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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

#251

Post by jhdavids8 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #248
jhdavids8 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your ridiculously large intellect can stop applauding itself for one second, I hope you can find time to read this. That was probably the largest amount of psychobabble condensed into 2 paragraphs I've ever seen. Seriously, your first point was extremely over-simplified and you were called out on it, rightfully. I could make your first argument about anything. Watch: "Only 50% of people went out to eat this weeken…

My first post was a joke , to emphasize how silly I thought the UX critique was. Complaining that software and civil engineering are not the same is so obvious as to be trite. I stand by my point above, though. Call it psychobabble if you like, but I like my metaphors. Shoot me.

I completely realize that. My point was to show how easy it was to make that critique with such an over-simplification, which was chetan's point as well.

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

#252

Post by richardw »

StavrosK wrote: post #166
varunsrin wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, while I think that select all & select none are pretty important ribbon items (most people never learn CTRL+A or Shift+Clicking), select inversion feels like a power user option to me.

"Delete all files except this one."

People who don't know about menus shouldn't really be mass-deleting things yet. Alternatively, add a button for "Help! -The Computer lost all my stuff".

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

#253

Post by krig »

I don't understand how there can be so many posts here defending this UI. Is this a concerted effort by Microsoft to flood hacker news with their viewpoint? I just don't see how this is a defensible UI, at all.

Seriously, it's overwhelming. The UI is constantly shouting commands at the user, regardless of what the user is trying to do. UIs like these are exactly where the problem my parents have with computers come from. They go in with an idea of what they want to do, let's say they want to find a note they wrote previously. As soon as they open the window, they are bombarded with commands. Move! Copy! Save as! Select! Select all! It's a cacophony of nonsense to them. Copy? Copy what, where? Nothing in there helps them find their note.

Really. "Easy access." What does that button do? I have no idea what might happen when that's pressed. It sounds a bit dirty, but accepting that it's probably accessibility related and not an invitation to intimacy, I still can't figure out what it might do. Ridiculous.

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

#254

Post by rat »

alextingle wrote: post #194
ajross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do those users use the desktop shell at all though? In my experience with novice users (across platforms: Mac noobs are no better) is that they only know enough to launch apps. They never touch the desktop integration at all.

This is only because the Finder/Explorer has been made harder and harder to use. Apple's OSX Finder is a shocking UI abomination. Their old MacOS Finder was clear and simple - my wife would spend hours arranging her work in coloured folders, each of which opened in a window whose shape and position she had chosen, and was meaningful to her. It was a powerful tool that enabled her to arrange and group her work. Now, b…

I don't know spatial mode was default in Gnome for a while and I think most users disliked it.

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

#255

Post by cellularmitosis »

jrockway wrote: post #221
rolleiflex wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for plane use, it has "Airplane Mode" as the first option of the Settings app, so at least for that it's covered.

But airplanes have wifi now, so you can still want the cell radio off and have the wifi on. Yup, it's complicated. The world is a complicated place.

That misses the point of "airplane mode". Airplane mode is for use during take off and landing. Ie, you'd need to turn wifi off too.

The only reason to turn off the cell radio but not the wifi radio is to conserve battery, which again puts you well outside the use case of the typical apple user.

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

#256

Post by kiiski »

51Cards wrote: post #76
dhimes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why are the ipad and iphone taking off? It's really hard to learn to do things on those devices. It's cumbersome to turn off wifi and bluetooth to save battery. The control location makes no sense in the settings menu (to my mind, anyway). I was a HUGE Apple fan for the early Macs. I totally get what you are saying. But we LOST in the workplace. It was just too slow for the other folks in the office to use (of c…

I understand what you're saying, and despite the content of my above post I've never been an Apple guy, always a Windows one. Every time I went over to the Apple OS I felt I had one hand tied behind my back by lack of options. I also try to keep in mind that I'm not typical. I started on "PCs" in 1981 and have grown with them, this all comes naturally. So when I judge a UI I literally stick my Mom on it... she's 68.…

"Just let me turn it off"

Just double click on one of the tabs.

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

#257

Post by epaga »

This makes me wonder how often I fall into the same trap when designing UIs.

"Not enough people are using this feature" can lead you to think "Let's make that feature's UI more prominent" instead of what it (normally) should: "Let's scrap that feature". Simplicity, minimalism, and elegance seem to be completely elusive to Microsoft, even with their brand new developments.

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

#258

Post by Ironballs »

What people often miss in Ribbon UIs is that they are in fact very much for the power user. Here are a couple of reasons why:

Every button or command on the Ribbon can be accessed via polymorphic hotkeys. Every command can be accessed as a chain of key presses. There is zero need for mouse usage -- even in PowerPoint.

This is huge. This was not doable in previous versions of Office! There were some commands you could not access via anything else than the menu, and to those of us that are vim users, you know how bad that can be! I do a lot of PowerPoint presentations and besides designing arrows or shapes I have no need for a mouse. And PowerPoint is a WYSIWYG editor!

The other reason is that you can hide the Ribbon. See the screenshots? That chevron symbol (^) means that you can essentially auto-hide the Ribbon and bring it back, while still retaining its usability via hotkeys.

I'm by no means an all-guns-blazing MSFT fanboy, but I need Office at work, and instead of jumping on the silly bandwagon of bashing all that is Ribbon, I found my inner vim user and learnt to god damn power use the hell out of it.

To those that actually need Office daily, I recommend opening it and pressing Alt. Let the funny stuff unfold.

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

#259

Post by babebridou »

alextingle wrote: post #194
ajross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do those users use the desktop shell at all though? In my experience with novice users (across platforms: Mac noobs are no better) is that they only know enough to launch apps. They never touch the desktop integration at all.

This is only because the Finder/Explorer has been made harder and harder to use. Apple's OSX Finder is a shocking UI abomination. Their old MacOS Finder was clear and simple - my wife would spend hours arranging her work in coloured folders, each of which opened in a window whose shape and position she had chosen, and was meaningful to her. It was a powerful tool that enabled her to arrange and group her work. Now, b…

There is a crusade against the filesystem in general. We should probably go all the way and design an OS that absolutely does not need the concept of files, extensions and directory trees, even for programmers, else we'll have to deal with this UI debate for god knows how long.

Disclaimer: I believe the best UI for a filesystem manager was Windows Explorer 98, the last iteration with perpetual, irrevocable and non exclusive root access, with Norton Commander as its only rival.

From the moment we cared about maintaining our system's safety from the user's "big fingers syndrome", it all went down (starting with hiding file extensions) to the atrocities we now have to deal with. And yes, I put Seven's Explorer in the same basket as Finder and the likes of Nautilus, mostly due to /that/ horrible folder scrolling bug that MS refuses to hotfix.

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

#260

Post by huhtenberg »

alanfalcon wrote: post #51

Reminds me of this video, which I was told was actually created by Microsoft as a self-parody, though I don't have any supporting evidence. "Microsoft Designs the iPod Package:" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9HfdSp2E2A

iPodObserver site appears to be the only place that was emailed by "Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla" to say that this was a Microsoft-produced video. Everyone else simply quoted them. So the authenticity of [1] looks highly implausible.

[1] http://www.ipodobserver.com/ipo/article/Microsoft_Confirms_i...

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