Microsoft Announces New Windows 10 Start Menu Design, Updated Alt-Tab (theverge.com) 140
Microsoft is testing a number of Windows 10 upgrades to a small number of testers, including changes to the Alt-Tab function and a new Start menu design. The Verge reports: "We are freshening up the Start menu with a more streamlined design that removes the solid color backplates behind the logos in the apps list and applies a uniform, partially transparent background to the tiles," explains Microsoft in a blog post. Essentially, the reduction in the color of the blocky tiled interface on the Start menu will simplify it slightly and make it easier to scan for the apps you use on a daily basis. It's a subtle change, but it certainly makes the Start menu look a little less chaotic and avoids many tiles sharing a similar blue color.
Alongside an updated Start menu, the latest Windows 10 build includes some big changes to Alt-Tab. "Beginning with today's build, all tabs open in Microsoft Edge will start appearing in Alt-Tab, not just the active one in each browser window," explains Microsoft. This seems like a change that might be a little confusing for veteran Windows users, but Microsoft is thankfully allowing you to switch back to the classic Alt-Tab experience.
Microsoft is also making some smaller changes with this new Windows 10 build. The default taskbar appearance will also now be more personalized with the Xbox app pinned for Xbox Live users or Your Phone pinned for Android users. This will be limited to new account creation on a PC or first login, so existing taskbar layouts will remain unchanged. Notifications now include an X in the top right corner to allow you to quickly dismiss them, and Microsoft is also improving its Settings app in Windows 10. Links that would typically push you toward the system part of the legacy Control Panel system page will now direct you to the About page in Settings. This will now house the more advanced controls typically found in that system section of the Control Panel, and Microsoft is promising "there will be more improvements coming that will further bring Settings closer to Control Panel."
Alongside an updated Start menu, the latest Windows 10 build includes some big changes to Alt-Tab. "Beginning with today's build, all tabs open in Microsoft Edge will start appearing in Alt-Tab, not just the active one in each browser window," explains Microsoft. This seems like a change that might be a little confusing for veteran Windows users, but Microsoft is thankfully allowing you to switch back to the classic Alt-Tab experience.
Microsoft is also making some smaller changes with this new Windows 10 build. The default taskbar appearance will also now be more personalized with the Xbox app pinned for Xbox Live users or Your Phone pinned for Android users. This will be limited to new account creation on a PC or first login, so existing taskbar layouts will remain unchanged. Notifications now include an X in the top right corner to allow you to quickly dismiss them, and Microsoft is also improving its Settings app in Windows 10. Links that would typically push you toward the system part of the legacy Control Panel system page will now direct you to the About page in Settings. This will now house the more advanced controls typically found in that system section of the Control Panel, and Microsoft is promising "there will be more improvements coming that will further bring Settings closer to Control Panel."
The Edge users are fascinated (Score:2, Funny)
Both of them.
You need to update your jokesm (Score:3)
Chrome is the new IE6.
The only thing that differs, is that they don't risk another Mozilla catching them in their sleep, by adding kitchen sinks at a pace that nobody can keep up with. :) With their own core becoming unable to keep holding all the kitchen sinks together, and it coming apart like a Laurel & Hardy car. :)
It *will* be funny when they inevitably end up like Windows ME, though.
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Of course. The got into the Cloud game fairly early, having recognized from the beginning the utility of Hotmail and the advantage of providing extra storage with One Drive. Then Ballmer got involved and it stagnated for a decade, letting AWS and Google roar past them in capabilities and utility. Now Nadella has the unenviable task of playing catch-up with one hand tied behind him by Ballmer's enormous entrenched bureaucracy.
Is Microsoft taken over by Mozilla? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is Microsoft taken over by Mozilla? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Microsoft has got themselves to the point where the first and only thing i thought when reading this is 'oh, they found a good excuse to reset all privacy settings again and seen the nature of this change probably put back all the advertisements back in the start menu so I'll have to remove them again too. Annoying.'
I'm not thinking anything positive. I'd be positive if they announced to bring the windows 95-7 start menu back and bury this whole metro thing somewhere stars not shine.
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What was wrong with Progman? :o)
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What was wrong with Progman? :o)
Doesn't allow nested groups? This might actually be a good thing, as it forces you to pick and choose what you want in your primary groups, or you get a horrible heap of clutter. Lacks the ability to sort the icons? Again, this forces you to be choosy about which icons you keep.
So I guess... nothing?
