Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

http://seldo.tumblr.com/post/9549775746/this-is-genuinely-microsofts-idea-of-a

by wyclif • 15 years ago

742 326 15 years ago

seldo.tumblr.com

zachallia• 15 years ago

They missed april fools day by a few months

Mavrik• 15 years ago

Em, if the author would actually fact-check, he'd know that most of those buttons dont't exist yet, so they'd hardly have more than 0% usage.

jdp233• 15 years ago

I just showed this to a Mac user who responded "Streamlined! Intuitive! Look at all that stuff, why would I use that?"

mikeryan• 15 years ago

I'm a heavy Mac user, but Finder is and has always been one of OS X's pain points and its gotten worse in Lion. Until I changed it when I opened a Finder window it defaults to a list of "All My Files" which is useless (the first 20 or so items are __init__.py)

igorgue• 15 years ago

You're a programmer, use the terminal.

Also most "normal" users do not have a single __init__.py I like the new Finder but I rarely use it... ack FTW!

sp3323• 15 years ago

In Windows 7, the menu bar is hidden by default, that's why no one uses it. Also, "no one uses" those other commands only because no one knows they exist now. The whole point to the new UI is to change things to be better.

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

So glad I discovered F10.

sp3323• 15 years ago

Just pushing Alt does the same thing, right?

hernan73• 15 years ago

Yes, instead of the menu bar they have this weird bar with "Organize", "New Folder", and "Burn". Not sure why "Burn" on every single explorer window; maybe they think all users are Napster fiends or something...

iaskwhy3• 15 years ago

Here's an image from the Microsoft article for those who don't know what it looks like in Windows 7: http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-bl...

Small nitpick: "Burn" doesn't show if you click on the main options of the left tree ("Favorites", "Libraries", etc).

I find it interesting because it clearly shows something changed on the last couple of years, we still remember how important burning something was, right?

saratogacx2• 15 years ago

Burn shows up because that bar is designed to show the options that you'd get in the top section of a context menu.

If you don't have anything selected you only get Organize and New folder. If you select a PDF you get Open with X, Print, and E-mail added.

Because every file can technically be "burned" when you have a CD burner it shows up all over the place.

encoderer2• 15 years ago

I think the point is missed.

It's hard to claim that the context menu is good UI. The fact that so few people use the menu bar means that it's currently useless and needs to be reworked. It's not as if they're replacing the context menu with the ribbon, they're replacing the currently-unused menu bar.

Triumvark• 15 years ago

True, and shortcut key functionality (the commonly used good UI) is simultaneously expanded.

stephen_g3• 15 years ago

That's not the problem here - it's that they are cramming literally hundreds of different actions into the ribbon. They're taking a bad design, and making it many times harder to navigate and far more confusing.

codingsolo• 15 years ago

This is a grossly-skewed assessment of the interface. Wouldn't the under utilization of features warrant an analysis WHY they are not being used? Wouldn't there also be a UX overhaul to make those features/commands/buttons/menus more approachable? The data and infographics would only be relevant if they were based upon the Win8 redesign.

kingofspain• 15 years ago

Everything I had to explain to my ex-boss about dealing with files is there in one click. I could hide it if I wanted and have my usual experience. I really don't see the problem.

I actually think that overall this a big improvement. Minimalism can go screw itself when it costs me hours of free labour :)

varunsrin5• 15 years ago

The first problem with the article here is that some of the buttons (Move To, Copy To) did not exist previously. They are also extensions of existing functions (Move, Copy) - so concluding that half the UI is covered by buttons that were not used is an inaccurate assumption.

Secondly, the actions are being moved from the context menu to the ribbon. Most new computer users find it very hard to remember additional, non intuitive actions like right clicking & context menus. Each of these is a 'modifier' that power users are used to, but which make the mental model of file manipulation much harder for beginners to wrap their heads around. They have to remember to apply these modifiers to see if the functions they want exist. Moving the functions into a contextually aware ribbon will make life much easier for these users.

Third, Move, Copy, Delete & Rename occupy the center of the ribbon. These are the most used commands (by far) and rightfully occupy center stage. Power users will call it clutter, but it will be extremely helpful for beginners.

[Disclaimer: MSFT Employee, but I do not work on Windows]

dhimes10• 15 years ago

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 if in a text document, etc.

Hell, rats in a cage can learn what to push in order to eat, so I would have thought that people would be able to learn this. Of course, it would help if they were told somehow and didn't have to discover it.

riffic• 15 years ago

agree, in fact UI like this encourages a user to develop bad usage habits, which will remain with them for an indefinite amount of time until these behaviors are (if ever) unlearned.

cwbrandsma• 15 years ago

Work in support sometime. It is EXTREMELY common to find users that really don't know about right-click. Or that double-click everything. These are not new users either, they have been using computers for decades.

For new users I might agree that they could figure out a right click because everything is new. But for users where everything is familiar ("I've always done it this way"), it gets much harder to break those expected actions.

Second part is about explorer itself. While it might seem like a common utility (even necessary), I find it very rare for a general user to know about it (my wife does not, nor my parents, siblings, their friends,...but my wife's father does). Once they see it, they have no idea what to do. Copy a file? Really, they have no idea.

tjogin• 15 years ago

Invisible actions are harder to discover than visible ones, not that illogical really, and one of the key ways in which the Mac is more user friendly as it depends on context menus to a lesser degree.

51Cards2• 15 years ago

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 heavily on their option key to extend functionality but at its root the UI was designed so that the average user could do things in a simple, straightforward way. MS sees visually exposing commands to the user as their way to do it and while I may not entirely agree, I don't think it's without merit. My kudos to them for also letting me as a "power user" collapse the "newbie visual noise" off my screen and drop what I want on a custom quick access bar.

Remember: don't let your status as a power user cloud your view of how your grandmother might want to use her computer. There are FAR more 'grandmother' grade users than there are us.

nickknw• 15 years ago

> 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

As someone who has done a fair amount of tutoring seniors on basic computer usage, I have a large amount of anecdotal evidence to indicate this is definitely not the case for them. Depending on the person, I would sometimes try to not show them context menus or keyboard shortcuts at all and just teach them how to use the File, Edit, etc. menus.

