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Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

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Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#121

Post by dhimes »

whatusername wrote: post #109
varunsrin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cumbersome because you have to navigate through a bunch of menus - however, its easy because you have a finite, visible set of actions to look through those menus (tap, swipe, repeat) and a finite set of menus themselves. In a desktop OS, you have a seemingly infinite set of modifiers (Ctrl, Alt, Double click, click, right click, Ctrl + Shift), which are not 'logical' operations like tapping and swiping - they m…

Tap, swipe, draw apart, draw together, click home button, double click home button, click headset button, double click headset button, triple click headset button, Press external volume button, flick mute/screen-lock button, press lock button, hold lock button. I'm sure there's a few more buried in there that I haven't discovered. (Like swipe backwards to delete an item from a list)

Don't forget "tap and hold" on Safari. Found that one by accident.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#122

Post by Maascamp »

skeptical wrote: post #29

Microsoft UIs current state is, in general, cluttered and broken. I agree with this blogger, and my reaction was similar when I red the original post on msdn. Having been absent from microsoft office (or any office like application for that mater) for many years, I recently got to use recent versions of microsoft products such as Word, Outlook, etc. The ribbons were a big facepalm, I didn't know such bad things exist…

That's because, as you stated in your post, you haven't used them.

On a side note, the quality of comments has gone down while the know-it-all undertones have sky rocketed.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#124

Post by revscat »

sid0 wrote: post #68
technoslut wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine that Apple's envisions a world of these things being done wirelessly. What is interesting is that Apple and MS have two totally opposed philosophies in handling the issue of the user not understanding the file system.

Well, yes, Apple designs products for rich people in the first world who have always-on fast internet (have you seen the sheer size of Apple point updates?!). Microsoft designs far more inclusive products.

Lion 10.7.1 was a whopping 79.3MB. That's nothing, especially for an OS point release.

And judging by the popular success of the iPad I have to disagree with the suggestion that Apple is less inclusive.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#125

Post by sid0 »

revscat wrote: post #124
sid0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, Apple designs products for rich people in the first world who have always-on fast internet (have you seen the sheer size of Apple point updates?!). Microsoft designs far more inclusive products.

Lion 10.7.1 was a whopping 79.3MB. That's nothing, especially for an OS point release. And judging by the popular success of the iPad I have to disagree with the suggestion that Apple is less inclusive.

Lion 10.7.1 was a whopping 79.3MB.

Well, they might have fixed it then. All I know is that I balked at the 1GB OS X update waiting for me.

And judging by the popular success of the iPad I have to disagree with the suggestion that Apple is less inclusive.

The iPad is only popular in rich first world countries. You will find tons of PCs running Windows in not-so-rich countries, orders of magnitude more. That is exactly my point.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#126

Post by mmatants »

sunchild wrote: post #74
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most "normals" I interact with are beginners every time they use the computer . They are not comfortable discovering anything. I can teach them something and be confident in them forgetting it by the next time I talk to them. Things like moving files around directories is black magic to them. Directories are black magic to them. The problem I see with this solution is two-fold: 1. The people who understand this stuff…

File systems and file browsers are just never going to be easy for users to understand. That's why Apple is slowly but surely hiding them entirely from "beginners"/"people who don't care to learn how to use their tools". Microsoft's solution is more akin to the way animal researchers teach apes to recognize arbitrary symbols. It's a subtle and pernicious form of vendor "lock in", because when you try to move those us…

This. Files and folders are not an optimal paradigm for this stuff. Partly because even real files/folders are not a "civilian" thing, especially now. Plus, there's typically just one level of folder nesting in the real world.

The actual user story is always: find what I'm looking for. Google got it right with GMail and informal searching - screw manual organization. Power users should be able to set up structures, but typical computer folks don't need that.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#127

Post by pointyhat »

revscat wrote: post #117
pointyhat wrote: post #99

Disclaimer: I'm a Windows and Mac OS X "power user" and I'm going to be rather critical of Apple who are seen as at the forefront of UI design. I'm probably going to get voted down for this. I'm a proponent of the Ribbon UI and I fucking hate toolbars in OS X. I use Outlook, Word, Excel and Windows Live Mail extensively. All of which have the ribbon UI. It turns out that for the sake of actually getting stuff done, t…

Two questions: 1) Why the anger? 2) What specific tasks are difficult for you to accomplish in Finder or Mail? The default icon set in Mail (seen here: http://i.imgur.com/zYmaw.png ) do not seem to be difficult to parse. Ditto the Finder icons.

1) 2 days with Lion and ten years of Apple fanboys whinging in my ear like angry wasps.

2) Just about everything from the awful toolbar icons (the labels are turned off by default on my MacBook) to the fact that it makes an awful mess of the messages and it's impossible to stick an image attachment in it without it trying to rape you in the eye socket with iPhoto.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#128

Post by jarek »

kaishin wrote: post #58
pavel_lishin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see some stats on this. I wonder just what percentage of users never changes a default UI.

My parents definitely won't.

Well, that's at least 2.8741 × 10^(-8) percent of users!

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#129

Post by revscat »

whatusername wrote: post #118
kaishin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ribbon concept is inherently flawed because no human brain can remember such an overwhelming amount of information (what command in which function group in which tab).

And your suggestion is? How is the ribbon any different to a hierarchial menu bar? (See the Gnome drop-down menu or the iOS Settings Menu).

Limit the need for Explorer/Finder/etc. altogether. For those cases where it is needed limit top level UI elements to the most commonly used items. Move the rest to either a toolbar or a contextual menu.

You know, I just checked Finder and realized that not only does it not have the things showed in this mockup, but that I have never missed them.

Strange.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#130

Post by encoderer »

martingordon wrote: post #64
sid0 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you copy a bunch of documents and pictures from and to a USB drive without a filesystem?

I'm not saying you don't need a filesystem. There are other ways to interact with data besides a file browser. On the iPad, I can use the official Photos app (or any of the other photo apps) to get my photos where they need to go, whether that's a phone, computer, website or printer. I don't read my email by going into the "My Emails" folder on my C:\ drive, I access my email through a UI specifically made for access…

My wife and I split the cost of an iPad last month, and we absolutely love it. There are a few things that really make me shake my head in frustration, but whatever, no product is perfect.

And last week I managed to score 2 32gb touchpads at the $150 price -- with the thought that we'll play with one for a week or so and see if it fits in our family. If not, we'll give both away at Christmas.

The touchpad just made me love my iPad2 more. It's nice enough, and will be a great gift for my mom and her dad, but it doesn't hold-up to the iPad2.

All that being said -- I sorta think of my primary computer as an oven to my iPads toaster-oven. The iPad can do a lot of the same things, and several things it can do far better than my oven and far easier.

And apple doesn't even want me to replace my oven -- they're producing toaster ovens by design.

What that means to me is that there's a lot of design decisions that work on a toaster oven that just don't make sense on an oven.

:) Now please forgive a somewhat clunky analogy.

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