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."
RIM style management? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is Microsoft taking a page from the RIM management playbook? It seems to me like they're deliberately trying to make themselves irrelevant by not giving people what they clearly want. I guess hubris strikes every large company eventually. They're systematically flushing themselves down the toilet with every release of code. It will be interesting to see the post-Windows world in a few years.
Good Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Interesting)
I offer you a challenge then: Force yourself to use the ribbon interface until you become comfortable with it, then try and go back. After doing this tell me whether you still think the ribbon is a bad idea. Personally I believe almost everyone who bitches about the ribbon is actually complaining about change in general - so eliminate that from the equation.
The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:5, Interesting)
The ribbon wouldn't be anywhere near so bad if it had a "quick search" feature. Either a box or some kind of keyboard focus capture where you can start typing a word and it would search all possible command names and descriptions, displaying the results in the ribbon. The number of commands is small enough that such a search could be extremely fast.
For example, search for "paste" and you get a ribbon bar with the options:
Paste | Paste Special | Paste as Text | Paste as HTML | Quick Paste | Paste as New Foo
I hate searching through all the ribbon panes to find a simple command. A good example another poster mentioned is where the "create zip archive" button is. A quick search for "zip" would make that painless.
Given the focus on searching in Windows Vista and 7 I can't fathom why they haven't done this yet.
Re:One word: WHY? (Score:4, Interesting)
I particularly like this graphic:
http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-29-43-metablogapi/8422.Figure-21-_2D00_-Real-Estate-comparison_5F00_2.png [msdn.com]
You get to see TWO MORE FILES!!!! with the ribbon...
Except if you streamline your W7 explorer you'll get about 6 back.
Let's compare the most streamlined W8 layout to the least streamlined W7 one! MARKETING!!
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:4, Interesting)
The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.
It isn't, though it's a change indeed. The reason is that the menus and the ribbon use different methods to locate the necessary action.
Menus are static. The "Edit" menu is always where it was before, and you don't need to think when you open it. Similarly, items within that menu are static as well (except when the most stupid option is enabled to make it into a surprise.) As result, menus can be operated mechanistically, without thinking at all.
This is not the case with ribbons. Ribbons change all the time, and when you need a function you need to realize first what ribbon are you seeing right now - and then what ribbon to activate instead of this one. This requires stopping thinking about your document and starting thinking about the UI.
On top of that, ribbons are pictograms - images that need to be actively recognized to be usable. Menus are words that can be read much faster. Nobody in the USA argues for writing menu text in Chinese, but why do we allow that in ribbons? Those chicken scratches that they sell as ribbon buttons are less recognizable than many Chinese glyphs. Menus are instantly discoverable; ribbons are not - you can't figure out what the ribbon element is going to do just by seeing it.
This reminds me that people universally hated VI for its stateful interface. But now people laud ribbons that are just as stateful! Does it mean that pretty pictures are more important than usability?
Note also that not every human is equally adept in recognizing images. Some do it with ease, other can't do it if their life depends on that. Why does MS force me to play "Where is Waldo?" each time I need to insert a footnote in the document? Some people are specifically procedure-oriented; it's easier for them to click on "Insert" - "Reference" - "Footnote" than to stare at the ribbon in vain attempt to understand what they are seeing there. It doesn't help that ribbons are context-dependent and tabs get added or removed while you aren't looking.
Ribbons also take far more space on the screen. They can be minimized, though, at expense of another delay.
Ribbons have no hierarchy beyond the two levels. If you need "Edit" - "Table" - Insert Row" you can't do that. You have to have a ribbon for "Table" and within that ribbon you cram everything else.
What if you run out of space? Well, then there is another horrific feature of ribbons. You click on a teeny-weeny pixel in a corner of one specific ribbon button, and then it drops down to expand that button and perhaps list there the function that you are so desperately seeking. Wasn't the whole idea of ribbons to make it easy to click? How many people have eyesight sharp enough to see that little down arrow, and hands steady enough to click on that arrow?
IMO, ribbons add nothing to the user's experience. They are an improvement in the area that required no improvement. Worst of all, MS pushes ribbons as the only UI of their wares, regardless of your opinion. MS does that only because it can, because the customer is locked into their product. There are other software houses, like Autodesk, that took a more careful approach. Their Inventor, for example, comes with ribbons by default, but a single checkbox in settings reverts it back to the traditional menu system. This proves that UI can be customized, and it's not a rocket science - and MS would be the most qualified team to do it. They force ribbons upon us just because they can.
Re:One word: WHY? (Score:2, Interesting)
I know it's a radical concept, but maybe you should read TFA, [msdn.com] specifically the subsection labeled "Designing for a wider screen."
Re:Awful (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you actually hit upon the main problem with the ribbon in your defense of it. The ribbon is in fact a great replacement for the old toolbar system and so, when you sit and spend the time to customize the bar, just like when you used to customize the toolbar, you are going to work faster.
However, as a general purpose tool for finding commands it's awful. It relies on you already not just knowing the command you are looking for, but that you know what the shortcut to it looks like. Worse, sometimes those commands are buried under other commands.
I do a lot of work in autocad, and while %90 of what i do I do on the keyboard or on the tool-bars, but there are hundreds of commands, many I simply don't use on a regular basis. All I usually need to find the command is to go to the menu of related commands, and read the short descriptions of the functions there. That's what the menu is there for, to provide some insight for the available commands and that is not what the ribbon provides.
I shudder to think of having to provide me grandmother with instructions over the phone on how to do something where I have to explain to her toolbar icons rather then just telling her the command she is looking for. Fortunately, she's still on windows XP.
Re:Bad Design (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost everyone hates change, period.
Mr Obama respectfully disagrees.
Re:Paging Darth Vader (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus the UI is inconsistent. Specifics: sometimes an icon has accompanying text - and sometimes an icon is small, with barely discernable details and no text label, and it's is hard to know its function. And sometimes, functionality is not even present on the ribbon but instead must be accessed by multiple clicks required to drill down several layers. I found that the ribbon in Word, in many common cases I need to use, adds extra steps and slows me down compared to the straightforward Office 2003 menus. Not just me, some of my clients complain how more difficult it is to do anything not common now. The ribbon is dumbed down UI, not improved UI.
Further, some tasks like 'insertion' are now scattered around through several tabs. They eliminated a clear top menu and replaced it with chow mein. For example, the actions of inserting a page break and inserting a cross-reference and inserting an image are now under different tabs. So you have to rethink your need from 'action-first' (verb first) to 'class of what is acted on-first' (noun-first). I maintain that is not how people think. We think 'I want to do THIS to THIS'. We don't think "I want the car to drive' but 'I want to drive the car'. The Ribbon appears to inconsistently implement the UI, sometimes using a reverse polish notation and sometimes not, which is an idea horrlble. :) That is a key UI semantic issue with this damned Ribbon.
Microsoft has actually caused me more labor in common activities, and may their trendy designers and marketing managers rot in zombie hell for it.