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• (January 12, 2023, 01:18:11 AM)

[Demosthenes]

Click

No.  No no no no no NO NO NO NO!

WRONG.

Do it again, and this time GET IT RIGHT. 

This pisses me off to the point where I don't even know where to start.  I wrote up a rant on the subject this morning and that still doesn't really even begin to get this out of my system.

It honestly makes me wonder if Microsoft implemented their stupid ribbon UI back in Office 2007 just as a tactic to get OO.o to shoot themselves in the foot by emulating it... only to get rid of the ribbon in the next version of MS Office and say "we've brought back the 'classic' interface by popular demand, because we care! Unlike that horrible open source alternative, who only seems intent on copying others instead of innovating, right down to interface design faults!"

This just makes me want to smack the Sun developers upside the head.  What the fuck are you people THINKING?

[Socrates]

Although it killed me at first, especially in Excel where I was one of those people that used all those things that most people didn't, I now rather like the ribbon approach.  Well I should say that I like some of the improvements in Office 2007 and although at points I want to shot the programmers who decided to do context based menus (ie certain commands only show when you have highlighted some cells for instance) overall I like it.  My less frequent users certainly use more functionality now that it is easier for them to find.

[Demosthenes]

I forced myself to use it for about 6 months in MS Office 2007.  Finally, after spending waaaaaay too much time fumbling around with it while trying to just do simple, day-to-day things, and sick of all the fucking space it ate up, I gave up on it, hit Ctrl+F1 to hide the entire goddamned thing, and put ALL of the functions I normally used in Word, Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint on the "quick access toolbar" (even thought the stupid quick access toolbar isn't big enough to hold all of that stuff on only one row, so it overflowed into a stupid pulldown menu at the right-hand side).

I'd be fine with the ribbon UI if it could be heavily customized.  Like, it needs to be made smaller, 100% flexible as to the content, able to show icons instead of big buttons, and should be able to show multiple rows of icons for tasks, easily grouped by the user by what he/she wants and needs out of the interface.

In short, exactly like Office 2003 worked.

As for the ribbon UI in OpenOffice.org, DO NOT WANT.

[Socrates]

I can understand, they really should allow you to customize the ribbon by deciding on icons versus text etc.

Did you take a look at things like this? http://word.mvps.org/FAQS/Customization/CustomizeRibbon.htm  That one costs but there might be others.  They only are really useful if you have to work in an Office environment.

[Demosthenes]

I can understand, they really should allow you to customize the ribbon by deciding on icons versus text etc.

Did you take a look at things like this? http://word.mvps.org/FAQS/Customization/CustomizeRibbon.htm  That one costs but there might be others.  They only are really useful if you have to work in an Office environment.

Yep.  My thought on that is simply that if you need to install an add-on to fix the interface, then you might as well just go back to MS Office 2003, since that's the only functionality that's missing from Office 2007 (a flexible, usable interface).  Kind of pointless, really.

EDIT: I should point out that there is one other piece of functionality that Office 2003 is lacking... namely the ability to open the native document format of Office 2007 applications.  And that can be remedied by this, which is free.

I've told many, many of my clients not to "upgrade" (which is a misnomer, in my opinion) to MS Office 2007, instead to stick with Office 2003 with the compatibility pack installed, or go to OpenOffice.org.

If OpenOffice.org goes to the ribbon interface, I'll be dropping that from my usual recommendations.

[Socrates]

I actually love the new version of Outlook, the ability to put my calendar on the side with my tasks below and still see my inbox is wonderful and long overdue.

I really dig the new pivot table interface in Excel, and the ability to sort by any number of columns not just three.

So there are some improvements, still not worth upgrading if you don't have to.  I had to upgrade my department since the rest of the campus switched.

[Demosthenes]

Yeah, and while I can see how some might find that useful (the calendar placement in Outlook), I definitely agree... it certainly isn't enough to justify moving from something that already works to Office 2007.

Sorry, I get riled up about this, because in my previous job I had to deal with headaches associated with Office 2007's interface as well as the massive problems with Outlook 2007 (mostly performance related) on a daily basis for about a thousand end users for quite a while.  It's a very touchy subject for me, as you can see.   

[Socrates]

Not a problem, no offense taken here.

It's funny but after a while you get so used to using the office products, and when nearly every vendor, internal or external, is using the same product(s) you sometimes forget that there are alternatives.

It does help to have a "common language" when trying to explain something.

[BizB]

HATE the ribbon interface.  Love 1 Million rows in Excel.  Love the new filter interface in Excel.  Hate that they eliminate flags from Outlook.

[Demosthenes]

Hate that they eliminate flags from Outlook.

Oooooh, that one drove me NUTS.  I actually used flags in Outlook for a lot of things, and when we converted to Office 2007 where I worked then I had to manually switch everything over to 'categories', which is a half-assed implementation of the same goddamned thing, but with fewer options.

[pbsaurus]

Hate that if one has older versions .docx, .xlsx, etc. cannot be opened by them.  Hate Excel 2007.  Fortunately work stuck with 2003 and stuck with XP.

[sociald1077]

Hate that if one has older versions .docx, .xlsx, etc. cannot be opened by them.  Hate Excel 2007.  Fortunately work stuck with 2003 and stuck with XP.

I thought MS patched older versions of office, or at least 2003, to beable to open .docx, .xlsx, ect.

[pbsaurus]

Yeah, but when my mother in law receives a docx from my BIL and can't open it, it causes me pain.

[mryellow]

I agree, one of the most stupid moves ever. Office 2007 is an enormous hassle for everyone, no one can work with the new interface from the get go, you need to learn to use it (and perhaps like it). In a big organisation this means training people to get back up to speed when the switch from Office 2003 to 2007 is made. Or... make the switch to OpenOffice.org, which works a lot more like Office 2003 than Office 2007 does and... is free! What a bargain, it's free and we don't have to re-train people.

But oh, wait... let's take away that advantage. Great move.

As for Office 2007, I personally can't stand it. It's like it is trying to rub me the wrong way in every thing I do, even if I desperately try to like it. So many annoyances that are probably fixable, but they shouldn't occur in the first place. Things like Word's insistence to show me two pages side by side on my big monitor and no obvious way to turn that off (apart from not running it full screen). Things like Outlook taking more than 2 minutes to start up, due to a registry problem that Vista won't let me fix (there's another piece of crap!). Word not aligning my tables correctly in the layout. Losing all productivity, hunting down features I need to use but cannot find thanks to that goddamn ribbon. And most of all: Outlook 2007's new 'rendering' engine or whatever the hell they call that piece of shit. One of my main products is a newsletter system, I have had to spent countless hours on making it work with Outlook's pre-1990 engine. Worst of all is that people blame us for not being compatible for Microsoft's appalling piece of crap. It is amazing that the vast majority of companies use Office.

[Demosthenes]

Well, my blog post ranting on the subject accomplished its initial purpose, I guess.  One of the lead interface developers for OpenOffice.org took notice and commented a few times on it. 

He doesn't understand why I don't want them to fuck up the interface this way though.  So I guess I only really accomplished half my mission.