There are people who just want to learn the correct order of incantations so that they can check their mail and do things with their photos. And that's okay! Trying to show them that that there is more than one way to do a given action often just leads to confusion as they meld them together (right click on Edit..)

I have seen a fair amount of people with a similar approach as well, but my largest body of personal experience comes from the tutoring, which is why I mentioned it.

Qz• 15 years ago

The main problem with right clicking is that right clicking does a myriad different things depending on what is being clicked on, whereas left clicking almost always does the same thing.

larrywright• 15 years ago

It begs the question though... other than children, how many "new" computer users are there?

rickmb• 15 years ago

> but it will be extremely helpful for beginners

Methinks that kind of summarizes the issue: Microsoft doesn't seem to realize it's not 1995 anymore. "Beginners" are no longer a big market, and people are more comfortable with "discovering" software interfaces, as proven by the success of web apps, Apple, etcetera.

CoryMathews• 15 years ago

Have you met people not in the tech world?

Tons of people struggle with things as simple as sending emails, or adding music.

SoftwareMaven• 15 years ago

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 will be comfortable using context menus.

2. The people who don't understand this stuff will be just a stymied by the "move to" being in the ribbon versus being in a never-seen context menu.

However, what I would imagine MS is hoping with this is that the people in category two will gradually slide up to category one (well, more like 1a) because these things are in their face all the time.

jvandenbroeck• 15 years ago

Your computer science class isn't a good representation of the market. + It's not because 90% knows how to use a browser that they know how to use explorer, right click & use CTR/ALT

testcock1• 15 years ago

I think this is a very subjective viewpoint, which is understandable considering the website we're on, but it still overlooks how huge the PC market really is, along with the Windows userbase, and the nature of a lot of its users. There's a huge segment of the Windows userbase who will always be beginners at computers, and their habits and methods are usually mindblowing to any "knowledgeable" user. One such example was the mass of people who typed "facebook login" into Google any time they wanted to log-in into Facebook, and got thoroughly confused and angry when the first hit suddenly led them to ReadWriteWeb's article on Facebook's log-in, filling the comments section with cries of where is the log-in, what is this crap, shitty re-design, let me in!, etc.

Because of users like this, Microsoft is where it is. Any big revamp, and they'll just get millions of confused customers who suddenly can't make sense of the most basic functionality. It is Microsoft's own doing that they made their users get used to interfaces like this, but it's not as easy as just scraping it and throwing up something new.

It's also easy to forget that Windows has a userbase 10 times its nearest competitor (which is to say this brings in challenges which competitors might not face).

wtallis2• 15 years ago

According to Microsoft's data, more than 85% of the command usage in Explorer is through keyboard shortcuts or context menus. Clearly, it isn't that hard to get used to using context menus and keyboard shortcuts.

It seems to me that a lot of people here on HN are simply using this issue to talk about how much better they are at using a computer than the ordinary person, who is apparently quite inept. Unless there is convincing evidence that people that incompetent are still a significant fraction of the userbase, we should stop designing desktop software to accommodate people who are not able to master the use of an iPad.

brudgers• 15 years ago

>"Clearly, it isn't that hard to get used to using context menus and keyboard shortcuts."

What this may show is that it is mainly experienced users who use Explorer. And based on my personal experience, I believe this to be the case - most people do not know what Explorer is for, let alone how to use it efficiently.

The reason for using the context menu use in my case is that most options are available only from the context menu...e.g. "edit", "extract [from zip] all", etc. and it is only through many years of trial and error that I have developed any efficiency with the context menu - this is because the problem with context menu operations is that they require enough experience to recognize the context and remember what [hidden] commands will be revealed by a right-click.

The advantage of the ribbon is that context menus are made visible when the context is entered, thus allowing less experienced users explore options more easily. Also, the issue with traditional context menus is that they are a mixture of fixed elements [cut, copy, paste, properties] and context specific items [extract all].

varunsrin5• 15 years ago

This is a classic case of misinterpreting the data - 85% use it because the only way you can copy, without using a context menu or a keyboard shortcut is by holding down Alt and then clicking on the Edit menu.The point is, people use keyboard shortcuts & context menus because they have to today.

This is the danger with reading too much into simple data - just because 85% of the people do X, it doesn't mean that X is good. Do you expect the data to show that people don't copy paste because its not intuitive? No, in most cases they 'have' to learn it, and figure it out by asking a friend, but they don't enjoy the learning process (and indirectly, resent the platform itself).

Everyone who struggled with the concept of right clicking eventually learnt it - the problem is not that right clicking or context menus are impossible to learn. It's that they're not a natural way of interaction, and should be eliminated whenever possible.

You shouldn't have to learn to use a menu to do what you want, especially when 80% of the time you just need 4 actions.

The simplicity of modifiers (tap, double tap, swipe) is what makes touch platforms like iOS very intuitive. A direct, clickable button ensures that novice users can accomplish simple file management tasks by learning a single modifier (the click).

kenjackson3• 15 years ago

A lot of people have addressed a mistake in your reasoning (selective bias, only way to do things, etc...). Another point is that context menus aren't touch friendly. The ribbon works surprisingly well for touch.

elehack2• 15 years ago

Assuming the usage data is from Windows 7, the nonexistent usage of menu is probably largely because the menu is entirely hidden unless you know that hitting 'alt' brings it up. And that is a much newer hidden feature (Win7 era, maybe Vista with early signals in XP) than context menus (at least since Win95).

Besides touch-friendliness, ribbons have huge benefits in discoverability. People can't use features they don't know exist; ribbons organize features into browsable, meaningful panels so they can be found, related to each other, and used. The article seems to entirely miss this point.

hernan73• 15 years ago

The "copy to" and "move to" buttons, seem to be some variation on the old "send to" command, which is currently available via both right-click and menu bar. (For those not familiar with Windows: if I select a file, the "send to" options are: compressed folder, create desktop shortcut, documents, fax, email, burn to DVD, network directory.)

Personally, that's an command that I never use; not sure how popular it is with the Windows userbase in general.

aw3c2• 15 years ago

It is one thing I love to show "normal" people. They can use it to easily copy files to eg USB sticks or even select images to send by mail. These are tremendously useful for those people.

watmough• 15 years ago

Yes, here's a place they really could have done something cool with the UI, and spiffed up a be-cobwebbed corner of Explorer.

