about Microsoft (Office) GUI evolution

[fulea.stefan]

http://mikemaccana.com/
Please make abstraction of the evangelism (if there is some to be found at all).

[milon]

I've noticed the GUI problems for a while. My school uses MS Office 2010 and I hate the GUI. It doesn't let me just create documents anymore. I guess that's my evangelism.

[SomeGuy]

Hmm, that site comes up blank for me. Anyway...

I don't know ANYBODY who actually liked or preferred the Office 2007 ribbon interface. Yet, has there been a mass riot? Have people widely insisted on purchasing Office 2003 instead? Has Microsoft reverted to normal menus in a sudden realization of "what have we done?"

No, and this boggles my mind.

Everyone has just bent over and taken it. Might be able to find a copy of Office 2003 on eBay, but that is about the only place. Compared to the masses, only a tiny hand full of people have stuck with their old version of Office or switched to an alternative.

And my point is, I strongly suspect that the exact same thing will happen with that awful Metro, or whatever other new garbage Microsoft sees fit to shove down everyone's throats.

[Z98]

A) What is the relevance of the link in the first post?

B) I find the ribbon interface far superior to the mess that was in Office 2003 and I fully support MS' decision to switch to it for Office 2007 and later.

[preston]

that ultra simplistic ui reminds of an apple ad (or was it a spoof?) where they say something like "our mouse only has one button so it's hard tu press the wrong one". yeah right. give me my buttons. I am capable of controlling an app that has a menu and ten buttons, thank you very much.

[vicmarcal]

The Ribbon was a nice improvement imho.
It helped me to find a lot of things that were hidden under the subsubsubsubmenues and I've never thought they existed at all.
Also the Proactive Tabs(those Tabs that just appeared when clicking in a relevant object, as the "Image" tab) was a comfortable feature.
Maybe I like more the GUI in the MS 2010(less bloated with "surrounding squares" and lines) but this new MS Office version looks Notepadistic..too much notepadistic to be handy and useful at all.

[Sof_T]

I personally like the idea of the ribbon interface, but dislike the way it was suddenly foisted on users with no option to revert to the older style menus. The upgrade at work caused total confusion as people who had been forced into one way of working by Microsoft sudden had to cope with a totally new way of working. More than a year on people are still asking where this or that is now. A few have moved over to using Open Office since it now feels more familiar.

The biggest thing for me is that for years Microsoft preached UI design specifically their UI design and more or less insisted that other companies use it when developing for Windows. The first time I noticed it change was with the Media Player upgrades, but at least you had an option to get back to using menus.

[fulea.stefan]

A) What is the relevance of the link in the first post?

@Z98: I could copy-paste the content, but I found it simpler to paste just the link. Other than this, I can't imagine more motives needed to be provided for an off-topic thread.


It appeared amusing to me the entire evolution, which ends up in a default look like Office 15 has. It's... ironic! Just remember it when thinking about interfaces.


P.S.: It brought up a memory about "the past and future of famous logos" (google it).

[Pisarz]

I must admit, that I hate modern user interfaces, even though I love minimalism. Current UI's are designed mainly for touch input. And as you can see in Windows Consumer Preview, it's not a really good idea after all. Unity from Canonical, Metro from Microsoft or GNOME Shell seems useless to me, even though they look quite fine.

[SomeGuy]

I want this interface back:

[ external image ]

128k ram on a 68000 CPU. So why can't Windows 8 do it?

[preston]

there are still too many distracting elements in the office 15 ui. so I took the opportunity to bring it to the next level. gentlemen, I give you PrestonUI. Following is a preview with desktop, task bar and couple of running apps to demonstrate its simplicity:

[ external image ]

the ui finally got out of the way.

[FlyingIsFun1217]

there are still too many distracting elements in the office 15 ui. so I took the opportunity to bring it to the next level. gentlemen, I give you PrestonUI. Following is a preview with desktop, task bar and couple of running apps to demonstrate its simplicity:

the ui finally got out of the way.

But can it run on 2 bytes or RAM?

FlyingIsFun1217

[hto]

It does not need any RAM at all, only the CPU registers.

[FlyingIsFun1217]

It does not need any RAM at all, only the CPU registers.

Too much.

FlyingIsFun1217

[SomeGuy]

[ external image ]