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Microsoft is poorly managed. (Score:2)
New York Times story about Classic Shell [nytimes.com].
I'm amazed at how poorly Microsoft is managed. The company managers seem to lack social ability.
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Of course development stopped. What is your point? ClassicShell is complete. It does what it is supposed to do and it works. And the last version still works today on the latest version of Windows 10 LipStick.
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Re: Microsoft is poorly managed. (Score:2)
Given the state of things like windows 95 and windows 3,3.1, 3.11 I would say that has always been the case.
Only things that has changed is the version numbers published
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I used Classic shell w/ Windows 10 when I upgraded from Windows 8. Actually, Classic Shell did a better job on Windows 10, since I didn't have the blown up icons devouring more screen space, but the good ole Windows 7 style layout
Re: Is Microsoft taken over by Mozilla? (Score:2, Offtopic)
I suspect a much broader mental illness in our society: Zen-like minimalism.
See, there are people who want to bring an unbearable reality and a wishful fantasy together, by forcing the world into their delusion. That's your regular Abrahamic religious extremists.
And then there's the people who want to resolve that conflict, by taking their own existence out of the equation. This results in minimalism. (Where "-ism" always indicated irrational obsessive ideological behavior subset.) The extreme final result
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Why am I telling you this?
I don't think you sufficiently answered that question.
Re: Is Microsoft taken over by Mozilla? (Score:2)
Then put some effort into it. I can only simplify it so much, before the essence is lost. You need to do your part too. I'm not your teacher.
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> That's your regular Abrahamic religious extremists...
> And taking away features to make life "simpler"
You should definitely walk into a Baroque-style church some time. Now *there* are some Abrahamic religious extremists who got it right. Churches and synagogues (I don't know about mosques) these days look so drab in comparison.
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When all you have is a pig, all you can do is apply lipstick.
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"...and if you had a dog that looked like that, you'd shave it's arse and teach it to walk backwards, but you couldn't teach an animal to fuck like that, so she's the sorta Sheila for me!"
- Kevin Bloody Wilson
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It's important not to ignore the larger more important issue here: software freedom. Mozilla, for all of the irritations Firefox may impose by default, delivers a free software [gnu.org] web browser to us all. That software freedom is why Firefox has been the basis of other important web browsers such as the Tor Browser [torproject.org]. Microsoft chiefly distributes proprietary software and Edge is no exception even if part of it comes from free software. Microsoft champions "open source" to the ex
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Given how Microsoft decided to tack on Chromium features to Edge, I wouldn't think they're taken over by Mozilla. They're more into copying Google these days.
Yeah, Windows 10 has just become slower and slower w/ every rev. Previously, I used to have Windows Classic Shell, but after a while, the whole thing became so slow that I just deleted the OS and did a complete clean installation. After doing it, I installed nothing except Steam: actually, games are all I use it for, and the occasional website tha
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Or the other way around. :(
The death of Control Panel (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite obvious Microsoft is hellbent on hiding anything useful the end user might need. What once could be done from one central location is now being spread across an innumerable number of separate and confusing interfaces, some of which have no relation to what you're trying to accomplish.
Ever since Windows 2000 there has been a deliberate and concerted effort to hide functions and reduce functionality. Windows 10 will eventually become so unusable, so difficult for the average person to make changes, that Microsoft will be able to force feed whatever spyware and advertising they want down people's throats and get it to stay because people won't be able to figure out how to change things.
That part about putting an X in the upper corner of notifications speaks volumes. In an enterprise situation, when you are notified your password needs changed, the notification stays visible for all of three seconds when you log in.
Conversely, if there's some notification about how great OneDrive is or would you like to take a survey, that stays visible forever in a day. And not only that, if you wanted to get to something behind that notification, it still doesn't disappear. It takes over the system and will not allow to get to you want until an hour or so later OR you have to manually remove it. Yes, manually removing something which shouldn't exist in the first place is tiresome, not to mention annoying, especially when you're trying to get something accomplished.
Anyone else notice when you type cmd to get a command prompt there's a massive window with all manner of useless items sprawled across your screen?
Forget simple. Windows 10 has been a decades long pursuit to make computing a firehose of disinformation for the end user, a veritable minotaur's maze designed by programmers who gleefully cackle when they get to show off their leet skills with buttons and bells and bobbing baubles.
Re:The death of Control Panel (Score:5, Informative)
It's quite obvious Microsoft is hellbent on hiding anything useful the end user might need. What once could be done from one central location is now being spread across an innumerable number of separate and confusing interfaces, some of which have no relation to what you're trying to accomplish.