In XP, there's a folder that you can put folder and program shortcuts in, that will populate the send to menu. In fact, this essentially is my quicklaunch method when using XP. Just put a link to notepad2 in there, and you can view anything in ascii. Rinse and repeat.

It's so useful in fact, that they might have been able to bring it into wider usage, and maintain continuity with older Windows, by adding a context menu such as 'Make me a send to place', which would add a shortcut to the clicked folder or application into the send to menu.

To me on OS X, the Finder sidebar and Dock are the rough equivalent. 90% of my Finder work is selection and dragging to the sidebar, or Dock, the same thing I would use send to on Windows for.

icebraining• 15 years ago

>(For those not familiar with Windows: if I select a file, the "send to" options are: compressed folder, create desktop shortcut, documents, fax, email, burn to DVD, network directory.)

There's one more: if you have a bluetooth adapter (or a laptop with embedded support), it shows a 'Send to Bluetooth device'. I find this very useful for sending files to my phone.

prewett• 15 years ago

I love "Send To". I keep a link to Notepad2 and a hex editor in there (and sometimes Emacs) so that I can easily use a real editor or get a hex dump. It's kind of like "Open With..." except that it's always in the menu and somehow Open With... might not pick up the program you want, so you have to waste time traversing the directory tree.

dendory• 15 years ago

"New computer users" ?!

People who use Windows are, for the most part, not new computer users. More and more the new users go to a Mac, tablet or smartphone.

The point of that article is that people already use hotkeys and context menus. So building a bigger menu and toolbar is crazy.

woobar• 15 years ago

'Move To' and 'Copy To' existed for a long time. I have them on Windows XP. They are not on a toolbar by default, by anyone can add them.

Nobody knows about them for one reason - they are useless.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/5e5xN.jpg

seabee• 15 years ago

they're on the toolbar in Vista and Win 7. In XP they're not on the toolbar but they're on the side bar that is shown by default.

Edit: Vista/7 may not be completely true, but it's certainly that way on my untechnically-minded mother's laptop - probably the result of context (e.g. in a library of pictures) or a setting somewhere.

raster_blaster• 15 years ago

Move To and Copy To have existed since at least XP: http://i.imgur.com/NsPGD.png

But they had to be put there by the user. :)

perlgeek• 15 years ago

I don't have a Windows system at hand now, so I can't check it... but didn't "Copy To" exist as "Context Menu -> Send to" before?

dmethvin• 15 years ago

There is a "Send To Any Folder" utility that you can put in there, but it's not a standard feature.

leon_3• 15 years ago

What makes you think that new computer users who can't remember "non intuitive" concepts like right clicking and context menus will know what cut/copy/paste on files does?

varunsrin5• 15 years ago

Again, cut/copy/paste are technical terms - the intent a user is likely to form is, I have this word file here, and i need to put it onto this USB drive here. The large copy to button in the ribbon accomplishes that task nicely.

Remember, its not that user's cant remember right clicking, its that they shouldn't have to. Why should you need two different types of clicks, and 2 sub menus to Send a file to a drive, when you can accomplish it with a single click and a single sub-menu (as is demonstrated in the ribbon)

Making the initial learning curve simple will have implications on the overall feel & appeal of the operating system, but this is something that is difficult to quantify with simple software metrics.

Kwpolska• 15 years ago

Move To and Copy To exist in XP.

iaskwhy3• 15 years ago

But they are not shown by default on Vista or 7 (which I guess is where their data comes from).

azylman• 15 years ago

Came here to say this, only I don't work for Microsoft. He takes you guys' research that says most people use it from the context menu and uses that to say that it should continue to be that way. It's like, since when are companies not allowed to try to improve their UI? Just because most people use it there doesn't make it the best option.

mc32• 15 years ago

The UI, is apparently customizable. From the Team Blog:

"We knew that using a ribbon for Explorer would likely be met with skepticism by a set of power-users (like me), but there are clear benefits in ways that the ribbon:

-Exposes hidden features that they already use but which require third party add-ons to use in the Explorer UI today.

-Provides keyboard shortcuts for every command in the ribbon, something many people have been asking for.

-Provides UI customization with the quick access toolbar, taking us back to a customization level that is basically equivalent to Windows XP."

qq662• 15 years ago

The rule of any customizable feature is that the vast majority of the users will stick with the defaults. So the defaults have to be optimized.

pavel_lishin2• 15 years ago

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

kaishin6• 15 years ago

This http://kaishinlab.com/2011/05/pitfall-of-customizability/

AllenKids• 15 years ago

I generally like ribbon in Office and think MSFT has some great ideas here, like moving the info pan to better fit the wide screen reality.

But at this stage it looks so very very bad, and remind me the open office mouse with 30 buttons.

planetjoe2• 15 years ago

I'm getting off-point here, but did anyone else get annoyed that the MS blog post used bar charts when they should use pie charts to compare relative percentages?

sid013• 15 years ago

http://www.napera.com/product-design/pie-charts-considered-h...

planetjoe2• 15 years ago

Point well taken. I can't seriously argue against Tufte or actual research, but I still like pie charts for some things.

cabirum• 15 years ago

As long as y-axis starts at 0%, its fine for me.

eddieplan9• 15 years ago

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.

hackinthebochs3• 15 years ago

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.

WayneDB2• 15 years ago

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.

pixcavator• 15 years ago

BTW, is "officially" the new "literally"?

anonymoushn• 15 years ago

I'm not sure. I haven't yet seen any companies that officially eat dog food.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_a-gn0dYmk#t=1m14s

systems• 15 years ago

Well, in general I agree with the comments saying that the review missed the point about reworking the Tool/Menu bar so that people start to use it more

I still think, it's too crowded, and will benefit from a mode selection (i.e. Advanced with all these button, Basic with only the most used ones and Custom )

skeptical• 15 years ago

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, a few co-workers of mine said that they find them practical. I spent an average of 20-40 seconds each time I needed to click one of those buttons, even after many months of usage.

The buttons are jammed together in a rectangular area in ridiculous amounts. Some ribbons have close to 20 buttons, this will never be intuitive, it's just not visually easy to identify the buttons. Also, often a button is on the other site, all the away across the window in a far far away ribbon.

