The Death of Clippy

AppScout interviews Office's Group Program Manager, Jensen Harris on the subject of Office 2007. Harris reveals that Clippy, the bane of all semi-sentient Office users everywhere, is officially dead. The decision apparently revolved not around the passionate hatred for the unfortunate sprite, but simply out of a desire for UI coherency.

Clippy did its job... Unfortunatly.

I think the general annoyance of clippy was the fact it kept popping up whenever you did something. In many ways it was actually successful for Office. It showed people that they could use other features that people didn't know it had. Which really did put a nail in the coffin for tools such as word perfect. Now that people know how to do a lot of these advanced features and got use to them, they got frustrated when other word processors don't have or they don't know where the features they enjoy are. That being said because Microsoft successfully monopolized the Office software, they don't need advertise all there features all the time.

Re:Clippy did its job... Unfortunatly.

Personally, I think clippy represents what is wrong with office more than anything else. For most users Office is far too complicated, and has far too much functionality, so it "needed" a way to inform average users how to use some of the features.

Personally, I see three classes of Office users and there seems to be a reasonable argument that there should be three seperate classes of Word/Office for these people; the classes are students/home use who want something which they can write a paper or resume on, office workers who want a little more control over their presentation, and professionals who want complete control over their presentation.

It looks like you're trying to post to Slashdot...

Would you like help:

• Trolling
• Being interesting or informative
• Posting something obvious
• Flamebaiting
  

Drat, there's no help for being funny =(

Re:Clippy did its job... Unfortunatly.

I think the general annoyance of clippy [...]

Funnt thing is, most non-expert users I've interacted with actually _like_ clippy (well, they often change it to another avatar, like the silly little dog, but the point is they like the idea of a "helper").

The help system that sits behind "Clippy" is excellent. It does what its designed to do very well - the problem expert users have is that they're not interested in what it does.

Re:Clippy did its job... Unfortunatly.

I think what bugs me most about Clippy these days is that one of my coworkers uses Word with it turned on...and her speakers turned up. Way up.

So every time she saves a file, I hear: "*click* *clank* *ker-chunk*"

Yes, she's quite inconsiderate about making noise - all day I hear "AAHAAHHHH! I DON'T KNOW HOW ANYONE GETS ANYTHING DONE AROUND HERE!!" (referring to the amount of email she gets), and similar things. Yeah, thanks for spreading the disruption around, lady.

My boss is no help - well, more correctly, she sympathizes, but she also realizes that we're never going to be able to change this woman's behavior, so the rest of us have to suffer or use headphones and turn the music WAY up to drown out her rantings.

She and Clippy deserve each other.

Re:Clippy's hints were often unrelated to the task

This exactly sums up my experience with those little assistants.

While the idea in itself isn't bad, the execution just didn't work. The help offered was either completely off the mark (as above) or apparently targeted at people who had seen a computer for the first time just the week before (a bit like the Windows on-line help - this is how you format a floppy).

I haven't used MS office a lot since I don't use Windows but get exposed to it every now and then and could use a decent interactive assistant since I don't know my way around it very well. OTOH of course it's pretty much the same as any other such piece of software so I can always find what I'm looking for by poking around a bit. But a competent assistant would be a time saver.

It would however be very difficult to do properly.

I guess users are better off without the assistant than with screen space devoted to a useless one.

Don't go, Clippy

Sure, it's easy to only remember the bad times. But who among us can honestly say we won't miss him? His knowing winks, his cute little antics. His sage, though sometimes random and unrelated, wisdom. I already feel a piece of my heart missing and I fear it will never be clipped back together.

Cue Cinderella's "Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone".

Goodnight sweet prince

I just heard some sad news on talk radio. Clippy, the Microsoft assistant, was found dead in his Redmond, Seattle apartment this morning. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

Re:Goodnight sweet prince

I suggest we all shut down our pc's for a minute at noon tomorrow in remembrance of his death.

After which we all celebrate by installing *BSD and Linux. Clippy would have wanted it that way.

Re:Goodnight sweet prince

Beware, though. He might just come back [sourceforge.net].

Re:Goodnight sweet prince

He will be buried next to Microsoft Bob.

Re:Goodnight sweet prince

I heard he was found almost completely straightened out, stuck in the emergency eject hole of an old 4x CD-ROM drive... he'd also been receiving emails threatening that someone was going to "f***ing kill" him, yet they're calling it a suicide!

He will be interred next to his cousin Bob in the solid-gold family crypt.

