News - Windows 8 gets ribbon interface

[HEXUS]

Office inspires Explorer UI changes.

Read more.

[Irien]

I'm sorry, but that screenshot makes it look absolutely dreadful. Can someone explain to me why simple filer windows need *that* many buttons and wasted real-estate?

Sorry to be the party pooper!

[pauldarkside]

I'm sorry, but that screenshot makes it look absolutely dreadful. Can someone explain to me why simple filer windows need *that* many buttons and wasted real-estate?

Sorry to be the party pooper!

It's the Windows 8: Finger Friendly Edition. You can collapse and hide the ribbon if you don't need it.

[Roobubba]

Oh dear God, please don't take anything from Office 2007+!!!

Let's take these handy, useful, easy to find buttons and bury them deep in a menu in a totally illogical place! "More intuitive" my arse!

It's still amusing to plonk down an experienced Office user in front of 2007 for the first time and ask them to open, modify, print, save and close a document. Yes, the shortcuts still work, but no, that's not more intuitive!

Oh dear, I've digressed again with a rant...

[Brewster0101]

Looks good to me and a nice step forward for any person that is not too confident with using explorer/file manager.

[dangel]

Oh dear, I've digressed again with a rant...

Yes, you have [the following is not singling you out in any way]

People - READ the blog carefully, watch the video - MS have gone to great pains to point out that nothing is lost - in fact you can see more files and they're focusing on providing lots of functionality for power users as well as the general user. They back up their post with real world stats if you read what's posted. It'd be nice if people posted objections having read and thought about the article - and constructively at that!

Sadly most people just looked at the screenshot and not the MS blog which gives you massive insight to how they got there (and it does make a lot of sense). Hexus are partially to blame as most people won't bother to follow the click through before commenting. People naturally fear change sadly.

I'm sorry, but that screenshot makes it look absolutely dreadful. Can someone explain to me why simple filer windows need *that* many buttons and wasted real-estate?

Sorry to be the party pooper!

Yes, MS can - read the blog!

[Spud1]

I would much rather they invested the time in fixing the "broken" windows Move/Copy logic under the hood instead of changing the UI to the ribbon. It's clearly going to be a love/hate thing but personally I hate losing all of that real estate if I want to have quick access to basic functions.

Power users DO tend to move away from explorer but its not because of the UI, it's because it sucks at copying files. I tend to use the standard explorer but with teracopy instead to do the actual copying, since it's sometimes up to 10 or 20x faster than explorer, with good options for resume/error reporting and so on.

This does them no favours imo - it will end up confusing the non power users (at least at first..office put off so many people and I still get no end of questions such as "Where has XYZ feature gone"). I can't see the benefit aside from MS trying to create more "unified product identities", when they don't want to admit that they got it completely wrong with the ribbon UI in the first place.

[Unique]

what is the ribbon interface? what does that mean? does it mean tabs for different bits, as that's what it looks like to me

[cptwhite_uk]

Buttons I would never use:

Copy (Ctrl+C)
Paste (Ctrl+V)
Cut (Ctrl+X)
Copy path - eh? what?
Paste shortcut - surely if you've got a shortcut in the clipboard, you'd just Ctrl+V?
Move to (Right click, send to....)
Copy to (same difference...)
Delete - FFS, just hit delete key!
Rename - Double left click slowly, surely everyone does this?

...meh all of them really. OMG... an open button, who's going to do that instead of double clicking? It's more work...?!

*facepalm*

[Gordy]

Ye gawds!

That is terrible, so cluttered and so much wasted space.

Also why is it operating systems from the big three don't realise that most people now have a widescreen laptop? Using so much space for nothing at the top of the window should be punishable by having their screens cut in half.

[dangel]

Buttons I would never use:

Copy (Ctrl+C)
Paste (Ctrl+V)
Cut (Ctrl+X)
Copy path - eh? what?
Paste shortcut - surely if you've got a shortcut in the clipboard, you'd just Ctrl+V?
Move to (Right click, send to....)
Copy to (same difference...)
Delete - FFS, just hit delete key!
Rename - Double left click slowly, surely everyone does this?

...meh all of them really. OMG... an open button, who's going to do that instead of double clicking? It's more work...?!

*facepalm*

Fallen right into the trap of the perspective of a power user - most people don't known about almost any keyboard shortcuts because it's hidden functionality just like the other items you described. For power users there are now over 200 direct keyboard shortcuts but most people won't ever use them but you and I can

People marvel at me showing them Win+E to open explorer!

[pauldarkside]

Buttons I would never use:...meh all of them really.

So, no interest in a Windows tablet/touch screen interface then?

[dangel]

Ye gawds!

That is terrible, so cluttered and so much wasted space.

Also why is it operating systems from the big three don't realise that most people now have a widescreen laptop? Using so much space for nothing at the top of the window should be punishable by having their screens cut in half.

Did you read the blog? Y'know the bit where they discuss they know most people are using a widescreen and how they've coped with that?



http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2...-explorer.aspx <---CLICK THIS!!

[Fraz]

I don't get what the big deal is with the ribbon interface haters. Sure, it's different from the interface of old, but essentially it's just a tabbed toolbar. It took me all of about 20 seconds to get used to it.

I confess, it did annoy me that they also took away the traditional drop-down menu names from Office 2007+, but this is mainly because I use office so infrequently these days that I haven't really got used to it yet. However, the idea of a tabbed toolbar was very easy to adapt to.

[pauldarkside]

Also why is it operating systems from the big three don't realise that most people now have a widescreen laptop? Using so much space for nothing at the top of the window should be punishable by having their screens cut in half.

You must have missed the section on "Designing for a wider screen"

[dangel]

I don't get what the big deal is with the ribbon interface haters. Sure, it's different from the interface of old, but essentially it's just a tabbed toolbar. It took me all of about 20 seconds to get used to it.

I confess, it did annoy me that they also took away the traditional drop-down menu names from Office 2007+, but this is mainly because I use office so infrequently these days that I haven't really got used to it yet. However, the idea of a tabbed toolbar was very easy to adapt to.

People don't like UI change - ever. I call it the issue of 'embedded users' - I suffer from it in my own software because people don't ever want to get out of their comfort zone and learn something new (regardless if it's better - and I agree for me the new office was TONS better than all that hidden obscure functionality that nobody could find except by muscle memory and years of enforced hunting for things).