I never managed to use any microsoft OS after XP. Did the users really need other MS OS after XP? Quite frankly, I cannot find sinigle advantage of using vista or seven.

PS: The screenshots have something of a 1998 charm, I think it's that overlayed info. mspaint?

Maascamp• 15 years ago

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.

marze• 15 years ago

They entered that realm long ago.

martingordon3• 15 years ago

Everyone I know loves managing their files, so it's great that Microsoft is finally improving Windows Explorer!

WRONG!

For the hundreds of nerds complaining that they don't have access to the file system on their iPads, there are millions of normal people who are delighted by a computer that they can use rather than manage.

How much longer can Microsoft keep making a 20th century operating system? What's going to be the great innovation of Windows 9? Yet another reshuffled toolbar driven by all of their wonderful data?

sid013• 15 years ago

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

adriand• 15 years ago

Well, the iOS way would be that documents would end up in a place that is shown when you open a word processor, and that pictures would end up in a place that is shown when you open up an image navigator.

martingordon3• 15 years ago

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 accessing email.

I don't manage individual contact files, I access my contacts through an address book app.

I don't manage individual music files, I use iTunes.

Most operating systems already encourage separating files by type, I'm taking it a step further by suggesting that 90% of users would be better served by many type-specific file browsers than a single general purpose one.

technoslut3• 15 years ago

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.

Lewisham2• 15 years ago

I was just thinking this myself. Windows 8 is moving towards a tablet-like structure, they need to go all the way on this and get rid of the filesystem for 90% of users.

Open almost any Windows laptop, and you'll see users who basically think of the hard drive as a file dumping ground. You'll see files stored on the Desktop, or everything just goes into one big directory. How many conversations have you had where you ask "Where did you save the file?" and the reply is "I don't know, just the place that it says when I press save"?

Windows should have had a services infrastructure, where programs explicitly define an export (how to access files the program has generated) and import (which files the program can handle). Users don't really think of files by directory but by type, either Word documents or photos or whatever. The file system should just be a dialog box which is essentially a search. "Show me Word documents I edited in the last 5 days." "Show me all my photos that I took in Hawaii." That's how users think about data.

Meai• 15 years ago

Interesting idea! There is no indication of what "My Documents" contains. What do I put in there? What is a "document" anyway? I'm frequently annoyed by files being saved somewhere I don't remember, or into huge folder hierarchies where I troublesomely navigate into. This is just simply stuff a user shouldn't need to think about. Couple your suggestions with a proper realtime search engine like we have with http://www.voidtools.com/ and this could be good.

contextfree2• 15 years ago

It looks like they are in fact implementing something at least kinda-sorta like what you describe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I (skip to around 3:30)

WiseWeasel• 15 years ago

This reminds me of BeOS's metadata database filesystem, taken to its logical conclusion on the front end:

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/the-beos-fil...

super_mario2• 15 years ago

Mac OS X already has that, but I still would not like to see the filesystem hidden from me. It's just too valuable idea for it to go away and it takes us further away from general computing to turning our computers into appliances owned by our OS vendor.

GeneralMaximus2• 15 years ago

I would say having logically named directories and a strict HIG could solve this.

When I hit "Save" on a Mac, the file picker shows me a field where I can type a file name, and a drop down where I can choose between "Documents", "Pictures", "Movies", etc. or the last directory this particular program saved a file to. Most of the time the application will even pick a sensible default location. Only if I click the small arrow at the right of the drop down to I see the advanced file chooser.

On Windows, when I hit "Save", I get the advanced file picker by default. Unless the application is smart enough to set a sensible default location -- which most Windows applications are not -- the Windows file picker defaults to Desktop. This is the reason most people have all kinds of shit on their Windows desktops.

I can search for files on Windows now, so at least Windows has one thing right.

leon_3• 15 years ago

Yeah, many users even don't understand the file system metaphor. MS unleashing the full fury of cut/copy/paste/files isn't really helping user experience.

But MS is a highly engineer dominated tribal culture. I don't see how they can overcome that. I guess the windows explorer will survive another decade.

anigbrowl4• 15 years ago

The writer of this blog uses a picture of the Golden Gate bridge as the background image on the page. As someone who lives near the bridge, I can affirm that at any given time, more than 50% of the bridge is empty; that is, less than half of the bridge's surface is covered by cars or pedestrians. Clearly this is a complete waste of resources, and we should just get rid of the empty half.

Also, what is up with those suspension towers and all those cables? Does anyone actually cross the bridge at those great heights? I say cut them up and stick them underneath as support piers, so that they're not obstructing the view or (more likely) sticking out of a fog bank and creating a hazard to passing aircraft.

chetan51• 15 years ago

Civil engineering is very different from UI design.

anigbrowl4• 15 years ago

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 distribution are able to complete the game and interested enough to spend time doing so.

For creative or productivity software, the definition of success is open-ended, because while designers can anticipate the kind of tasks/problems users will want to perform/solve, the end product of their labors is fundamentally unknowable, rather than waiting within the software to be discovered by the diligent user (player). Sure, Michaelangelo used to say that the statue already existed within the block of marble and his job was simply to reveal it, but you should probably see that as an early example of successful branding rather than a design document. A game is like a theme park ride insofar as the riders may change but their interaction with the ride is highly constrained. An application is more like a civil engineering task insofar as it has to bear a substantial amount of traffic, but its job is to facilitate rather than fulfill. You want those things available on the toolbar, even though many of them may not see regular use, because it's the easiest way to signal the availability of such functionality. The relative utility distribution of toolbar buttons or menu items follows Benford's law just like everything else.

krschultz• 15 years ago

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 is the grid? Where is the white space? What the hell is that round button that replaces the file menu? The title bar just looks awful.

If they could clean it up graphically I really think it could be just as nice as anything on Mac OS X. Ask yourself this, if Apple had come out with the buttons on tabs in the exact same groupings but done it in a gorgeous way, who would be complaining about it? We'd all be heralding it.

kaishin6• 15 years ago

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).

whatusername2• 15 years ago

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).

hackinthebochs3• 15 years ago

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.

psychotik2• 15 years ago

The best way to 'fix' Windows Explorer is to focus on improving usability of the OS such that Windows Explorer isn't something average users needs to use. Focusing on improving it is focusing on the wrong problem, IMO.

