Comment Re:A million documents? (Score 1) 300
So MS changed from a proprietary, binary document format to a text-based, registered open-standard format in order to accomplish vendor lock-in? Hmm...fire that strategy guru!
Let's not forget Microsoft's own, publicly shared motive for moving to the ribbon; namely, the proliferation of commands in the UI beyond anything that a menu system could handle. The few comments about how bad the UI is at present, especially the ones about how hard it is to find a particular command, are dead on-mark; that's why they made the change.
They spent tens to hundreds of millions on usability studies, in order to figure out how to put the more commonly used commands in front of the user with fewer keystrokes and/or mouse moves, and the ribbon is what came up. One of the alternatives that the ribbon beat -- in actual, head-to-head competition -- was the OfficeMac UI, which is very pretty and very consistent and therefore terrific for casual use, but which takes a lot of keystrokes and (especially) mousing to use, both of which slow you down when you're writing hard. I use both versions intensively, side-by-side and every day, and there's no question in my mind that I can get more done, more quickly, in OfficeWin than OfficeMac. That was true even before 2007; it's even more true with 2007.
Are MS happy that this new UI puts OpenOffice (even) further behind the curve in terms of appearance and usability? Dunno, but if I were them, I certainly would be; I would even have spent some extra $$$$ to make sure it did.
And lest people think that it's all about 'pretty', let's not forget that, just the other day, Massachusetts pulled back from OO and chose to remain with Office using the ODF plug-in (see Slashdot 1831230, 08/24/2006). Why? Not the pretty, new interface, but *accessibility*, which is not an optional feature for a government entity these days. Usability isn't exactly accessibility, but if you build a UI that is easier and less confusing for a fully-abled person to use, then it's likely to be either more accessible automatically, or at least cheaper to make accessible, for someone with one or more disabilities.
Why use a proprietary document format to achieve vendor lock-in, when you can use Federal law and your competition's inadequacies to achieve the same result with much greater certainty, less cost, and less PR fallout to you? Now, *that's* the kind of strategy guru you want to hire.
Been running the 2007 beta for a couple of weeks, by the way. There's definitely a cognitive shift, but the new layout is extremely intuitive; you spend more time stopping yourself from looking in the wrong (old) places than you do finding something once you try to start looking in the right places. If I had been through even 20 minutes of training on the new UI, I suspect I would have had zero problems and made the shift completely in just an hour or two; someone who doesn't use Office as much as I do might take a little longer. The ribbon is big, especially on my lightweight laptop, so I like the idea of a self-hiding ribbon as long as it's well-behaved. OO could do worse than to mimic this interface.
My biggest problem right now? The new UI is even farther away from the Mac UI than before, so it's even harder to switch back-and-forth a lot. Somehow, I don't think that's good news for the Mac.
They spent tens to hundreds of millions on usability studies, in order to figure out how to put the more commonly used commands in front of the user with fewer keystrokes and/or mouse moves, and the ribbon is what came up. One of the alternatives that the ribbon beat -- in actual, head-to-head competition -- was the OfficeMac UI, which is very pretty and very consistent and therefore terrific for casual use, but which takes a lot of keystrokes and (especially) mousing to use, both of which slow you down when you're writing hard. I use both versions intensively, side-by-side and every day, and there's no question in my mind that I can get more done, more quickly, in OfficeWin than OfficeMac. That was true even before 2007; it's even more true with 2007.
Are MS happy that this new UI puts OpenOffice (even) further behind the curve in terms of appearance and usability? Dunno, but if I were them, I certainly would be; I would even have spent some extra $$$$ to make sure it did.
And lest people think that it's all about 'pretty', let's not forget that, just the other day, Massachusetts pulled back from OO and chose to remain with Office using the ODF plug-in (see Slashdot 1831230, 08/24/2006). Why? Not the pretty, new interface, but *accessibility*, which is not an optional feature for a government entity these days. Usability isn't exactly accessibility, but if you build a UI that is easier and less confusing for a fully-abled person to use, then it's likely to be either more accessible automatically, or at least cheaper to make accessible, for someone with one or more disabilities.
Why use a proprietary document format to achieve vendor lock-in, when you can use Federal law and your competition's inadequacies to achieve the same result with much greater certainty, less cost, and less PR fallout to you? Now, *that's* the kind of strategy guru you want to hire.
Been running the 2007 beta for a couple of weeks, by the way. There's definitely a cognitive shift, but the new layout is extremely intuitive; you spend more time stopping yourself from looking in the wrong (old) places than you do finding something once you try to start looking in the right places. If I had been through even 20 minutes of training on the new UI, I suspect I would have had zero problems and made the shift completely in just an hour or two; someone who doesn't use Office as much as I do might take a little longer. The ribbon is big, especially on my lightweight laptop, so I like the idea of a self-hiding ribbon as long as it's well-behaved. OO could do worse than to mimic this interface.
My biggest problem right now? The new UI is even farther away from the Mac UI than before, so it's even harder to switch back-and-forth a lot. Somehow, I don't think that's good news for the Mac.
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