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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

#311

Post by hackinthebochs »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #25

This reminds me of this famous quote: The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.

The problem with this idea is that for the majority of users "taste" is the last thing on their mind. Functionality and ease of use are the only things that matter. Having common functions up front in your face is in fact easier to use than having them hidden away.

It takes a certain level of skill using a system before you're capable of appreciating higher level constructs such as "beauty". As an analogy, we all have seen poor coders whose code is poorly formatted, sloppy looking, and just plain ugly. But when you ask them they're just not capable of noticing this. Its that their minds have not elevated past the details to see the big picture. It's the same way with most computer users.

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

#312

Post by hackinthebochs »

kaishin wrote: post #52
krschultz wrote: post #45

The concept of the ribbon - tabs with buttons grouped by function - has a lot of advantages in theory. Obviously you can have bigger buttons which is always a good thing, and you allow each button to have sub-buttons which actually works out really well. I personally think Microsoft is on the right track from a high level perspective. The problem comes in the implementation. The graphic design is just horrible. Where…

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).

You don't remember it, you develop muscle memory. I couldn't tell you what most key combinations are in Visual studio, but I'm always able to press the right buttons in the right context.

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

#314

Post by anigbrowl »

jhdavids8 wrote: post #246
anigbrowl wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, i wouldn't want you to overthink it...but they're not so far apart. Games have the best UI; ideally a game will only show you the bare minimum of information required, and make the play experience as smooth and intuitive as possible. But games also have very narrowly defined win/loss conditions, and even in sandbox games (like Grand Theft Auto ) success means that that players in the middle of the normal distri…

And your argument starts off with some random assumption that "games have the best UI". You can't lead into the rest of your argument with some random tidbit you assume is true. Some games have great UIs, some have shitty ones. Largely, it's irrelevant to your point, whatever it may be.

Most people are perfectly capable of drawing the necessary inferences from a generalization. If I say that 'cows have four legs', this is not to deny the fact that some cows come up short in the leg department. Games with shitty UIs tend to fail rapidly in the marketplace, because few people want to play a game with a shitty UI.

There's a reason that I included qualifiers like 'I wouldn't want to overthink it' and 'ideally...' and 'players in the middle of the normal distribution...'. The reason is that I'm sketching out a philosophy of UI design in only a few sentences, and want to signal this to people who are reading. You seem determined to interpret my remarks in the most literal and narrow sense possible, to the point of completely overlooking the contextual qualifiers that accompanied them.

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

#315

Post by BonsaiDen »

Dunno... but I get the feeling that everyone thinks that computers should be easier, and nobody should have to learn anything in order to use the. Uh, what?

We're living in a world where digital technology more and more becomes the dominant driving force of our society. We already lost the ability to change hardware to a - relatively small - group of people (yes, considering the amount of people using the stuff, the group is tiny).

So what now? Make sure there's only an elitist circle of high paid, influential "technology gods" left? While I definitely consider my self as a geek, I would not like such a society at all. It can be the target of humanity that ordinary people get even "dumber" than they're now.

Sorry, but I think people should strife for new knowledge, they should keep their spirit of discovery. By simplyfing the whole world around them, at least in my eyes, it becomes harder and harder for kids to figure out all these things on their own. And once all the knowledge is locked away from them, the elitist will choose who gets insight into the then "magical" workings of the world.

Yeah, maybe my picture of the future has a little bit of a dark taint, but well that's what you get when even your colleagues, which are the same age as yourself, are light years behind in terms of thirst for knowledge.

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

#316

Post by Jamiecon »

51Cards wrote: post #41
dhimes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most new computer users find it very hard to remember additional, non intuitive actions like right clicking & context menus I didn't realize this. In fact, if I were asked to guess, I would have answered that most new users would pick up pretty quickly how to use context menus, especially if the context menus had related commands like file manipulation if in Windows Explorer (is it still called that?), or formatting…

Yes but people don't WANT to learn things like this. My mother doesn't want to remember what mouse button to click or that CTRL or ALT is a modifier on this command. I would argue that THIS is what made Apple's OS hang on all those years it was in the severe minority. There is a segment of the population that wants only one mouse button to click, not 3, not 3 plus CTRL or ALT or etc. Apple did end up having to rely h…

Agreed. And not only does the ribbon increase accessibility for novice users, it also encourages advanced use by displaying keyboard shortcuts to a wide variety of functions in an intuitive way.

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

#317

Post by eliben »

danssig wrote: post #284
eliben wrote: post #232

Although I'm (very very) far from being a MS fan-boy, I find an inherent flaw in such reviews written by programmers/hackers/power users. What they all miss is the real target audience for Windows - i.e. my Grandpa.

What is your Grandpa doing with a desktop? Get him an iPad, it's all he'll ever need.

Well, he has it since before the iPad. And isn't iPad kinda hard on old people? (shaky hands, etc.)

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

#318

Post by deselection »

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."

Select all, then deselect (ctrl-click) the one item you want to exclude. That's the exact same amount of work, just with the inversion step at the beginning instead of the end.

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

#319

Post by WayneDB »

benaston wrote: post #137
sid0 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say you're out of luck then. What good are those mkv files if you don't have an app to read them? I have a really nice app to read them called Media Player Classic -- I just don't have an app to manage them. Writing apps to manage every single file type I have is very inefficient compared to using a general purpose file manager. You abstract out often-used code rather than copy-pasting it all over the place,…

Files without a dedicated application will be the exception rather than the rule. Movies, Photos, Documents, spreadsheets, databases, music, books; you will usually open in a dedicated application. It's not hard to envisage an improved UI for files that do not have a dedicated application: they could be presented in a view showing all the files that are not associated with a program, for manual association. From then…

It's a ridiculous idea IMO because when I want to copy 2 docs, a jpeg and an html file from one device to another, I'd have to open three separate programs in order to carry out the task.

With a dedicated file manager, you open the one program and do it all in one step.

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

#320

Post by WayneDB »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #25

This reminds me of this famous quote: The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.

From the same guy that said "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

If Microsoft has no taste, Apple certainly has rotten taste in my opinion.

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