Having said that, I think the author of the post seems to ignore the fact that Microsoft's research shows that not many use the menu bar currently (because currently, the menu bar is hidden by default). By adding the ribbon, I assume their goal is to improve that statistic, and in turn make it easier for users.

alanfalcon• 15 years ago

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

jdp233• 15 years ago

Yes, this video was done by an internal group at Microsoft.

huhtenberg2• 15 years ago

How do you know?

huhtenberg2• 15 years ago

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...

kirillzubovsky• 15 years ago

Maybe this is an ingenius plan by Microsoft employees to revamp the company from inside out (or outside in?). But seriously, the kool-aid drinking types are probably really flustered by your post, as they think the ginormous waste of screen space is the best thing ever invented. sad

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

With regards to Microsoft's usage statistics, and the counter-argument, I can't help but think of this: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/09/counterintuitive-w...

Simple usage statistics aren't especially valuable if you don't look at the overall picture as to why features are used (e.g. who would cut and paste if they understood how to move?). I'm not sure if either side is properly analyzing the available information.

mirkules2• 15 years ago

Actually, copy/paste makes a lot of sense. Having to frequently copy or move files from one place to another, I got used to ctrl-c or -x a file, then go to a different directory, and ctrl-v. The appeal, I think, is that I don't have to use the mouse (which employs a time-costly drag operation).

Dragging files into directories is also cognitively expensive - e.g. you have to make certain that you are dragging exactly into the right folder which can be about 15 pixels high, depending on what view you're using. It requires hand-eye coordination which becomes unnecessary with simple copy/paste operations.

BUT, for beginner users, I agree: users have a hard time grasping the concept of a copy/paste buffer anyway, and with files it gets abstracted one more level. For more advanced users, they use keyboard shortcuts, so the buttons don't really need to be there.

mmuro• 15 years ago

_They use this to show that “the commands that make up 84% of what users do in Explorer are now in one tab”. But the more important thing is that the remaining 50% of the bar is taken up by buttons that nobody will ever use, ever, even according to Microsoft’s own research._

This hits the nail on the head when discussing the UI decisions made. If Microsoft had included the top 10 commands in an organized manner, plus a few more from their data, it'd probably be fine.

elehack2• 15 years ago

There's a huge difference between have never used and will never use. Microsoft's data is about past usage; the article makes an unjustified extrapolation from that to future message. This extrapolation is particularly relevant when discussing a feature that largely serves to improve discoverability - if the features make sense together, putting them together and making them visible may help users get more out of the software.

It would be interesting to find out how many people say "I never knew the file manager could do that" when they fire up Windows 8, even when the feature has been there since NT4.

jasongullickson• 15 years ago

Usability of this (and anything, really) would improve dramatically if in each system there were one correct way (based on selection by scientific usability testing) to initiate each task.

The "helpfulness" of providing "n" ways of doing the same thing is an illusion and only undermines the ability for users to establish a shared context which can be used to make user actions more automatic for the experienced and easier to teach to the inexperienced.

voxmatt• 15 years ago

This post didn't even need words, just that progression of screenshots. Windows 7 feels almost like a nice breeze and them, wham, that Windows 8 monstrosity. Functional, data-driven arguments will never convince me that a user's first reaction to that window will be anything other than confusion.

devth2• 15 years ago

This prototype is a failure of both design and usability. It's an offense and a joke against anyone who expects to be able to interact with a machine in an efficient and intelligent manner.

- It's ugly as hell

- A beginner is bombarded with way too many things to click on

- An expert is annoyed by useless buttons and waste of space

Sure, you can turn it off, but who wants to configure and reconfigure UI preferences for the rest of their lives (sidenote: reminds me of eclipse)? Sensible defaults, please.

Contrast this with Apple, whose designs often define what good design and usability means. In their apps:

- The appearance is simple, well-designed, elegant

- The only actions present are those deemed most necessary to the user

- Tons of functionality is hidden under shortcut keys, modifier clicks and context menus for expert users (after years on OS X, I still discover hidden elegance as a result of their zealous attention to detail)

aik• 15 years ago

Just one question:

Are these two statements different or restating the same thing with a different perception:

>> after years on OS X, I still discover hidden elegance

and something like:

"It takes me years to find some features because they're so well hidden, and perhaps unintuitive."

devth2• 15 years ago

Not at all. The things discovered are unessential to getting things done. It's usually just a nicer way or more of a "wow, I can't believe they thought of this crazy edge case".

A few examples: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/400/got-any-mac-os-...

pointyhat8• 15 years ago

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, this is incredibly useful. I genuiely hardly ever need to use the context menu because what I need is there "in my face" and "obvious". While this fits newbie usage patterns perfectly, it also helps us power users who don't always switch back to the keyboard shortcuts (mouse already in hand) and don't want to jump through several hoops (like faffing with context menus) to get stuff done.

On the other hand, I have absolutely no fucking idea what the hell the toolbar buttons do when I'm using Finder or Mail on OS-X (Snow Leopard and Lion). The icons are crap, there are no visual cues and I always end up dropping to a terminal to get stuff done because I simply can't be arsed to figure it out or piss around with right clicking or the awful keyboard shortcut system on OS X. I don't think people usually get that far with OS X without getting "shiny I paid $2000 so it must be good Apple mental block" as I call it.

I'm fed up of so-called self-proclaimed experts chucking out blog posts criticising user interfaces while masturbating over Apple's efforts. Microsoft's UI allows you to get shit done and get it done quickly. So it might not be as aesthetically pleasing, but it works and works well for those of us with shit in our eyes.

Also, Microsoft research what you want rather than tell you what you're having (like Apple do).

revscat5• 15 years ago

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.

pointyhat8• 15 years ago

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.

Yhippa• 15 years ago

"Also, Microsoft research what you want rather than tell you what you're having (like Apple do)."

I feel that's one contributing factor to the bloat of Microsoft Office applications. Instead of having some governance around what features to include you have them including feature after feature that may not align to something more cohesive. As a result after the nth version you have a piece of software with features buried deep within the menus. The Ribbon does help out with this a lot but I still have trouble keeping track of which feature is buried within which sub-menu of an icon on the Ribbon.