Vorpal bladework

"And, has thou slain the Clippywock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

Good heavens, that's almost ... almost... enough reason to suggest upgrading to MSOffice 2007. Of course the fact that the rest of the UI is being needlessly changed is enough reason to suggest not upgrading. "You seem to be trying to figure out how to open a document, or where the hell the Tools menu disappeared to. Would you like to take a remedial word processing class to learn how we want you to do it now?"

The Tragedy of Prince Clippy ...

It's far worse than the media are reporting. Rumors of Clippy's impending dismissal have been bubbling around for years, and they had finally started to wear the noble Clippy down. First he started stopping on the way home for a couple or three double shots. This made his wife, Tacki, suspicious and she started nagging about that and asking when he was finally gonna get a promotion. Well, he asked & they promised him the job that was ultimately given to Ozzi.

Folks tried to tell him not to count on it, but he ignored them, saying "Would Chair-boy lie to me? Never!" When that news broke, so did Clippy. Lots of double-, and triple-shots, and he was occasionally found wandering around "the Campus" with a bottle of Muscatel in a bag, mumbling incoherently, "To C# or not to C#, that ..." or chanting a strange mantra, "Longhorn, Lamehorn, Foghorn-Leghorn." Treatments didn't help. Eventually, Tacki ran off with with a stapler and his son Gui ended up smoking crack and huffing glue. The final straw, was when his beloved, musically gifted daughter, Bandi, got a "Theo is my Hero" tatoo and joined the OpenBSD project to write theme-songs and documentation. Poor guy, his intentions were really good, and he tried so damn hard.

Clippy is NOT dead ...

"The rumours of my death are somewhat exaggerated."

Clippy is alive and well - he's been ported to linux so that we can hate him too ... http://vigor.sourceforge.net/screenshots/ [sourceforge.net]

Moments from Clippy's life

I think the "I'm alright, thank you, fuck off" response pretty much sums it up... [youtube.com]

Oh, NOW...

They talk about UI consistency!

Consistency or not, it was a huge failure of something in the development process.

I mean, the HATE heaped upon poor Clippy, from the most novice to the most advanced of users, is hard to comprehend. For something to be so wrong for such a wide range of users means it is truly bad. How on Earth did this get past the supposedly rigorous user-testing facility that Microsoft has? Nobody said at some point, "You know, that Clippy thing isn't really helpful. It just gets in the way and is annoying." Nobody? For years?

From the article, after talking about people who liked him: "There were also an equal number of people who looked at it as interference or an annoyance..." Equal? Equal?!! What kind of bizarro statistics is MS collecting from their user feedback system that it took them years to figure out the problem and at least turn it off by default?

TTS and voice in agent

The text-to-speech and voice recognitiion in the other Microsoft agent were pretty cool I thought. It was kind of fun trying to program the gestures.

Maybe they should make a 3d little dude that walks across the top of the Aero glass.

Clippy Resurection!

Word has it that Scott McNeely is putting together a team to develop a cross-platform Clippy Java Applet, in a last ditch attempt to gain JVM desktop acceptance.

so long clippy

R.I.P.
rust in pieces.

Hopefully...

The death was not too quick or easy. [photobucket.com]

Clippy's Mental State

The decision apparently revolved not around the passionate hatred for the unfortunate sprite, but simply out of a desire for UI coherency.

Yep, Clippy was definitely incoherent.

Enough! Clippy was the MAN!

Who stayed up with you that night and taught you how to import your old PST's into your new Outlook?

When you were pulling your hair out trying to expose the BCC field, who saved your ass?

Who taught a million admin-assists where to learn how to mail-merge?

ALRIGHT....I admit it.....Clippy was my......lover.

IS THAT SO WRONG?

Somebody took pictures of clippy's death...

It's kinda gross and gory, but ... *sniff* oh I can't say anything more! It was horrible! *SOB*

http://www.thenoobcomic.com.nyud.net:8090/daily/st rip089.html [nyud.net]

One of my Nightmares, Unillustrated

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

"Hello! It looks like you're writing an article. Would you like me to:

• Prepare a set of subsections for you?
• Help you publish your work?
• Do a trick?"

"By Lamport's Beard! What are you doing here?!"

"Well, Microsoft chucked me out."

"How the hell did..."

"It's this Emacs thing — got a darn powerful LISP engine, you know. It's very roomy in here."

Meta-M doctor

"Oh, sorry, it's not that big. He's been evicted. Now, about that article—"

"Look... just... bugger off!" [Click!]

\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage[varg]{txfonts}

\begin{document}

"Hello! It looks like you're writing an document. Would you like me to:

• —"

"Sod off and die."

