points by Zarathustra30 3 days ago | 0 comments
Maybe on the OS side. However, Vista coincided with the release of Office 2007. That release of Office introduced the dreaded Ribbon, which made functions much harder to find.
[–] okanat 3 days ago
[–] wolpoli 2 days ago
> It made functions easier to find
I actually find it difficult to scan for a specific function since the most of the text in the ribbon is centered and may have multiple lines. With the current design, I am expected to look up top to check what tab I am on, then look down bottom to find the container that might have my desired functionality, and then finally scan the middle text (which may be one or two lines) for the button.
[–] wolpoli 2 days ago
When Office 2007 was released, they made a lot of noise about how the ribbon was easy to use. One of the key functionality was Preview - that when the mouse cursor moves inside a button, the change is immediately applied to the content and when the cursor moves outside a button, the change was undone.
They never bothered to implement this Preview functionality on the Web version of office, and I bet only a few ever noticed this inconsistency.
Of course people who got used to traversing 3-level menus got annoyed but they still have all the same keyboard shortcuts. However, spending enough time, you also get used to Ribbon and it usually requires fewer clicks not more.
I still find a tastefully done Ribbon is better than a menu and a toolbar combination. The problem is, not everybody has put the same effort that Microsoft did which created monstrosities like Solidworks Ribbon.