As for Apple I completely agree with this. I really wish they had a unified experience like Ribbon UI. It really is a thing of beauty to use it in Windows Live Mail, Office, and even adopted by newer programs like Bizagi Process Modeler.

lancewiggs• 15 years ago

I'm an Excel geek - and yes sorry I've done far too much VBA in my time. The ribbon has all but destroyed Office for me. The commands are randomly scattered about the sub-menus of the ribbon, much of the content is stuff I will never ever use and it takes up a ridiculous amount of space.

While it seems a large step backwards to folks like me who were expert users, the ribbon apparently makes it easier for "average" users. However in helping the average Microsoft seemed to forget about the power users, with the result that my speed in Excel is slower now than it was in 1995. Indeed there is almost no tangible improvement in Excel for over 10 years. The basic functions are the same, the program still crashes frequently and now the usability is worse than it used to be. No wonder I turn more and more to Google Docs and Scirvener.

oemera• 15 years ago

You sure are a "Mac power user" who just don't have a clue what the menu bar in OS X is for and for it... Apple is crap and theire products are overpriced and the OS is a piece of crap too because you can't figure how to use it. Are kidding me? I bet that you only once used Mac OS X in an Apple Store for 1 minute.

I understand that a lot Microsoft people don't like Apple and Mac OS X but to say to be an power user of both systems and only use the terminal in OS X cause it is too complicated is little bit too much of it, isn't it? I can tell you the exact difference: I used office 2003 for a very long time and since we at work switched to 2007 I can't find anything. Ribbons everywhere but not one Ribbon is self explaining. Not even ONE. Sure you get used to it and after a lot wasted time you know where those things are now BUT getting used to it doesn't speak for a great UI design!

But maybe the complicated stuff fits you better but I doubt such thing!

pointyhat8• 15 years ago

I've had more Macs recently than hot dinners. I don't like them.

Software......................

Firstly, the menu bar is awful. Even the shortcut to find stuff is nigh on useless (Squashed-bug + slash). You have to know what you are looking for and the terminology is terribly inconsistent between applications. There are no access keys to navigate around either. If the mouse is easier to use then it's a shit menu.

Also Apple's compiler toolchain is a POS and varies so reliably between releases.

XCode is buggy as hell and the multi window UI sucks (although I hear this is being fixed now).

I could go on but I really want to get onto...

Hardware......................

With regards to my hardware usage, I've had 8 Macs now and three extremely bad experiences:

a) Mac mini failed in 2006 after owning it for 2 weeks. Took Apple 2 weeks to sort it out after denying there was anything wrong with a 100% dead box. I had to threaten to throw the fucking thing at the idiots in the apple store before they'd even think about replacing it.

b) 20" polycarb intel iMac. Crashed regularly with 10.4 on it. After 2 months of arguing with Apple, they replaced the logic board and it was fine for about 6 months then the display failed. Claimed it on the insurance then.

c) 2010 MacBook Pro. Absolutely dangerously retarded stupid design. Can't remove the battery. This is just dangerous. My daughter spilled water on the table (just enough to touch the side of the unit). Due to capillary action, the seam around the base of the machine sucked up all the water. On most machines, you yank the battery quickly if that happens to protect the electronics. You can't on a MacBook. Turned it over and all the liquid that had been sucked inside rained onto the logic board and shorted a few things including the battery. Whilst trying to find some damn mini screwdrivers to get the back off, it CAUGHT FIRE and was promptly chucked in the garden before it burned my house down. It burned for 10 minutes before the LiPoly cells calmed down. The inside of the machine was black and burned, the keyboard had melted and the screen had cracked due to the temperature.

As a qualified electronics engineer, I can assure you that's just a shit and dangrous design. Isolating power is a fairly fundamental aspect of electronic design.

This is why I hate Apple. Bad, dangerous products with shiny happy marketing.

neutronicus• 15 years ago

I love the ribbon. It briefly brought me back to Word from LaTeX. I am by no means a Word power user, but I found it 2007 much easier to use than 2003.

(I also have a Mac and prefer it to Windows, but I interact with it mainly through the terminal, the browser, and emacs - and I can't be arsed to learn powershell or whatever in order to do the same thing on Windows)

ams6110• 15 years ago

I hate the ribbon. It was the final push for me to abandon Word and learn LaTeX. Really.

I also use the shell for almost all file system manipulation, on OS X and on Windows (via Cygwin) so I know that puts me in a small minority of users.

mambodog• 15 years ago

Clearly you're not a Mac OS X "power user" as you claim to be, because you seem to be ignorant of very basic Mac OS features, like enabling text labels for the toolbar.

code_duck• 15 years ago

There's really no question... the screenshot he has provided is heinous. Talk about being out of ideas 20 years ago...

leeoniya• 15 years ago

explorer is progressively getting bloated and nasty; there's no 'power user' version and now way to bring back useful features which have existed before.

i've been using Classic Shell to keep my sanity on W7 and the 'Super Bar' is big step back in productivity for me.

my search for seamless Explorer replacements continues...

icarus_drowning• 15 years ago

I'm not sure why, but I've never really gotten used to the ribbon. Especially in Office 2010 , I find it incredibly difficult to navigate and, frankly, hugely annoying. To see it brought to something like explorer is horrifying, especially considering the large amount of vertical space it takes up.

Shouldn't there be more intuitive ways of doing these things? Why is there a need for a move button or copy (one or the other) when you have drag and drop? I know it is very much in vogue to abstract the file system away from the user, and it strikes me that this is exactly the opposite, and just might be just a little over engineered.

DevX101• 15 years ago

Before power users criticize the UI, keep in mind the recent study that 90% of computer users didn't know to use CTRL-F to search a document. Things that may be intuitive to you, may not be so to most other users.

Maybe MS did extensive usability testing, maybe they didn't. But that CTRL-F study was so surprising to me that I don't trust my instinct when it comes to judging the effectiveness of a user interface for hundreds of millions of people

siromega• 15 years ago

The simple answer is that MS had to add all those buttons in the ribbon to make the UI more touch friendly. You cant right click on a tablet with your finger.

lucisferre• 15 years ago

The problem here is really the ribbon itself. It is ugly awkward and hard to scan quickly due to it's inconsistent layout. I almost never find what I'm looking for without looking two or three times and I'm a regular user. Yes tablets need buttons to touch, what they don't need is a cluttered ugly ribbon.

wisty• 15 years ago

I can't believe this wasn't upvoted more.