\author{The Holy ettlz}
\title{The Art of Paperclips}

"Oh."

"Yes, 'Oh'! Now get out of Emacs before I drag Donald E. Knuth himself over here."

"No need to get nasty. Hmmph."

A few hours later:

Integrate[1/Sqrt[x^3 - 2], x]

"Hello! It looks like you're trying to evaluate an integral. Would you like me to:

• Add limits?
• Draw a graph?
• Do a trick?

Oh, and by the way, it's very roomy in here!"

Who killed Clippy?

It was Steve Balmer in the library with a chair.

Clippy: Do you need help with a post?

Choose the type of post:
-Fence-
-Slashdot-
-Last-

You chose -last post-, do you want help writing a suicide note?

Re:Clippy: Do you need help with a post?

GNAA to lun1x cocksuxx0rs goats

"Hello! It looks like you're trying to troll on Slashdot. Would you like me to:

• Insert a cut-and-paster about trying to run Quake 3 under Linux?
• Find a picture of Natalie Portman and order some hot grits?
• Help you do the Russian Reversal?
• Generate a permutation of the many *BSD/Goatse combos and accidentally forget the hyperlink?
• Do a trick?"

clippy lives in vi!

anyone seen the vi clippy? http://www.petebevin.com/archives/vim.gif [petebevin.com]

It was a quite reasonable way to get help...

and there were people who liked the interface as a way of gettign help.

I'll agree that Office's help system was is quite good: It just didn't need Clippy. Or any of the other... <action type="gags" level="lethal" />

Enjoy the respite

I have no doubt there will be many badly flawed milestones to come along the path to a coherent AI assistant. It is something too cool not to aspire to even if the results are going to be awful for years to come.

So far the most memorable I've seen was a shareware "Southern" parody of Microsoft Bob that involved an outhouse and, if I remember correctly, a possum.

Clippy - Lite Bright

RIP 1997-2007

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28608553@N00/38550308 3/ [flickr.com]

No more Clippy (I say Clippit) for President?

No more Clippy, or as I say, Clippit, for President?

So that's Office 2007 major new function?

I'm sure the droids in Redmond think this is a quantum leap in functionality too.

While you're at it

Could someone put down that miserable dog in the XP search module?

The Death of Clippy

Cool, is it showing on Youtube yet ?

Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

Even on different stories ?

It's been 1 minute since you last successfully posted a comment

On a different story !

Could you house a poor, rejected help agent?

Every year, dozens of help agents are abandoned heartlessly by their owners. Meet Clippy. He loved his company, and he thought his company loved him. But he was cruelly excluded. He's still waiting for a home. If you could house a help agent like Clippy, call the Society for Lost User assisTantS (S.L.U.T.S.) on 0800 BULL#*@?

Clippy Cartoons :-)

Clippy Goes Undercover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJCv8ru3L98 [youtube.com]

Clippy Gets Clipped
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB03aRifPLU [youtube.com]

Clippy faces facts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMShkAZR1-Q&NR [youtube.com]

He will be missed

I never understood the unabashed Clippy hatred. It was certainly a more friendly window to the whole help interface since it's much easier for a novice to ask a question than rummage through indices. It was one checkbox to turn the little bugger off, and you could choose something that you thought was less annoying if that was the problem. (I've almost always used the dog.) Not to mention that he's being going away more and more the past few versions: "It looks like you are writing a letter" is becoming about as relevant as the 95-thru-Me era BSOD.

I agree with the new notions that the Office user interface team has chosen to adopt, like only being able to access a feature from one place. Jensen Harris is a smart guy and I've been enjoying reading his weblog and the trials and tribulations of the Ribbon and the new UI as a whole.

Big Hello to those missing clippy

A Big Hello to those of you out there missing Clippy. Just remember the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys. ...

Clippit

His name is (was?) actually Clippit, as someone above indicated, not Clippy. While I understand Clippy was his nickname, he's dead now and his proper name should at least be mentioned.

The original clippy was good

When one of the developers/researchers working in MSN Search came to my university to give a one week course on probability based models for search applications he told us that originally Clippy was meant to run with a quite advanced AI (based on a probability model), but was changed before shipping for the much more simpler version we all knew. I'm not sure but I think it was to decrease CPU utilization.

The mostly crappy AI made it extra annoying, the rest is history.

My prayers have been answered.

Oh good heavens!

There is a God after all.

Clippy was vicious...

Back in the day I came home to find my mum on the computer, crying...

Apparently the paper clip was making fun of her...

They killed the role (assistant), not Clippy!

