On 8/15/08, Tom Dell'Aringa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > It is hard to comment on this design from a neutral point of view. I have > > used it for a while, I was very use to the old office design and where to > > find things. I find myself struggling to find things I use to be able to > > find effortlessly. On the other hand, I have found things I never knew > > existed. So it has some benefits.
I would echo Nick's sentiments here. I currently have FOUR versions of office installed on my machine (2003, 2007, 2004 for Mac, 2008 for Mac... I know, it's ridiculous) and I often have to bounce between them, which I feel allows me to offer some insights. My basic opinion is that I strongly prefer Office for Mac's "Inspector" interface to Office 2007's ribbon. As Nick said, very basic things (Open, Save, Save As, Print, etc.) are hidden. The items I mentioned are hidden beneath the Office logo, which absolutely does NOT look like a button. (There is a tool bar that you can configure to add common stuff to, but most users would likely not discover this.) On top of that, the tabbed ribbon interface causes users to *always* have to make two clicks if they are changing MS-defined contexts (e.g., from editing text to editing a table). This is often frustrating for me, because I often need to edit tables within a larger text document (like 95% of all other knowledge workers out there). The way Office for Mac (2004 & 2008) is set up is that there's the typical Mac menu bar at the top, a main toolbar, task-specific toolbars (e.g., Reviewing), and the Inspector. The main toolbar has all the usual suspects: New, Open, Save, etc.... all that stuff 2007 hides under the Office logo. In 2008 you can also dock some (but not, to my great frustration, all) of the task-specific toolbars underneath the main toolbar. So far this is all fairly standard, but the Inspector deserves its own paragraph. : ) This object accomplishes the goal that the ribbon is trying to accomplish but in a much more flexible way. The inspector, for the most part, is a collection of palettes that can be collapsed and expanded. For example, I always use styles rather than fonts, so I always have the Font palette collapsed while the style palette is always open. There are other palettes that come and go as you need them, like when you're editing a table. I can do Insert Table from the main toolbar or menu bar, click on the table, and then table formatting options appear in the inspector. When I click out of the table, they go away. When editing the rest of my document, if I need to go back into that table I just click it and my table formatting options show up again. In 2007, I'd need to click the Table tab, and only THEN would I have access to table formatting options. So yeah, I'm not a fan of the ribbon. Nice shot, but MS didn't hit the mark. Ironically, they were closer with their Mac product. Maybe it's just that there isn't a strong "Inspector" metaphor in Windows, whereas it seems relatively common in Mac apps. - F. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred Beecher Sr. User Experience Consultant Evantage Consulting O: 612.230.3838 // M: 612.810.6745 IM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (google/msn) // fredevc (aim/yahoo) T: http://twitter.com/fred_beecher ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
