Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003) • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#191

Post by stephenr » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 10:47 AM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43

stephenr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We clearly have different ideas of “worse”.

Yes, and? When it comes to "what OS should I use on my computer", is it your assertion that I should use your definition instead of my own? If so, you're probably a Linux Desktop evangelist.

Ah, when someone questions your assertion, jump to what you perceive as an insult against them.

(a) no, I'm not saying everyone should use the same thing, or that my "definition" of worse is more valid than yours. But consider this context: The original linked email is about a list of glaring usability failures in Windows, experienced by someone who should at the very least be very familiar with the product. I commented and asked if it's really any different now, with some of my own perceptions and experiences, to which you replied and confirmed that it's not better, but that you somehow believe the alternatives are worse. This follows on as:

(b) no, I'm not a Linux Desktop evangelist. I mean, I'd definitely use it before I use fucking Windows, but I also don't recommend it to people. Servers? Absolutely. Desktops? I honestly don't have recent enough personal experience with it to recommend it.

So, somehow you've managed to agree with the premise that Windows is a dumpster fire of usability bullshit, but then also suggested every alternative is worse, and made a baseless claim about both what I believe, and my likelihood of pushing others to adopt the same viewpoint.

Great job.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#192

Post by willtim » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 10:50 AM UTC

knolan wrote: post #162

2003 was the pinnacle of MS Office for me. The introduction of the ‘Ribbon of Confusion’ in 2007 around the time of the adoption of 16:9 screens was appalling. The ribbon was welded to the top of the screen leaving a letterbox sized area for your documents. It was like using a toolbar encrusted IE. This all happened when Adobe were demonstrating excellent UI design in their pro apps with pallets that could be docked…

And it was a completely different UI, forcing all the users to relearn most of the functionality. I suspect that such a user-hostile change was done in order to achieve a patentable UI, something that LibreOffice and others would not be able to copy.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#193

Post by gield » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 10:52 AM UTC

cbhl wrote: post #29

std_throwaway wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide an alternate link to the PDF that works worldwide? Some people are getting a 451 error.

Are the folks getting 451 in Europe? Might be GDPR...

Nah, I am in Europe and I have no problem viewing the PDF.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#194

Post by willtim » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 10:59 AM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #178

knolan wrote: post #162

2003 was the pinnacle of MS Office for me. The introduction of the ‘Ribbon of Confusion’ in 2007 around the time of the adoption of 16:9 screens was appalling. The ribbon was welded to the top of the screen leaving a letterbox sized area for your documents. It was like using a toolbar encrusted IE. This all happened when Adobe were demonstrating excellent UI design in their pro apps with pallets that could be docked…

A huge amount of user research went into the original ribbon. However, it looks like they decided that no further research was needed and just started moving everything into the ribbons without any thinking whatsoever.

Using the new ribbon version of office I found out that document properties could only be inspected by clicking on a golden orb and going into a menu called "Publish". Similarly most other less-often used features became impossible to find. I've refused to use office for any substantial document ever since. I can only assume that this research was targeted at new users and not existing users.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#195

Post by thrower123 » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 11:00 AM UTC

MikusR wrote: post #182

knolan wrote: post #162

2003 was the pinnacle of MS Office for me. The introduction of the ‘Ribbon of Confusion’ in 2007 around the time of the adoption of 16:9 screens was appalling. The ribbon was welded to the top of the screen leaving a letterbox sized area for your documents. It was like using a toolbar encrusted IE. This all happened when Adobe were demonstrating excellent UI design in their pro apps with pallets that could be docked…

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2006/04/17/the-size...

It's unfortunate that when they have migrated so many of these older Microsoft blogs around, so many of the images and links have rotted.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#196

Post by knolan » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 11:11 AM UTC

willtim wrote: post #194

dmitriid wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge amount of user research went into the original ribbon. However, it looks like they decided that no further research was needed and just started moving everything into the ribbons without any thinking whatsoever.

