Tommy27 wrote: > Regarding the Ribbon i had chance to try it on Office 2007 and i can tell > that it really sucks... it's context sensitivity is a pain in the ass... a > computer will never exactly anticipate what i need, it will only mess up > things to piss me off.
I agree. But context sensitivity, if implemented carefully, can at least come close to what most of the users need. Some manual work will still be necessary, but it's better than doing all manually. Wrt. Office 2007: I made a similar experience with it. The defined contexts didn't match my expectations most of the time. That's not surprising, because expectations are very subjective. So I think it would have been better if they had defined their tool sets closer to the former toolbars so that users only had to learn a new UI concept but find the elements in them somewhat more familiar. And the biggest mistakes they did was to remove the menu and not to offer a choice to select the old GUI. > The icon size is a ridiculous example of bad use of screen space just to > please aestetichs that will not help you at all when you use the software. Harold also mentioned that and I agree. I hope that the feedback to our prototype will reveal that. BTW: taking part in that process will be more efficient than signing a petition. ;-) So whether you signed it or not, please take part in the feedback. A petition not to copy the ribbon is pointless if the addressees of it don't have the intent to do that anyway. So you have been warned. :-) But obviously all the 200 petition signers think that the "Renaissance" prototype has too much similarities to the ribbon UI. So here's a hint to all of them: you could do yourself a favour by using the feedback to the prototype to list the complaints. But please be specific, a comment like "this GUI sucks" will not help if you don't explain why. > And i could go on and on to enumerate all the drawbacks towards the old MS > GUI. > > Now Renaissance, which despite what all you Renaissance guys are keep > telling us, is just a Ribbonized-OOo-GUI... you have been inspired by it but > you still deny it saying that similarities are coincidence... sorry, i don't > believe that. > > So it seems funny to me to see that you say “no, it's not a Ribbon” and then > you defend Ribbon assuming that we hate it just because it's MS.... I didn't defend the ribbon. In fact, I really dislike it for some reasons. But I like the idea of a context sensitive user interface. > now i have questions for you, Mathias: > do you think the Ribbon is a good interface? I think I have done that above. > do you think it really helped productivity of MS Office users? I don't know, but I'm sure it depends. If you never had used MS Office before I think you could be more productive (and less annoyed) with a context sensitive GUI. But I also believe that many current users will see a drop in productivity. As I wrote above, IMHO one of the two biggest problem of the MS Office 2007 GUI is that it totally ignores this fact. It urges all users to make the switch, even if they don't want to. > If it is that good why so many MS Office 2007 users would like to downgrade > to the old GUI? > why people is offering a kind of plugin to recreate MS old GUI to replace > the Ribbon? The user base of MSO as well as that of OOo is too big to expect that all can be pleased. Even if some of them just didn't want to change because they resist to change as an end in itself, many users have good reasons to prefer the old GUI and that should have been valued. > Why you did not realize that Renaissance would face the same negative > response of Ribbon? Oh, I expected that when I saw the prototype. That's why I said that the UX people should have explained it better. > The fact is: leave us the old GUI (as an option or an extension), then do > whatever you want with the Renaissance... i would never use it because i > don't need it and despite your good intention it will not help my work but > only disturb it. If you have read my first mail, you should know that this is my suggestion also. Regards, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[email protected]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