Moving to this design is a step in the right direction. They need to do more - like ax the filesystem altogether (rendering this step meaningless), but that's another story.

danssig5• 15 years ago

If they want to go touch they should be getting rid of the file system, not making it easier to manage. Touch devices are appliances. The reason I left windows in the first place was because I was sick of managing it. I'm certainly not going to pay money for the joy of managing an appliance.

r00fus• 15 years ago

There are more elegant ways to add touch-usable capabilities than gobbling up real-estate (iOS implements the "context menu" as a long-click meta-mode). You could also use persistent buttons like PalmOS/Android.

Discoverability is a prime way to keep things elegant (ie, don't push it in a user's face - let them find it easily).

Of course, if Microsoft wants to address BOTH touch and desktop, then I wish them well... that's a herculean task and I don't think any solution work well for either.

saratogacx2• 15 years ago

Press and hold is right click. Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, Tablet versions of windows for at least vista and 7 all use this.

strmpnk• 15 years ago

While I haven't used this UI and I think it's bulky and ugly, there is one important thing to note that I think people miss on first pass.

Typical use based on their research has used the context menu. On Windows that is typically a right click (IIRC). Now Windows 8 has claimed to moving towards more touch capable user interface. I'd imagine anything that is directly touchable with common controls being larger targets is a huge improvement from right-click simulation. These controls, while ugly, I could see as an improvement to usability in those scenarios.

Additionally, I haven't seen any effective file management interfaces for touch devices yet. Most of them shun the filesystem in favor of flattened document collections, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out on upcoming tablet devices. Personally, I was looking forward to stepping away from filesystems and lessening their role in my regular interactions, but time will tell where valuable experiences will be spent, so I'd say we wait and see for this one.

contextfree2• 15 years ago

Between this and the last post about the copy dialogs with their graphs etc., I wonder if they are making a conscious decision to focus the traditional desktop UI more on "power use cases" (not necessarily "power users"). It's telling that the PM prominently talks up Copy as Path and batch file scripting in the video. It makes a certain amount of sense - for casual use there's the relatively minimalist, design-y immersive UI, so the people working on the desktop UI feel free to focus on the remaining use cases and move in the opposite direction.

abhimishra• 15 years ago

This post seems to miss the point - obviously some of the commands that were less-visible or non-existent earlier would not show up on the telemetry data, but can still be important to surface in a redesign of the UI.

The newly-added buttons on the ribbon are there to address the most-requested features (by actual customers) as well as some of the missing features users most-often go to third-party plug-ins for, per the actual blog post from the Windows 8 Engineering Blog.

As for whether the UI is stream-lined or not - while simplification has its place, it is not always a good thing. The OSX Finder is surprisingly devoid of things even basic users can find useful - in many cases it isn't easy to find the appropriate menu option or shortcut to perform these actions - personally I think it goes too far by way of simplification.

It is good to make computers easy-to-understand - but by attempting to remove the learning curve COMPLETELY you can also damage the productivity a computer can provide. The sweetspot, of course, is somewhere in the middle.

crenshaw• 15 years ago

This is an odd article, because Microsoft addresses exactly the point this person is arguing against.

MS says, "Only 2 of the top 10 commands customers invoke in Explorer are available in the Command bar, the main UI element for invoking commands."

And have this picture, http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/communit...

The takeaway from the data isn't that you should focus on people using context menus, because all commands haven't been available in other places. But they used their data and said, "there are the most common desired actions" coupled with their own design sense that said, "if we moved them to the ribbon they'd be easier to use".

To me that makes a great deal of sense.

I feel like this person, Seldo, who wrote this blog post attacked MS without either reading the full MS post or not understanding it. Statements like, "But the more important thing is that the remaining 50% of the bar is taken up by buttons that nobody will ever use, ever, even according to Microsoft’s own research" (which she bolded) simply aren't in the data MS presented. It's as if she misunderstood the distinction between location and action.

And later she says, "Again, this is Microsoft’s own research, cited in the same post: nobody — almost literally 0% of users — uses the menu bar, and only 10% of users use the command bar." Again she seems to not understand that the most common actions were only available from the context menus.

fmavituna• 15 years ago

Article is ignoring a big thing, features such as "Copy Path" is almost hidden in Win 7/Vista unless you know where they are.

In 7 you have to "Shift + Right Click" to see "Copy as Path" in the context menu. Now how many users (even power users) actually know about this? So many of my friends were really pleased to find this out when I showed them.

There are lots of other features such as you can actually copy a file and when you try to paste it to a "File Open Dialog" 7 will automatically paste the path of the file, so that's why "Copy Path" was quite hidden, because for common usage it's just easier to do copy & paste.

We have to understand that just like everyone know what is Ctrl + C all power users eventually gets rid of menu bars and just uses hotkeys. New Ribbon interface (with hide/customise features) provides a nice infrastructure for that while not punishing the normal users.

zobzu• 15 years ago

I'm probably the only one to think that it's good that MS keeps buttons that are less used. Cause you see less used does not mean NOT used. Sure cut&paste is going to be like 80% of the use, but when you make a new dir you're going to have that working and in front of you.

Here's the key sentence,take note:

It's not how OFTEN you use it that matters most but how USEFUL it is.

Browser makers, please take note when you remove 99% of the UI. Thanks.

Beside I know most "noobs" look for these functions in menus and will love the buttons. Even on OSX many just don't know how to move/copy. They can do it in iPhoto or iMovie, but when it comes to the finder they're lost.

VaedaStrike• 15 years ago

Oh the myopic mind has no bound. Well...except where it has to have bounds to be considered myopic...

Do you expect an UI designed for someone that's never heard of HN and who is unaware that you can copy and paste pieces of text SHOULD seem attractive to a technohipster blogger?

So many times HN seems like the next incarnation of the Library of Alexandria and then posts like this make it seem like a bunch of silly stupid cyber bullies stuck in myspace and high school WHILE guffawing at the teacher's assignment for the day.

Microsoft is often times silly, stupid, evil, whacked out. But don't go projecting myopic mamby-pamby "critique" like you knew something.