Errr not at all. Microsoft simply changed the name of control panel to "Settings" and is slowly porting all of control panel functionality over to it. Seriously every successive windows version has one less thing in the control panel and one less reason to go to it. It is all very much being put in "one central location".
Just in a new location, different to the location you used 20 years ago.
Re:The death of Control Panel (Score:5, Funny)
So you are saying that settings is having the functionality of Control panel slowly ported to it - so it does not have all the functionality currently,
So I still need to use the Control Panel - and Settings - but they will continually change where things are ? ...and you don't see this as a problem?
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It's sad to see how UIs have regressed in the last few years.
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This would be fine if the Settings app? menu? actually worked. They're constantly breaking the print subsection in setting by making the Manage option unclickable for a printer. I'm always telling users to go to the old control panel that actually works.
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Nor would it be as easy to hold users hostage to their constant downgrades. Users can disable downgrades at the cost of ever having their settings centralised.
Re:The death of Control Panel (Score:5, Interesting)
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As nice as it is to have every option in a big list, I wouldn't rely on memorising how to enable an esoteric feature, or even rely on said feature. There will come a time when you're using another computer, or Microsoft moves your cheese and then you're stuck because all you were ever used to was doing something in a non standard way. Then you get to sit there thumbing through the Settings window that you've never used before swearing at your PC while grandma next to you could find said setting in a minute.
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It's worth learning the official away even if it treats you like an idiot.
After 29 years of suffering Microsoft Windows I just didn't install it on my newest machine. A year later and I don't let Windows do anything important now, soon nothing at all. Linux may irritate from time to time but the Windows UI experience has become a festering case of the clap.
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> Anyone else notice when you type cmd to get a command prompt there's
> a massive window with all manner of useless items sprawled across your screen?
No. Perhaps you can enlighten us.
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Yeah, I just tried this. Hit the 'Windows' key, typed 'cmd' and got this:
https://imgur.com/a/X9zAJBN [imgur.com]
Now there's a bunch of white space I don't _need_ in there, and I don't need or use the filters along the top, but everything else? Pertinent and indeed 'Run as Administrator' is often one I use.
The panel is under a third of the screen width and well under half the screen height, so it's hardly oversized either.
Maybe the original poster is using Windows on an old 13" laptop with a 1024x768 screen.
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The usual question when MS makes changes (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual when MS comes up with daring new ideas for Windows: How do I avoid/revert them?
Re:The usual question when MS makes changes (Score:5, Informative)
OpenShell is good: https://open-shell.github.io/O... [github.io]
It's based on Classic Start Menu which was open sourced a few years back.
But maybe try the new start menu first, if you were not already using OpenShell then it's actually a decent upgrade over the old one. Occasionally Microsoft does good, purely by accident I'm sure.
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Nougat is also good. Very, very good. So good that I'd crawl over the dead corpse of the person I love to get some. But if you force it down my throat, you may still expect me to puke.
Who hid my cheese tournament 2020 season starts .. (Score:5, Insightful)
if it ain't broke... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stop fixing what isn't broken, and start fixing what is.
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That's right! We don't want you to fix it by giving us a NEW version, we want you to fix it in the OLD version, because we don't like change very much. What's that? A fix would BE a new version? I don't want to hear about that. You should have done it right the first time.
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I'm sure they'll find a way to make it worse. They'll probs ly change it to a ribbon.
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The previous one was fine though and I want _that_ back.
Then you should be happy with the change they made, as it is very much a visual change towards the previous one by removing the stupid bloody background squares. Sure you haven't got everything but based on your desires to have the old one back what they messed with here was a step which should please you and for you would provide an improvement.
Honestly you sound like you're complaining for complaints sake.
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Honestly you sound like you're complaining for complaints sake.
Absolutely right on that. I moved to Kubuntu something like 20 years ago. I still occasionally use Win10 in a VM, but it's such garbage... I pay for the license, so I get the right to complain, damn right !!! ;-P
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> What century are you from?
Leonard "Bones" McCoy: What's wrong with you?
Elderly Patient: Kidney dialysis...
Leonard "Bones" McCoy: My god, what is this, the Dark Ages?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Open Shell is the answer (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the answer:
https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
Microsoft needs to put it into windows.
The simple menu works really well.
If they want to do even better, they could let each application classify itself... Like the Linux desktop Environments do by convention...
