Microsoft 'Ribbonizes' Windows 8 File Manager 951
CWmike writes "Microsoft said today it will 'ribbonize' the file manager in next year's Windows 8, adding Explorer to the short list of integrated applications that already sport the interface in Windows 7. Microsoft's Alex Simons, director of program management, released screenshots of the new ribbon interface planned for Explorer (scroll way down). 'We evaluated several different UI command affordances including expanded versions of the Vista/Windows 7 command bar, Windows 95/Windows XP style toolbars and menus, several entirely new UI approaches, and the Office style ribbon,' explained Simons. 'Of these, the ribbon approach offered benefits in line with our goals.' Plans by Microsoft and others to ribbonize applications have often met resistance. 'We knew that using a ribbon for Explorer would likely be met with skepticism by a set of power users, but there are clear benefits,' Simons said."
Bleh (Score:2, Insightful)
Looks like a two year old designed it. Talk about cluttered. Explorer has a ribbon, the right mouse button.
Awful (Score:5, Insightful)
The ribbon is just awful. Generally it takes me 1-2 weeks to get back to 95+% productivity with a new machine. I am now over 18 months into Office 2007 at work, and still only at 75-80%. Important things were buried or burned to make the ribbon approach fit, so I am constantly having to dig for simple crap like "crop". Ugh, I was hoping it all would go the way of Clippy...
Upcoming news.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And alternative file manager downloads soar on Windows 8 launch day.
Windows professionals and consultants ready themselves for increased profits in tutoring a new array of people having difficulty simply working with their own files.
Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of s (Score:5, Insightful)
One word: WHY? (Score:3, Insightful)
My company's switch to Office 2007 nearly a year ago is still bringing groans from my coworkers (who by the way are engineers in their 20-30s for the most part). We love new things, and we love improvements; we abhor inefficiency and "stupid pretty things". If we wanted eye candy, we'd get a Mac.
I guess I should read more about their "clear benefits", because we are obviously missing them!
Bad Design (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter how you look at it, Ribbons are inefficient, badly designed UI elements.
Microsoft continues to floor me with how valiantly they push that envelope toward a cliff.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing they won't have a 'classic' look and feel option?
Re:Awful (Score:5, Insightful)
The ribbon is just awful.
The thing is, it's not a bad toolbar replacement, but it is an absolutely dreadful menu replacement. It is so much harder to find less-frequently-used functions now, and half the time when you find them, they are in a menu behind a little button!
The craziest thing is that Mac Office still has the ribbon - but RETAINS THE MENU! Why can't they do this on their flagship platform?
But what if you don't know what to look for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Word is famous for being able to do 1000 things to a document, but the interface makes it faster to only do 3-4 of those tasks, and make it frustratingly agonizing to find some little known feature, which pisses me off, ruins my experience, and blows all the efficiency I just gained on complaining and hunting for what I needed.
A Ribbon would be great if word only did about 50 things, but then that's the problem, word is bloated and crazy. They've put the right interface onto the wrong product.
Then again, a Ribbon on Explorer might not be bad, because it really only does 50 things.
Total Commander (Score:4, Insightful)
This new one even looks like it is a step backwards yet again. I hate the ribbon interfaces in Office 2007 and used a third party addon to get the old menus back, so I doubt if I will like the Windows 8 ribbons any better.
Re:Awful (Score:4, Insightful)
I could be wrong, but doesn't that have something to do with Apple's UI requirements? One thing that I always liked about OSX was that there was some consistency from program to program as to where certain things would be found. In Windows, you can generally find the preferences button in 3 different places depending upon where the UI designer felt like putting it.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate the ribbon. It's been 4 years... How long is enough time to be comfortable with it?
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Insightful)
I used office 2007 since beta.
I wish I could have those years back.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Insightful)
WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Awful (Score:3, Insightful)
The ribbon is just awful.
The thing is, it's not a bad toolbar replacement, but it is an absolutely dreadful menu replacement.
