The article asserts that MS completely got it wrong but it doesn't even attempt to persuade the reader with arguments as to why. To me it isn't obvious that adding a ribbon with the most frequently used features to the top of the explorer is a bad approach.
I think the ribbon was a mostly a success in MS Office, Notepad, MS Paint, Wordpad and so on. So why not also use a ribbon in the explorer?
Bingo... This is what I was thinking about while reading the article, He cites 1 other blogger who has complained about this. Personally, I generally use the shortcuts for copy-paste but I do appreciate having the ability to avoid right-clicking to do some of the other tasks
If you live in a non-english speaking country, you'll learn that Microsoft does us the favor of "translating" the shorcuts. So, in portuguese, CTRL + S means "save" in about every program you'll encounter, but for Microsoft products, it means "sublinhar" (underline).
CTRL + A is not "select all" but "abrir" (open).
Well, that's just messed up... thanks a lot Microsoft...
You appreciate not having to right click? Right click is on your mouse, where as in order to use the ribbon you have to go up to the top. This seems like pulling the most useful feature out from under your finger to duplicate it somewhere further away. How does this make sense?
Because generally you don't merely right click. You right click and then have to navigate a small menu of options to find the one you want. The big button on the ribbon is a huge target and is generally easier for users to hit and click.
And for some reason, I personally find right-clicking with a track-pad much more difficult than right clicking with a mouse, although I haven't taken a lot of time to analyze why as I generally use a desktop machine with mouse.
Exactly what I thought, it's almost as if they implicitly say the only good way to make a file explorer is to make it just like osx' dolphin, where you need to use drag motions for any operation. Sure, let's get rid of the buttons and the context menu and make our users open a couple windows so they can drag stuff around.
The ribbon is a weird thing for me because despite trying to adopt it for quite a while now, I still don't like it, yet I'm not egocentric enough to think that alone makes it a bad design. The evidence that it isn't is all around me... everyone I know who is a "regular person" and uses Windows loves the ribbon.
Damn it.
At least Microsoft generally gives you the option of configuring the ribbon manually in a way that suits your needs (especially in Win 8). This is much better than when I run into UX/UI elements that do things I personally don't like when Apple is involved, because then I'm pretty much stuck with it.
The before and after pictures are supposed to speak for themselves, I assume. I know that for me, just seeing the two pictures makes is very clear "how they messed up." I'm willing to agree that not everyone is so offended by huge, ugly, attention grabbing, screen real estate hogging interfaces.
Comments
The article asserts that MS completely got it wrong but it doesn't even attempt to persuade the reader with arguments as to why. To me it isn't obvious that adding a ribbon with the most frequently used features to the top of the explorer is a bad approach.
I think the ribbon was a mostly a success in MS Office, Notepad, MS Paint, Wordpad and so on. So why not also use a ribbon in the explorer?
Bingo... This is what I was thinking about while reading the article, He cites 1 other blogger who has complained about this. Personally, I generally use the shortcuts for copy-paste but I do appreciate having the ability to avoid right-clicking to do some of the other tasks
If you live in a non-english speaking country, you'll learn that Microsoft does us the favor of "translating" the shorcuts. So, in portuguese, CTRL + S means "save" in about every program you'll encounter, but for Microsoft products, it means "sublinhar" (underline).
CTRL + A is not "select all" but "abrir" (open).
Well, that's just messed up... thanks a lot Microsoft...
You appreciate not having to right click? Right click is on your mouse, where as in order to use the ribbon you have to go up to the top. This seems like pulling the most useful feature out from under your finger to duplicate it somewhere further away. How does this make sense?
Because generally you don't merely right click. You right click and then have to navigate a small menu of options to find the one you want. The big button on the ribbon is a huge target and is generally easier for users to hit and click.
And for some reason, I personally find right-clicking with a track-pad much more difficult than right clicking with a mouse, although I haven't taken a lot of time to analyze why as I generally use a desktop machine with mouse.
Or right click and have to navigate a huge menu of options, if enough third-party shell extensions have had their way with your context menu ...
Exactly what I thought, it's almost as if they implicitly say the only good way to make a file explorer is to make it just like osx' dolphin, where you need to use drag motions for any operation. Sure, let's get rid of the buttons and the context menu and make our users open a couple windows so they can drag stuff around.
The ribbon is a weird thing for me because despite trying to adopt it for quite a while now, I still don't like it, yet I'm not egocentric enough to think that alone makes it a bad design. The evidence that it isn't is all around me... everyone I know who is a "regular person" and uses Windows loves the ribbon.
Damn it.
At least Microsoft generally gives you the option of configuring the ribbon manually in a way that suits your needs (especially in Win 8). This is much better than when I run into UX/UI elements that do things I personally don't like when Apple is involved, because then I'm pretty much stuck with it.
The before and after pictures are supposed to speak for themselves, I assume. I know that for me, just seeing the two pictures makes is very clear "how they messed up." I'm willing to agree that not everyone is so offended by huge, ugly, attention grabbing, screen real estate hogging interfaces.