Sure. This will work. (Score:4, Interesting)
As I write this I have fifty-one (51) tabs open in my browser. This change to Alt-Tab makes no sense at all.
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But is that browser Edge? And if so, why?
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Why should it matter which browser it is? Treating Edge in a special way would be annoying. Of course, in this case, putting every tab on a separate alt-tab tile is a way to ensure I don’t use that browser.
Alt-tab is for cycling windows. Ctrl-tab is for cycling tabs. Shift goes backwards. Simple. Please leave it that way. At the very least, give me a way to turn the new behaviour off and never, ever reset my choice. But I know this is way too much to expect of Microsoft.
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I'm still shocked at the number of long-time Windows users who see me Alt-Tab and say, "How did you do that? Is that a new feature?"
This shouldn't bother me much since I almost never use Edge, but unless turning that feature off is easy and obvious it does seem like a stupid change for a function that has been in place since Win 3.1.
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Google briefly (maybe 2 Android versions?) defaulted the switcher to show every individual tan in chrome. Luckily there was a setting to just show chrome as one item you could switch back. In this period my wife's switcher was always a nightmare of open tabs. She wouldn't use it at all, just got home and go to the apps menu and "relaunch" whatever other app she was using until she gave up and set it back, too.
Thankfully they ended this behavior. But I'm sure it will work out for Microsoft.
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So in your case just disable the new Alt-Ctrl and go back to the old standard Alt-Ctrl.
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DOH should watch what I type before I submit I of course meant Alt-Tab not Alt_Ctrl. 8^(
"We are freshening up the Start menu" (Score:5, Insightful)
That show how out of touch they are. Freshen up my coffee - sure. Freshen up the paint job in my study - OK, nice idea as long as I don't have to work elsewhere for a week. Freshen up the background images - great.
Freshen up the Start Menu and all those other things that I depend on every minute, no thanks. Why not "freshen up" the positions of the accelerator, brake and clutch in my car while you're about it?
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This trend in computing is indeed annoying - especially now that updates are automatic and made as difficult as possible (if at all) to refuse.
UI and workflow changes should never be automatic updates. They should be included in "new versions" of a software product. Security updates and bug fixes? Yes, those can be auto-updated.
Sadly there are almost no companies doing that these days - everyone seems to be focused on pushing their views of a better UI or workflow, without consent, on users. It's not just
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I moved all my important stuff to Linux a dozen years ago. I still use Windows in a VM when I need to, but all of my real work is done in a BSD or Linux environment. And I still get choice: Gnome, KDE, Mate, Openbox and many others. I can set up my system exactly as I want for productivity and keep it that way.
I am amazed by threads like this one about changes made to a UI by a company that simply cannot get all of the system configuration controls into a single panel (Settings, Control Panel, make up your
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That show how out of touch they are. Freshen up my coffee - sure. Freshen up the paint job in my study - OK, nice idea as long as I don't have to work elsewhere for a week. Freshen up the background images - great.
Freshen up the Start Menu and all those other things that I depend on every minute, no thanks. Why not "freshen up" the positions of the accelerator, brake and clutch in my car while you're about it?
Agreed. My ideal definition of "freshen up" would be "include OpenShell by default, thereby letting people set things to optimize the way they work instead of the way we think you work."
Windows 8 / Server 2012 demonstrated clearly that Microsoft doesn't understand how people use the Start Menu, focus groups be damned.
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70% of the issues I have with Win10 are in the start menu, and OpenShell resolves pretty much all of them.
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Actually I think they may have **stopped** listening to the focus groups. I haven't talked to anyone in a long time who has been in one in the last decade, and I live in the middle of Microsoftland and work with a bunch of techies. It used to be quite popular, since they gave away any item from the Microsoft Store (until several of us grabbed the $198 Win 2k Training and Resource Kit and they put a price limit on it.) It wouldn't surprise me to find that Ballmer had done away with them entirely.
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The latest beta has a keyboard refresh as well, all you have to do to enable it is ALT-SHIFT-K, fnu hq hsvor i[[ 7ghol dmoa, ftggwert!
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If you want to stick to the car analogy then this isn't so much moving the position of the brake/gas/clutch pedals as much as putting a new textured grip pad on them. 8^)
Fresh (Score:5, Insightful)
>"We are freshening up the Start menu "
It doesn't need freshening, it needs reversion. The two things that would greatly improve the start menu would be to:
1) Get rid of any and all animation of any type.
2) Get rid of the huge, unnecessary tiles, completely.