No, it's a crap toolbar replacement too: (i) they removed all ability to customise it and (ii) you can't show things from more than one "category" at once, meaning that a lot of things that used to be 1 click away are now 2 clicks away. Seriously, what POSSIBLE reason is there to stop people from customizing the toolbars/menus to make them work the way THEY want them to?
Add on top of that the changes it implies to keyboard shortcuts (and just to really mess with the users, they decided to make it so that *some* of the old shortcuts still work but with no predictable way of telling which ones... and of course for the shortcuts which were based on the old menus you now lose the visual cues that you used to have).
And that's just the issues with Ribbon as a concept. The implementation is awful too... many things just not in anything like the "logical" place (I've resorted to just googling what I want to do immediately if the old keyboard shortcut doesn't work now, it's quicker). My workplace switched to 2007 over 12 months ago and people are *STILL* struggling every day to find things which used to be easy.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.
- Jamie Zawinski
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:5, Insightful)
How is haphazardly mixing multiple sizes of buttons with complex scrolling controls and text an improvement in UI design? My gosh, have you actually looked at this thing?
Putting commonly used features within easy reach is inarguably good UI. Making it customizable so that the definition of "commonly used" can be modified by the user, however, is also inarguably good UI. Doing this, by definition, necessitates something approaching standardization of icon sizes, layouts, etc. Instead, what we have here looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.
Let's look at what's wrong with this UI design, point by point:
Tabbed navigation incorrectly used to select between banks of controls
Tabbed navigation is assumed to affect the contents of the screen as a whole. It is a fundamental abuse of the metaphor to use it to choose between banks of controls.
The need for tabs is a clear indication that you are bringing way too many controls to the forefront of the user's attention.
Most users won't notice the tabs, and will be confused if they accidentally click on one because they won't know how to get back to the controls that they're used to. They will, in turn, file bugs or call tech support.
Tabbed navigation shares a row with other information
I'm guessing that the blob called "File" is not part of the navigation tabs, but it appears to be. While it might seem convenient to reduce the vertical spacing by placing unrelated information in a tab bar, it's extremely confusing. It looks to me like two different things are selected in a single tab bar, which is just plain wrong.
Unhelpful grouping labels
Although conceptual grouping of icons can be useful in terns of keeping related things together, it is generally not useful to label those groups. This wastes valuable vertical screen real estate and adds nothing to the user's understanding. Yes, in some way, burning a file to disc is conceptually similar to emailing it to someone, but a label called "send" doesn't add meaning, and is actually a bit confusing.
Inconsistent levels of detail, and non-independent controls
There are wildly different levels of detail between different features in this UI. You have simple tasks like "Print" that presumably open their own dialog boxes, and then you have things like sharing preferences in which lots of detail is crammed into a single section of the ribbon bar for no good reason. "Sharing options" could be a single icon in a button bar that brings up a modal sheet or dialog box, and no convenience would be lost.
In general, UI elements should be independent unless you are in a dialog box or sheet. Clicking an item in a button bar or similar should cause either an action to occur or a dialog box to appear for getting more information. Items in button bars should absolutely not depend on other items in the bar for their behavior.
Minor variations have separate buttons instead of a pop-up menu
If there are several UI elements that conceptually do the same thing, then they should be combined into a single menu item with a pop-up menu to choose which specific variant action should be performed.
Example 1: "Send" button: display a pop-up for email, burning, etc. (Note: compressing a file is *not* an equivalent action, and should *not* be listed with the rest of those.)
Example 2: "Clipboard" button: for all of the various cut, copy, and paste options, show a hierarchical menu that pops up when you click the clipboard/pasteboard button.
By making those two changes, you've turned basically two ribbon bar tabs into two or three buttons with a couple of simple pop-up menus and a simple modal sheet.