I wonder why people always refer to Clippy. It is an annoying character, no doubt. But the feature is called "Office Assistant", and you can choose from a number of different characters. Einstein is probably just as annoying, but the Cat is rather cute.

So please stop whining about Clippy, and think for a minute about all the other characters!

Clippy falls on hard times

XP Media Center includes a desktop dancer program.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/deskt op/dancers.mspx [microsoft.com]

One of the characters is wearing a ghost outfit. Occasionally the white sheet slips, revealing the thin curve of steel underneath.

You have died (2nd time!)

Funny, I thought I heard this before. Like, around the time XP was coming out. And how Microsoft hired Gilbert Gottfried to voice the lousy chunk of wire [wikipedia.org] to advertise how Clippy was dead and gone with Office XP.

Give it another six years when Windows Vienna comes out (given how much a success Vista is). We'll be able to relive this story all over again!

fully sentient users, too

"Clippy, the bane of all semi-sentient Office users "

Sentient, and semi-sentient, Office users were not the target audience of Clippy, unless it was always intended as annoyance, leaving ...?

Now that OpenOffice is usable enough, for me, I have stopped editing RTF in emacs. At one job, I was asked to explain to a co-worker how to create PDFs. I started with "go to this address

http://www.openoffice.org/ [openoffice.org]

download and install OpenOffice, then call me to come over".

right

The decision apparently revolved not around the passionate hatred for the unfortunate sprite, but simply out of a desire for UI coherency.

... which are (hatread and UI coherency) absolutely unrelated.

i thought clippy had already died

the proof is here [youtube.com]

Ding-dong...

...the witch is dead, the witch is dead!
Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead...

So when will openoffice kill

..bulby?

And can I pull the switch?

overlord

i for one welcome the overlords replacing clippy

Sheds a tear for Links the Cat

I think people hated clippy because while being annoying he wasn't cute.

If the assistant had defaulted to Rocky the Dog and the first alternative on the menu was Links the Cat then you would have had 99% of people with something that they at least thought was cute.

In all seriousiness though I think a big opportunity was missed to use the assistant idea as a friendly frontend to intelligent agent functionality. It should have been an OS-wide feature that lived in the task-bar. Hell give it network storage & make it aware of being run on different machines.

Clippit, not Clippy

Come on, folks, his name is actually "Clippit". Why does everyone call him "Clippy"?

Clippy was my savior

I once had to deal with a botched Visio 2002 install on a work computer with Office 2000. For some reason this completely killed the normal HTML help interface in the O2K apps but the Office assistant help still worked.

Evil Empire

The great Microsoft empire probably did a Redmond-wide roundup of Clippys and made them fight wild staple-pullers in the breakroom.

You mean.....

Reports of Clippy's death [youtube.com] earlier were exaggerated?

Clippy freaked me out...

One of clippy's little animations involved him doing something with his eyes...I think he leaned forward and the eyes suddenly got bigger. For some reason, that would freak me out and I would have to look away from the screen. Sometimes I actually jumped a little when I saw that happen.

Burning in Effigy

I keep wondering if the slashdot users burned him in effigy, or reality. LoL!

Re:I hope slashbots end the joke as well

It only seems like 20 years ago. [wikipedia.org] In many ways, Clippy (and other MS Agents) are the last remaining pieces of "Bob Technology".

This must be a sign that Bill is really not as

influential or at least not as feared by MS leadership. The REAL reason clippy was inflicted on us was because he was (as another slashdot poster mentioned) the "last piece of MS Bob technology." The project manager for MS Bob is now better known as Mrs Bill Gates.

Re:Lucky Clippy!

Now he can be bangin' Anna Nicole Smith in the afterlife!

It's gonna take something with a LOT more diameter than a paperclip to pleasure that ho! What she needs is something with dimensions closer to a Swingline stapler...

Re:Clippy

>...The problem with Clippy and other avatars was that it was:

Actually, in addition to the problems you noted were the following problems:

- You could not choose, in a custom install, not to have the damn avatars in the first place. You had to install, then disable them
- The method for disabling the avatars is placed in a non-intuitive location
- You could not reliably disable avatars in the first release of Office to have them; like things buried in the Pet Sematary, they kept coming back.

Similar problems exist in the "Clipboard Enhancement" that allowed Office apps to store more than one item in the clipboard, and pop up a stupid dialog to select which thing you wanted to paste. That turns off by dismissing the dialog 3 times (WTF, MS?), and can come back if you copy twice without pasting.

"Bad Pet Rock! We do that OUTSIDE!" - Peter Griffin, 'Family Guy'