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You can accomplish what you want by simply removing all the Live Tiles from the Start Menu.
https://www.guidingtech.com/re... [guidingtech.com]
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That's so strange. I have **never** seen an ad on my work computer. Considering how utterly incompetent the system admin was at my previous job it has to be remarkably trivial to block them, so why doesn't everyone? Do they not know what Group Policy does? Why would anyone use Active Directory and not do at least some minimal configuration? Makes absolutely no sense to me, but then I'm an actual MCSE.
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I just googled "block ads in windows start menu with group policy" and got dozens of hits, I was right that it is trivial. Group Policy in Active Directory is incredibly useful.
Change for change's sake (Score:5, Insightful)
So alt-tab no longer switches between windows, but now goes inside certain windows to flip through their internal tabs. In other words, let's break a paradigm that experienced users have wired into their synapses. That's like car manufacturers deciding to put the turn signal lever into a knee switch, just for fun.
Let's also re-arrange the control panel again, because we didn't confuse enough people last time. Maybe we can make it so that no one can find and shut off the telemetry.
Change for change's sake.
Re: Change for change's sake (Score:2)
"let's break a paradigm"
Put the blame where it belongs. Tabbed windows did this, they broke the document-window model. Alt+tab is now supposed to do what, cycle through windows or "documents"?
I think this is why Apple took their time adding tabs to Safari way back when, because it's a bigger change than most people want to admit. They ended up expanding the Expose feature to accommodate, similar to how Microsoft evolved alt+tab and win+tab.
I'm not saying Windows's approach is the best one, but window man
Re:Change for change's sake (Score:4, Insightful)
It's even simpler - change to make it appear you, and your salary, are useful and necessary.
Some changes certainly do make things better. Bolloxing up the time-tested start menu design (there are limited ways to display 1000 units of information in 100 units of display and that problem had been solved) did not.
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It's even simpler - change to make it appear you, and your salary, are useful and necessary.
Metrics determine if that is the case, and changing isn't a metric.
there are limited ways to display 1000 units of information in 100 units of display and that problem had been solved
There are ways of getting to work with a horse and cart as well. That was also solved. Declaring any problem "solved" is nothing more than a promotion of stagnation in development. Your post is very familiar, it reads exactly like what everyone said in 1995 when the Start menu first appeared, and here we are 25 years later with it having redefined interface designs not just on the PC but on many OS platforms. If you never try your hand at th
Re: Change for change's sake (Score:2)
Translation: "I have no idea how bureaucracies work."
Either that, or they're paying you to carry water for this goofy crap. How do I get in on a gig like that? I can post apologetic AstroTurf alongside the best of the Win10 boosters.
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Either that, or they're paying you to carry water for this goofy crap.
Defaulting to accusing someone of being paid because they have a different opinion than you is anti-intellectualism at its best. If you actually understood the point I was trying to make you would attempt to understand why I said the things I did, maybe ask rather than pontificate.
But to answer your question, no I'm just a guy who has in the past dedicated a year long engineering project to fix a legal issue around some critical wireless infrastructure only to be accused of "change for change sake" by some
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No, when bureaucracies promote change, they frequently do so because one manager is attempting to expand their department's purview at the expense of another manager's department. Whether this expanded influence results in a better product, a stronger organization, or happier customers is quite beside the point.
Historically, when a PM at Microsoft feels they don't have enough influence on the company's direction, they tend to take their frustrations out on the users. Then, when their product's market shar
The ADA would like a word... (Score:2)
Are you sure, Microsoft? Have you had this new start menu tested by the visually impaired? By people who are sensitive to brightly colored backgrounds? By our rapidly aging userbase?
You SAY that it makes it easier, but this isn't something YOU can say. Only the USERS can say that.
If you got nothing that needs innovating... (Score:2)
... but need to justify leeching profit off of your victims. The mirror equivalent to standstill with (state/private) monopolies.
It's a menu. A list or a tree. With executable entries.
An unnecessary duplication of functionality from a directory tree with softlinks to executables and a window to display a directory (like a file manager).
It stopped needing changes somewhere around DOS times, or even earlier.
Quit slacking off, and come up with something new, if you want new money! Otherwise we can draw lipstic
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Exactly- it's a list of items. The way they gush about it you'd think they'd just invented perpetual motion.
Someday they'll realize that no one gives a shit about the Start menu, we just wish they'd quit messing with it.
Wowzers (Score:2)
So much innovation- different colors and opacities on the Start Menu.