Love them or hate them or think they're falling off of the face of the earth Microsoft gets enough right to still pull in the pennies, a tad bit more than I think this poor chap manages with his blog.

lhnn• 15 years ago

Yes, let's get rid of advanced features, because a lot of people don't use them.

mkramlich• 15 years ago

I felt they entered that realm a while back. One of the reasons I switched to Mac.

blackrabbit• 15 years ago

The concept might be to increase their usage...

eliben2• 15 years ago

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.

danssig5• 15 years ago

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

eliben2• 15 years ago

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

frou_dh• 15 years ago

It's the stuff at the top left of the screenshot that puts it over the edge. They couldn't resist having just one more menu, so there it is partially crammed in to the title bar.

antonyme• 15 years ago

While the Ribbon UI was intended to simplify complex UI, these screenshots suggest it may not. Take for example the "Explorer in Windows 8" image. The visual hierarchy is very confusing. The ribbon appears to have 5 pages - but File is bold and special for some reason (it invokes a huge popup menu?). But the focus of the entire app is on Files - so what conceptually would not go under File, except for Folder operations? Furthermore, above this special File menu there are three super special (and somewhat inscrutable) icons. But aren't these just shortcuts for File operations? Why don't they just live under File menu? For that matter, why have toolbar buttons been hoisted into the title bar itself?

The current tab appears to be the Home tab, based on the highlight. But this has nothing to do with your "Home" directory - it is merely the "default" page for the most common operations. These operations are used to manage your files - the names of two other tabs in this hierarchy. What would the user expect to find there?

The layout of the Home tab is visually confusing. There is no grid or use of whitespace to guide the eye, and it presents a non-uniform 2-dimensional array of controls of different sizes. At least the old toolbars being 1-dimensional meant the user could easily remember approximately how far along the toolbar to look for the icon - now the user must scan a far more complex terrain to find what they're looking for.

There are two different sizes and layouts for action icons. So Copy and Paste are large icons with text below, while Cut is a small icon with text to the right. Why? Presumably it is less frequently used, but the inconsistency is visually jarring and non-obvious to the user.

While some buttons cause immediate actions, others have a small down-arrow next to them, suggesting they will probably pop up a menu instead. This introduces another variation to the two button types, giving a third type. But some have a default action when clicking on the button itself (a fourth type), and only reveal a menu when clicking on the arrow - yet there is no visual indication of which behaviour a button has. (This is apparent in IE and Office also.)

A user may wonder what is the difference between clicking on the dark blue File toolbar tab, versus clicking on the menu button in the very top of the titlebar, versus pressing Alt to reveal the hitherto hidden menubar?

While the Manage ribbon tab appears at the same hierarchy level as Home, Share and View, it has a brightly coloured tab _above_ it labelled "Library Tools". Vertical lines suggest it is superior to the Manage item; yet presumably it is also higher than Home, given its placement and urgent red/orange background? What is the difference between pressing Manage and selecting Library Tools?

A user not trained in the intricacies of the Office Ribbon UI will IMHO be utterly baffled by the complexity exposed in this UI and the inconsistencies therein.

While it is laudable that Microsoft is attempting to refresh the design of this venerable component of Windows, this work seems to be little more than a reshuffling of features and shortcuts, rather than a rethinking of file management.

pinaceae• 15 years ago

The ribbon discussion reminds a lot of the iPad one - all the IT "geniuses" simply don't get it.

Hate the ribbon. Hate the iPad.

But for the majority of users, those are massive improvements in UI.

Right-Click, Double-Click, ... arcane commands only people like and love that are good at memorizing actions. And if those memorized actions are gone, the rage begins. You need to be anal to love the old Office UI or the command line. Do you remember the hate the old Office UI got in the past from the very people who now praise it?

Personally, I think the ribbon UI was the ballsiest move that MS did in a decade. It showed real guts, real vision. In Office 2010, they improved upon it, making Excel, Powerpoint and Word actually more usable. Exposing new functions and teaching me about them, from within the UI.

krig2• 15 years ago

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.

atomicdog• 15 years ago

All I see in this new UI is a bunch of interface designers trying to justify their jobs...

>What? Most users are familiar with CTRL+C, CTRL+V these days? LALALA NOT LISTENING!! ADD MORE RIBBONS!!

DanElectrode• 15 years ago

The new Windows 8 tile-based interface will be the default way to interact with your files and applications, Explorer will be only for when you need to do some advanced file management. Your parents will most likely never have to use it.

krig2• 15 years ago

No one should have to use it.

epaga• 15 years ago

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.

Ironballs• 15 years ago

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.

mariusmg• 15 years ago

If you're not using keyboard shortcuts for file operations, you're doing it very wrong. Hide the ribon UI and problem solved.

agilemanic• 15 years ago

haha this made me laugh. would like to hear an official statement from the MS Design department

greendot• 15 years ago

I have to help "stupid users" in both the PC and the Mac world. There are "stupid users" everywhere and not more on one side or the other. I look forward to this new Windows Explorer. You would be amazed at the things regular people just do not know. MS is putting that all up front, in their face. They see it, they know where and what the commands are. It matches what their version of Office looks like. They will probably be able to figure it out instead of calling me to go show them how to do something, that as a nerd, deem "easy".

Plus, I agree with the other users. Our viewpoint is skewed. We are top tier users. We're not the ones that need disclaimers on the side of our hair-dryer that says, "Do not user while bathing."

hackermom• 15 years ago

Someone should open a can of Apple HID on their asses.

jhawk28• 15 years ago

Most people I work with detest the ribbon interface.

runjake• 15 years ago

Seems like I've been defending Windows Phone on here so much lately, maybe it's time to balance it out.

I think this is hideous crap UI design. Fortunately, it can be shut off (at least in the leaked betas).

I'm not aware of anything good that's come out of Microsoft and usability tests. Apple didn't seem to use them and it turned out well for them.

Microsoft, go with the Windows Phone paradigm, full force. It is your (successful) future.

rradu• 15 years ago

On a related and more positive note: Microsoft also released a preview of changes they're making to the actual copy/paste process. And it's kind of cool.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows8-file-copy-win8-win...

BonsaiDen• 15 years ago

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.

Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

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