > > Regards, > > Scott Rossi > Creative Director > Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design > - > E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > W: http://www.tactilemedia.com - To make communications with Clearstream easier, Clearstream has recently changed the email address format to conform with industry standards. The new format is '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'. Visit us at http://www.clearstream.com IMPORTANT MESSAGE Internet communications are not secure and therefore Clearstream International does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message. The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. Any views expressed in this e-mail are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of Clearstream International or of any of its affiliates or subsidiaries. END OF DISCLAIMER ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: [Not so OT] MS Office UI Developments
For those folks interested in UI... The local CHI group posted slide (2.8MB) and audio (84MB) downloads from Jensen Harris's recent presentation on MS's UI redesign of Office. http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20051213/ Regards, Scott Rossi Creative Director Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] W: http://www.tactilemedia.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: [Not so OT] MS Office UI Developments
I am still downloading this, since I usually find my interfaces awkward, I often look into any resources that can help me build better UIs... In my opinion, the best MS Office interface was the Office:Mac interface, far better than it's windows cousin... the inspector works fine, things fit together... cheers andre On Dec 16, 2005, at 6:05 PM, Scott Rossi wrote: For those folks interested in UI... The local CHI group posted slide (2.8MB) and audio (84MB) downloads from Jensen Harris's recent presentation on MS's UI redesign of Office. http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20051213/ Regards, Scott Rossi Creative Director Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] W: http://www.tactilemedia.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution