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siMac · May 24, 2006, 04:21 AM

I am over 18.

Anybody care to discuss this horror?

jbanger · May 24, 2006, 06:53 AM

Yuck!

papworth · May 24, 2006, 07:44 AM

Originally Posted by siMac

I am over 18.

Anybody care to discuss this horror?

Holy cow! that is appalling!
How have M$ managed to make the interface worse?!
There is almost nothing to distinguish what is what or to show a heirachy or anything!

wow.

seanc · May 24, 2006, 08:38 AM

I hope there's a classic interface option like windows.

eyevaan · May 24, 2006, 12:32 PM

oh dear . . . in the dayz where people were looking for a new look that might have flown but Office - like it or not - is completely sensible, useful, power program for users. If they don't write a classic interface option into it like seanc suggested. well god help them in the reviews.

SLiMeX · May 24, 2006, 01:41 PM

eww

alex_kac · May 24, 2006, 02:19 PM

Its actually not bad. Its not necessarily pretty...but in actual use it actually makes the applications easier to use.

siMac · 07:44 AM

Umm, huh?

It's clearly not pretty, I thought what really stood out was the fact that it's a UI horror... menus, that are in panels, which are in tabs, which are in more menus! Aargh! Just look at all that crap in the titlebar - the title, the widgets, the control panel, more freakin' tabs! No scroll bar should ever scale that small; why lose 'File' and 'Edit' from the menu? Don't f*ck with the metaphors man...

...and don't get me started on that big fugly logo *shudder*

The Microsoft way: make it easy, however complicated the method.
The Mac way: make it simple, it will be easy.

Stuphalina · May 24, 2006, 02:56 PM

*Makes me want to gouge my eyes out* or *gag me with a spoon*!

I'm in complete agreement, Simon.

Catfish_Man · May 24, 2006, 04:00 PM

Looks better on Vista, fwiw. I think the "segmented toolbar o' panes" concept is not necessarily a bad one. Certainly better than the "huge toolbar of incomprehensible tiny icons" design that they've been using.

Sourbook · 04:27 PM

"The only problem with Microsoft..." - Steve Jobs Video

Tick · May 24, 2006, 05:20 PM

Looks kinda neat.

kmkkid · May 24, 2006, 06:10 PM

Silly people, that's Windows Media Player 10.5. lol!

Wait.... No it's not......

Apfhex · May 24, 2006, 07:23 PM

ARG.... trying to figure that out is like looking at a M.C. Escher painting.

Syzygy · May 24, 2006, 10:59 PM

Wow, multiple values in one field?! What a feature!

Helmling · May 25, 2006, 12:08 AM

Let's hope Apple gets a spreadsheet into iWork and makes Pages and Keynote a bit more robust so we'll never, ever be tempted to use something that looks like that.

TheoCryst · May 25, 2006, 01:30 AM

Oh God, I don't even WANT to know what the next version of Office:mac is going to look like... imagine the uproar if they end up doing a near-straight port of that eyesore to the Mac platform.

*crosses fingers and hopes that something, ANYTHING, better than this comes along*

siMac · May 25, 2006, 06:29 AM

(OOo)

tcom · 06:16 PM

Yet another stirling example (in the company of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Britney Spears, Martha Stewart, "Reality" TV, weekend newspaper advertising inserts, the Yugo, Ford Taurus, the Hummer, the minivan, DMV, Postal Service, FEMA and Walmart) of why design by committee just does not work...

siMac · May 26, 2006, 05:44 AM

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man

Looks better on Vista, fwiw. I think the "segmented toolbar o' panes" concept is not necessarily a bad one. Certainly better than the "huge toolbar of incomprehensible tiny icons" design that they've been using.

Except that the huge toolbar of tiny incomprehensible icons was always an alternative to a corresponding menu item, now the giant toolbar of enormous incomprehensible panels replaces regular menus altogether. Oh dear...

joltguy · May 26, 2006, 01:30 PM

I had to clean the puke off my keyboard before I could even compose this post. Seriously, what the hell? Good to see that we'll be able to keep bashing on ole Microsoft far into the future, with this kind of crapola being their state-of-the-art.

tillin · May 26, 2006, 02:05 PM

i think i just vomited... *checks self*...

yep. i sure did.

Jasoco · May 26, 2006, 02:23 PM

Jesus H. Macy! WTF is that? It's like.. WTF??

::maroma:: · May 26, 2006, 07:47 PM

Originally Posted by Sourbook

"The only problem with Microsoft..." - Steve Jobs Video

Hehe, funny how those words still ring true today. Maybe even more so. I wanted to hear him elborate even further though.

Dr.Michael · May 27, 2006, 05:54 AM

They have no taste! Their usability designers seem all to have studied mechanical engineering in their college days.
Just use another application. That one is crap and has ever been.

Jasoco · May 27, 2006, 01:51 PM

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9000690

The article if you want to see more eye shattering horror.

monkeybrain · May 28, 2006, 04:28 PM

Hopefully they'll retain the palette approach for the Mac version, which works very well - it's much quicker than using the toolbars. (Better than the palette in Pages too, since that one uses small not very descript icons to represent its panes).

It seems like they have taken the concept of the palette in this new version, but spread and twisted it along the top of the application window.

MindFad · May 28, 2006, 08:47 PM

I love it.

I'm lying.

cal-ov-whe · May 29, 2006, 12:34 PM

Originally Posted by Deacon

Yet another stirling example (in the company of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brittany Spears, Martha Stewart, "Reality" TV, weekend newspaper advertising inserts, the Yugo, Ford Taurus, the Hummer, the minivan, DMV, Postal Service, FEMA and Walmart) of why design by committee just does not work...

Spelled "Britney" wrong.

Personally, I think it's lovely.

...eesh.

tcom · May 29, 2006, 08:06 PM

Originally Posted by Jazzjackrabbit86

Spelled "Britney" wrong.

Personally, I think it's lovely.

...eesh.

OOOPS... comes from being an O.F. I guess....

powerbook867 · May 30, 2006, 12:03 AM

Sweet mother of God that is painful to look at...

andreas_g4 · May 30, 2006, 06:37 PM

M$ is Teh Intarfece Gods…

siMac · May 31, 2006, 04:18 AM

Deacon, I think your sig is slightly over the limits...

tcom · May 31, 2006, 02:06 PM

Originally Posted by siMac

Deacon, I think your sig is slightly over the limits...

Changed... certainly wouldn't want to push the boundaries, especially on a "design" site

siMac · May 31, 2006, 02:54 PM

Originally Posted by Deacon

certainly wouldn't want to push the boundaries

As least, not as far as before eh?

jsousa · May 31, 2006, 05:16 PM

Originally Posted by siMac

(OOo)

agreed;

http://www.openoffice.org

siMac · Aug 25, 2006, 06:44 AM

!tfosorciM lacipyT

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/softwar...9267508,00.htm

SLiMeX · Aug 26, 2006, 12:19 AM

Gross

jriveractu · Aug 26, 2006, 01:13 AM

well, what can I say .. being a billionare doesn't make you brilliant .. there're some things money can't buy, like a beautiful Mac .. oops .. beautiful OS ..

orcinus · Aug 26, 2006, 05:41 PM

Just for the record, my dear Apple zealots, this is what the Office 2007 really looks like:

What you've been looking at here are very old screenshots of an alpha version.

Oh, and again, for the record, the thing is very usable, uses a very good UI paradigm and actually lets you work faster. Working in, i.e. Pages' polished and completely non-ergonomic user interface, takes much more effort.

It's not all in the looks, you know. Some of us have to work and don't download apps just to watch the chrome

©öñFü$íóÑ · Aug 27, 2006, 04:48 AM

Originally Posted by orcinus

Just for the record, my dear Apple zealots, this is what the Office 2007 really looks like:

whew..... i was gonna say......

doesn't look that bad..... now, let's hope it works as promising as it looks.

siMac · Aug 27, 2006, 07:57 AM

Originally Posted by orcinus

What you've been looking at here are very old screenshots of an alpha version.

