The revolution will not be televised!
Microsoft has a new design approach for the next generation of Office that uses command "tabs" that group functions into relevant areas instead of drop down menus and toolbars. And it’s about goddamned time. In the current version of Office, the drop-down menus are impossibleto use and the tools in the toolbars are irrelevant the majority of the time.
For example, if I go to the Insert menu in the most recent version of Word, there are four initial options, with one option leading to the Picture sub-menu. That is, unless I click on the double down arrow in the circle, which shows me the extra eleven options in the Insert menu, brings the available sub-menu count to three, and adds nine additional sub-sub-menus under the Autotext sub menu. Now if I didn’t like what I inserted and want to try again, I have to browse the menus for the option that I selected once more, assuming that I found it in the first place. Menus blow because you have to know what you are looking for and know that it is there and move through the menus multiple times to get to it if you want to do it again. Adding to that, the toolbars in Office are a waste of space. I almost never use them because they are rarely relevant to the task at hand. If I am writing, then why am I seeing Excel chart tools in the toolbar? Why do I always see them when I never use Excel except when forces beyond my control compel me?
I have the burden/joy of taking Human Computer Interaction and Social Analysis of Technology this semester, and we have spent copious amounts of time talking about the legacy of the Xerox 8010 and human factors in computation. The lessons I have learned so far are that you should not make people think, search, read, or study in order to do anything. They should be able to grasp it instinctively. Toolbars with umm… let me count… thirty options (with maybe a third grayed out) make me have to do at least two of the above, and the menus with shifting numbers of options in the high teens probably make me do three of the above at any given time. With the new version of Office and the command “tabs“, I might have to do one, max.
If I had a million dollars, I would thrash the Barenaked Ladies to within an inch of their lives and then buy couple of drinks for the Office boys as those Torontites bled on the ground. I would need a group of commandos, though, because I hear Canadians are all about the martial arts.
For example, if I go to the Insert menu in the most recent version of Word, there are four initial options, with one option leading to the Picture sub-menu. That is, unless I click on the double down arrow in the circle, which shows me the extra eleven options in the Insert menu, brings the available sub-menu count to three, and adds nine additional sub-sub-menus under the Autotext sub menu. Now if I didn’t like what I inserted and want to try again, I have to browse the menus for the option that I selected once more, assuming that I found it in the first place. Menus blow because you have to know what you are looking for and know that it is there and move through the menus multiple times to get to it if you want to do it again. Adding to that, the toolbars in Office are a waste of space. I almost never use them because they are rarely relevant to the task at hand. If I am writing, then why am I seeing Excel chart tools in the toolbar? Why do I always see them when I never use Excel except when forces beyond my control compel me?
I have the burden/joy of taking Human Computer Interaction and Social Analysis of Technology this semester, and we have spent copious amounts of time talking about the legacy of the Xerox 8010 and human factors in computation. The lessons I have learned so far are that you should not make people think, search, read, or study in order to do anything. They should be able to grasp it instinctively. Toolbars with umm… let me count… thirty options (with maybe a third grayed out) make me have to do at least two of the above, and the menus with shifting numbers of options in the high teens probably make me do three of the above at any given time. With the new version of Office and the command “tabs“, I might have to do one, max.
If I had a million dollars, I would thrash the Barenaked Ladies to within an inch of their lives and then buy couple of drinks for the Office boys as those Torontites bled on the ground. I would need a group of commandos, though, because I hear Canadians are all about the martial arts.
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