Woooo, will the innovation never end??I can't keep up. What's next- rounded corners?
So tab bars are just a duplication of task bars to (Score:2)
I thought the point was that the task bar should be nicely hierachical. But maybe it's because the webIdiots have been deliberately blurring the line between document and program, and now basically every web site is a program.
I wish it would only put tabs into the task switcher that actually think of themselves as web "apps", and tell the browser that. Like GMail, for example. Or things that want to add a desktop icon / start menu entry.
Start menu folders (Score:2)
Want to fix the Start menu? A start would be to get rid of folders.
I have Geforce Experience installed, but it's not listed under 'G'. It's under 'N' because it's the only thing in a folder named 'NVIDIA Corporation'.
Lots of other apps are in the Start menu inside folders which also contain their help applications, links to their corporate web sites, and their uninstallers. Because yeah, whenever I install an app I'm glad the developers gave me quick access to a way to get rid of it ...
All this stuff may ha
Ctrl-Tab already works for tabs (Score:3, Informative)
Within the browser, I can Ctrl-Tab between browser tabs, why would I want to also fill up my Alt-Tab with them?!?
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Within the browser, I can Ctrl-Tab between browser tabs, why would I want to also fill up my Alt-Tab with them?!?
Because the people designing this shit are morons. It is exactly like what Google did with Chrome on Android. I turned this off immediately and eventually stopped using Chrome on Android because I don't want every single browser tab to show up when I'm trying to switch between apps. Switching betweens apps is a completely different concept than websites, but apparently Google and now Microsoft cannot understand that.
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They realized it was idiotic and reverted to the older (proper) behavior.
Stockholm Syndrome (Score:2)
A shame since they did improve a fair bit of the internals from Windows 7/8.
Microsoft (Score:2)
Wake up reboot (Score:3)
Maybe it's just me (Score:3)
This would all be a moot point if they'd just give us the option to pick what style menus we wanted (they could even collect data on how many people pick each style - I don't mind them collecting that kind of data). But instead I bet they're gonna pick a style and force all of us to adopt it whether or not we like it.
ReactOS (Score:2)
So what is the current status of ReactOS: has it progressed much in terms of being a good alternative to Windows 7, and a replacement for Windows 10?
Since Classic Shell has what's needed, it would seem that ReactOS could just use that for the shell, make sure that the kernel was adequately stable and capable of supporting all those cores, have a workaround on NTFS whereby the Microsoft NTFS is a subset, and then it would be good to go.
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and to top it all, those users with 100 open tabs on their browser, will see all of them when alt-tabbing. Just what they really wanted.
Maybe this is Microsoft's way of telling them to use bookmarks like they were intended.
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Hmm. I can have a hundred open tabs in my browser that I've opened in the past 20 minutes and will read and close in the next couple of hours.
If, during that time, I want to alt-tab, I'm not going to fucking bookmark and close them all just to make it usable, then re-open them all when I return to the browser.
Is that a failure to use bookmarks 'like they were intended'?
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I replaced it with the classic shell start menu. The original start menu was vastly more useful than whatever crap they came up with for aero, that is a nightmare.
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Ribbon won. 13 years after it was introduced if you cannot see the improvement over seas of menus and buttons, I donâ(TM)t know what to tell you. And Iâ(TM)ll stop taking your advise of what good UI design looks like for good measure
Ribbon did win. But not because it was a better design. It won because Microsoft insisted on it.
Anyway I haven't used anything but Docs at work for years now, so the amount of winning is questionable.
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Ribbon won. 13 years after it was introduced if you cannot see the improvement over seas of menus and buttons, I donâ(TM)t know what to tell you. And Iâ(TM)ll stop taking your advise of what good UI design looks like for good measure
Ribbon did win. But not because it was a better design. It won because Microsoft insisted on it.
If you've got the time, Jensen Harris did a keynote presentation back in 2008 on the RibbonUI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's long, but very interesting. I'll agree that they should have kept the menu bar around (at least for 2007 and maybe 2010) and that search should not have taken until 2016 to implement as a UI element...but at the very least I get the sense that the RibbonUI was genuinely intended to improve the usability of MS Office.
By contrast, Microsoft seems to be of the persuasion that the
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> the RibbonUI was genuinely intended to improve the usability of MS Office.
As they say, The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Re: (Score:2)
Ribbon won because we're living in the wrong universe, sort of like the alternative universe in The Man in the High Castle (although fortunately not as lethal for the losers).