So they changed the colour, my original points still stand. A regular menu is logical because when you click it all the contextual options appear right under the cursor. With these 'ribbons' in certain cases you would have to click the menu on the left then move the cursor all the way over to the right of the screen ('Find' for example) to get to what you wanted. It seems to generate a lot of extra mouse mileage for a negligible 'new user' advantage.

Now, I'll admit I haven't used this interface and I am basing my opinions on screenshots, but the logic of the thing from a UI perspective escapes me. I'm not even talking about 'pretty'.

Originally Posted by orcinus

It's not all in the looks, you know.

That much is obvious!

Originally Posted by orcinus

Some of us have to work and don't download apps just to watch the chrome.

Not all Mac users are just in it for the eye-candy (personally I hate Aqua, luckily there's ShapeShifter), some of us appreciate a well thought out logical interface and adherence to such principles as Fitt's law too.

I think Fitt would have a fit looking at Office 2007.

orcinus · Aug 27, 2006, 02:00 PM

Originally Posted by siMac

Now, I'll admit I haven't used this interface and I am basing my opinions on screenshots, but the logic of the thing from a UI perspective escapes me. I'm not even talking about 'pretty'.

Well, i have used it and it works.
You're basing your opinion on the idea of cramming the same arrangement of tools and functions we use in menus today, in the ribbon, while that's not really how things ARE arranged in Office 2007.

Categories are assembled in a logical, sequential manner, so you find most of the tools you need at a certain stage of document editing without switching to other tabs. Your example (clicking the far left tab to get to the far right icon) simply does not happen or happens very rarely.

Keep in mind that the ribbon isn't just a menu replacement - it unifies menus, toolbars, galleries and previews in a single "metawidget". Furthermore, frequently used functions, such as spell checking, ruler related functions, text statistics, zoom, views, are built into the window frame and are instantly accessible. For example, you click on the word count to get the full text statistics (try counting the number of steps needed to get it in Pages

).

I'm sure there's a lot of people here who bash on floaty (the small formatting toolbar that appears near the cursor when you select text), but that actually works very well too. It appears as a very faint, transparent toolbar when you select text and gets more solid as you move the mouse cursor closer to it. If you move it away, it disappears out of the way. It also gets automatically positioned so it practically never gets in the way of what you're doing.

I'm not claiming that Office 2007 is the magic bullet of UI's here, just that you all really should try something out first, before you start bashing on it based solely on your prejudices and two screenshots

sieb · Aug 29, 2006, 12:33 AM

I like the new interface alot, especially the mouse over formatting tools (ghosted tools). That along with Ctrl+K (hides the ribbon, or double click on the active formatting tab) makes for a clean interface, especially compared to the old versions of Office.

orcinus · Aug 29, 2006, 07:21 AM

That's weird. Ctrl+K is "Insert Hyperlink" on my machine. Ctrl+F1 hides it :?
BTW, too bad the ribbon can't auto-hide/show. That would be rather useful...

siMac · Aug 29, 2006, 01:24 PM

Originally Posted by orcinus

BTW, too bad the ribbon can't auto-hide/show. That would be rather useful...

*cough, cough*

Originally Posted by siMac

!tfosorciM lacipyT

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/softwar...9267508,00.htm

orcinus · Aug 29, 2006, 03:14 PM

Originally Posted by siMac

*cough, cough*

Oh... Missed that one

Well, they did get it right then. Although it wasn't much of a nuisance this way either. I'm using a Logitech G15 keyboard on my windows desktop so i have plenty of unused macro buttons

Assigning Ctrl+F1 on one of them makes hiding/showing a breeze.

smithz4096 · Aug 31, 2006, 07:18 PM

Once, Apple *WAS* among of the kings of UI, if not THE king. ... Way back in time. Then many talented UI-Designer left the company. Now Apple's among of the kings of cheese.

ps. M$ belongs to this group, too. But at least M$ offers the user the choice to disable 99% of the cheese while Apple forces the User to look at cheese all day long.

seanc · Aug 31, 2006, 07:23 PM

Well at least Apple's "cheese" doesn't lag. Cough LUNA Cough

orcinus · Sep 1, 2006, 06:57 AM

Yes, but Apple's cheese has low framerates.
Just try resizing a brushed window