Using the new ribbon version of office I found out that document properties could only be inspected by clicking on a golden orb and going into a menu called "Publish". Similarly most other less-often used features became impossible to find. I've refused to use office for any substantial document ever since. I can only assume that this research was targeted at new users and not existing users.

Similarly for editing charts in excel which became a multi-click hell. Whereas in 2000/XP office you could quickly rearrange series in charts by dragging and enable chart elements at a click now it’s a tedious unintuitive affair.

I haven’t used Excel for any serious work since.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#197

Post by knolan » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 11:15 AM UTC

MikusR wrote: post #182

knolan wrote: post #162

2003 was the pinnacle of MS Office for me. The introduction of the ‘Ribbon of Confusion’ in 2007 around the time of the adoption of 16:9 screens was appalling. The ribbon was welded to the top of the screen leaving a letterbox sized area for your documents. It was like using a toolbar encrusted IE. This all happened when Adobe were demonstrating excellent UI design in their pro apps with pallets that could be docked…

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2006/04/17/the-size...

I’d really like to see those images.

In older office I could move toolbars around. If I could have moved the ribbon to be vertically arranged on the right side (hence my Adobe comments) it would have been at least usable.

EDIT: via the Wayback machine

https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092652/http://officeblog...

https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092624/http://officeblog...

My point regarding 16:9 screens stands. Many people would have migrated to cheap 16:9 panels (this was certainly the case for the cheap Dells most of the PhD students in my lab were given). The 97 UI has a lot of unused space To the right where you could drag the lower toolbar and expand as needed. You could also customise it and place your frequently used buttons where you wanted them. I always had super/subscripts in easy reach.

The inflexibility of the ribbon to and the endless clicking about at least helped me move away from Microsoft and embrace *nix.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#198

Post by stinos » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 11:44 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #156

stinos wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in Linux it's only when a specific component (like the kernel) gets updated Fair enugh, but depending on what distro you run that seems to be fairly often as well. Like, more than 'a few times' a year. Then again if you dont run a server for which downtime is a true loss, or something alike, is rebooting that much of a problem (honest question)?

If I have a few tens of applications open that all have their own separate state that is lost on reboot, then it’s fairly annoying to reboot because one thing updated.

Maybe it's what exactly you do then/how. I.e. apart from a REPL session in which I maually typed a bunch of commands, I don't seem to have that problem. Editors/IDEs/browsers all persist open documents/view state etc between runs.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#199

Post by jdnenej » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 11:53 AM UTC

FourthProtocol wrote: post #133

jdnenej wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the bugs that are an issue with 10. It's the mountains of nagware, spyware and advertisements built in to it.

I use 10 daily and see no ads. Where does windows 10 show ads?

Candy crush in the sidebar, ads all over the home page/new tab page of the built in browsers. Heavy annoying pushes for Microsoft products like starting Microsoft teams every time you boot when I never installed it or even have an account.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#200

Post by dmitriid » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 12:08 PM UTC

willtim wrote: post #194

dmitriid wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge amount of user research went into the original ribbon. However, it looks like they decided that no further research was needed and just started moving everything into the ribbons without any thinking whatsoever.

Using the new ribbon version of office I found out that document properties could only be inspected by clicking on a golden orb and going into a menu called "Publish". Similarly most other less-often used features became impossible to find. I've refused to use office for any substantial document ever since. I can only assume that this research was targeted at new users and not existing users.

Microsoft destroyed their old blogs and with them a lot of knowledge they contained.

Thankfully, Internet Archive preserved the "Why the new UI" series of posts: https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn...

Relevant parts: by Office 2003 they had 250 top-level menu items and 50 toolbars (Part V), and this was becoming unmanageable. In Office 2003 they started collecting info on how people are using Office: About 1.3 billion sessions since shipping Office 2003, over 352 million command bar clicks in Word over the last 90 days (Part VI).

I won't quote the rest because it's a very good series of articles.