From: "Rich Gauszka" 

I wonder how many corporations will want to take on the added task/burden
of retraining their users? Office 2007 ribbon obscurity 101?

The difficulty for them with this UI is that obscure commands become more
obscure,"

http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid1_gci1231929,00.h
tml

"On the one hand, the new UI is more intuitive," said Michael
Gartenberg, vice president and research director at analyst firm
JupiterResearch in New York. "On the other hand, things are no longer
where users expect them to be," he said. "For users, it's like
getting in a car and the steering wheel is on the wrong side."

The learning curve will be on both ends of the spectrum, said Rob Helm,
director of research and desktops for consulting firm Directions on
Microsoft in Kirkland, Wash. For lower-level users who follow specific
commands day in and day out, the command tasks will have to be relearned
because they have been moved, he said. For high-end users, obscure commands
will be harder to find. Overall, though, Helm said they will have fewer
problems with Office 2007 than with earlier versions. "The difficulty
for them with this UI is that obscure commands become more obscure,"
he said. "They may find that the odd combination of commands they try
are no longer honored."

Either way, expect efficiency levels to drop as users adapt, Helm said.
Through testing in his own organization, for example, comment and revision
tracking on documents are a lot harder to get to than before, requiring a
lot more mouse clicks, he said.


"mike"  wrote in message
news:af76p29qi9pr1b6g5b7br4o7p0o182or6c{at}4ax.com...
>
> Microsoft Office's ribbon-like interface looks and sounds like something
> out of a focus group....
>
> "...which do you like better, this cool, new ribbon interface; or a
> dorky, old DOS command line prompt..."?
>
>
>
> /m
>
>
> On Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:14:47 -0500, "Rich Gauszka"
>  wrote:
>
>>For my part I like the comfort of a hierarchical menu structure. Hopefully
>>the Microsoft guidelines for 3rd party apps using contextual tabs and such
>>( I don't know how explicit the MS guidelines are ) will be sufficient so
>>that I don't need a Rosetta Stone to decipher the interface.
>>
>>
>>"Rich"  wrote in message news:45931670$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>     The ribbon is a great improvement for discoverability and ease of
>> access of features.  I don't think that is the issue with the apps we
>> have been discussing.  For them removing or hiding menus is for
>> simplicity.  The features people commonly use are accessed by other
>> means.
>>
>>  Rich
>>
>>    "Rich Gauszka" 
wrote in message
>> news:45930f31{at}w3.nls.net...
>>    Since Microsoft wishes to freely license and actively promote  their
>> ribbon paradigm to all applications that don't compete with Office it
>> seems to me that Microsoft is attempting to change the toolbar/menu for
>> applications which is part of this discussion 
>>      "Rich"  wrote in message
news:45930444$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>         This discussion has nothing to do with the ribbon as we are not
>> discussing Office.
>>
>>      Rich

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