Rarely used UI options are artificially elevated
Most people don't add or remove columns in their views regularly. That's the sort of thing that you pretty much do once when you first get a computer, assuming
Here's a thought you morons... (Score:5, Insightful)
Jeez
Any benefit from ribbons (which I haven't seen any yet) is lost from me not being able to find stuff. Excel was just plain nasty trying to find things in. I still have a difficult time finding things that I don't use very often, but had used enough to make some sense about why they were in a specific menu.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong, the Ribbon is Awful; too many clicks (Score:4, Insightful)
I am currently working on a Word document that has all the usual bells and whistles: tables, multiple styles, bullets, pictures, drawigs, etc.
It is awful.
Most of the time is spent moving the mouse around and switchings tabs.
Sure, it is easier to find the various commands with the Ribbon, but it takes a lot more time than toolbars. With toolbars, whatever you needed was there, you just had to move the mouse to reach it. Now, with the Ribbon, you have to move the mouse, click the appropriate tab AND move the mouse to the appropriate command.
Whoever designed the Ribbon is a complete moron. It now takes double the time to do the same work.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, I can learn to use it. In fact I can guarantee that I will "get used to it". That doesn't mean it is good. I don't see anyone complaining about Windows 7's snap to the boarder feature. That is new, but it is also a good improvement. I didn't hear anyone complain when quick launch buttons were added to the task bar. In fact, I didn't hear anyone complain about the task bar at all when it was added. These were good IMPROVEMENTS to the UI, so while they were different, no one complained.
The ribbon is bad UI, and the sooner MS admits it, the sooner we can start moving in a positive direction.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Insightful)
It is utterly baffling to long time users
I have been using word processors since Display Write for DOS and didn't find it "baffling". It is basically the same as the old menus but with icons instead of just a list. People sort of knew this was a good idea back in the Windows 95 days when toolbars were first introduced to save you digging through menus for common tasks like changing the font or printing. The ribbon is just a toolbar with tabs.
The ribbon is nice because the icons actually show you what you get if you click on them and are better organised. Finding things is no harder than going through the various menus was in previous versions, except that now you can do it quicker because the brain can recognise pictures faster than it can recognise words.
It does take about five minutes to get used to and isn't necessarily appropriate for every app, but as a programmer who occasionally uses MS Office for documentation and the like I much prefer it. Previous versions fumbled around trying to be helpful with idiocy like Clippy, "personalised" menus and toolbars that only appear when you click on an image or a table, but now everything is on the ribbon and properly organised.
Re:Awful (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, what POSSIBLE reason is there to stop people from customizing the toolbars/menus to make them work the way THEY want them to?
I know that was probably rhetorical, but it's worth answering.
One of Microsoft's big problems in Office 97-2003 was that people were not noticing features that Microsoft wanted them to use (features that, if relied upon, made their software the only good solution on the market in the process. Extended features, especially ones with IP attached, provide lock-in and/or licensing). So they found a way to advertise the features they want you to use, and combined it with features that are popular. You don't want your customers customizing your ad space. Adding all the most popular commands alongside means that they got fewer complaints when users figured out that their software is telling them how to use it (In Soviet Russia), instead of the other way around.
The ribbon is the application equivalent of a billboard. It's there to advertise the extended (and usually less interoperable or legally encumbered) features of Microsoft's awesome software, because no one could find them in the Byzantine menu system, and they weren't leveraging the full value of their product as a result. This was baffling to Microsoft. That was its purpose in Office 2007.
It's also patented. That is its purpose when extended to all the other products. Lawsuit bait. Like it or lump it, Microsoft is aggressively pursuing a patent arsenal in a patent arms race.
It is not there for any reason other than to serve Microsoft. They carefully test market exactly what they can get away with, the same way advertisers test market an ad that might cross the line with its audience. If MS goes to an ad-based model, expect to see Flash advertisements in the Ribbon.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Insightful)
If you didn't have the damn ribbon interface (like it used to be) you wouldn't need to minimize it.