Desktop Internet Explorer 11 in Blue will include swipe navigation!

[mitchellvii]

I had no idea there were people who liked the menus of old Windows. I know I hated them. Inexperience users hated them too. You had to know where things were - sometimes 3 levels deep, then heaven forbid your mouse slip a few pixels and close the whole tree down forcing you to start over. Not to mention trying to use them with a pen or touch interface.

Lol, well I've been talking to IT development people almost every day for 25 years and their users LOVED menus and HATE ribbons.

 

[Nuspieds]

Lol, well I've been talking to IT development people almost every day for 25 years and their users LOVED menus and HATE ribbons.

I, for one, do not know what problem ribbons solved or, better yet, attempted to solve.

I could understand if they did away with menus altogether and were trying something else but, to me, ribbons just turned out to be a more annoying and confusing menu structure.

However, Microsoft products do have a lot of options and features that are buried in the products' menu structures. What I extremely love about Windows 8's Search functionality is the ability to search for settings (exact or close-matching words) and it finds and displays the matching settings for you to choose. I would love to see this similar functionality across all their products because most of them have become so complex and feature-rich that it becomes very difficult and tricky to remember where everything is in the menu structure.

 

[J515OP]

Lol, well I've been talking to IT development people almost every day for 25 years and their users LOVED menus and HATE ribbons.

I'd hate to be a customer of that backwards company. Sounds like the kind of users who are exactly the kinds of people who some think work at MS as high level managers. Those users also seem to have an IT department unwilling to train them in the advantages of ribbons I don't see app developers building extensive menus into all the latest apps. It appears to me that most apps have panels that closely resemble ribbons

 

[machistmo]

HA! Seriously though, you know those people complaining about the start button are the same ones that have desktops that are lined to the hilt with icons, not a single open space. You're telling me they make a lot of use of the start button?

It the Users that put 30 GB's worth of folders on their desktop's and then complain about performance that kill me. Shortcuts fine, keep the massive folders off the desktop please.

 

[machistmo]

I'd hate to be a customer of that backwards company. Sounds like the kind of users who are exactly the kinds of people who some think work at MS as high level managers. Those users also seem to have an IT department unwilling to train them in the advantages of ribbons I don't see app developers building extensive menus into all the latest apps. It appears to me that most apps have panels that closely resemble ribbons

But of course, you love them, so everyone else should too. They are clearly superior. The same level of thinking that led to the Start button being removed and Windows8 booting to the Metro interface only. 8.1 is putting 'boot to the desktop' back by popular demand. Not everything that appeals to the people making the software appeals to the people using it.

The same level of thinking that lead to a website being created with forums about a product whose own browser must be in compatibility mode on the WHAT ??? DEKSTOP! to post paragraphs and pictures. What does your signature say again? I can't make this stuff up.....

 

[J515OP]

I never said I love ribbons Actually I very much disliked them at first but then learned to use them. They are certainly no worse than menus and absolutely the way to go with touch.

The way this site works is really not relevant to the conversation.

 

[Nuspieds]

In all honesty, the ribbon interface is just a fancier menu interface. Be it the traditional or ribbon menu interface, things still get buried and you will have to click around to search for what you want if you don't know where it is.

Until we get to the point where we can speak our own individual phrases to the app to have it do what we want, then all those features and options will continue to be buried in some sort of menu structure. Just the other day I had a huge PDF file and I wondered if, like an image file, it were possible to change some "resolution" settings to reduce the file size. So I searched the Internet and I found an answer. Unfortunately, the answer contained a menu path that no longer existed in the current version of Adobe Acrobat!

I initially thought that maybe they had removed the feature but it turns out that they moved it into a completely new menu path. So, traditional, ribbon or whatever screen-based menu UI they come up with next, features and options for complex apps will continue to be buried and re-arranged and we will continue to click/touch around to search and find what we need.

 

[machistmo]

I actually love the ribbons, but understand that most people are put off by the radical changes. I still don't see how the ribbons are any MORE touch friendly than the menus though... I mean in the end, my fingers flub the ribbons up just as quickly as they do the old style menus.

 

[J515OP]

Nuespieds, yes you still have to have a lot of experience and knowledge to use ribbons and complex programs. It will certainly take a much larger paradigm shift to change that.

Machistmo, ribbons are a lot closer to being touch friendly than menus. Maybe not perfect but cascading menus requiring you to keep your finger in contact with the screen are almost impossible to deal with via touch.

 

[mitchellvii]

Nuespieds, yes you still have to have a lot of experience and knowledge to use ribbons and complex programs. It will certainly take a much larger paradigm shift to change that.

Machistmo, ribbons are a lot closer to being touch friendly than menus. Maybe not perfect but cascading menus requiring you to keep your finger in contact with the screen are almost impossible to deal with via touch.

But Office users will never go primarily touch. There will never be a replacement for the precision of a mouse. I cant imagine using touch on my Access database or Excel. This is why MS needs mouse versions of Windows and Touch versions of Windows. One size does not fit all.

 

[jnjroach]

I use Touch in Excel 2013 all the time and Access 2013 is touch friendly as well, I'm sitting in a Tully's in Lincoln Square and needed to edit a slide for a meeting this morning by adding an Excel Dashboard to the deck, did all with Touch on my Surface remoted into my Desktop.

 

[pallentx]

But Office users will never go primarily touch. There will never be a replacement for the precision of a mouse. I cant imagine using touch on my Access database or Excel. This is why MS needs mouse versions of Windows and Touch versions of Windows. One size does not fit all.

Desktop with keyboards and mice will never go away, but they will become a smaller piece of the pie. What MS needs is a single interface that works well in both environments. That's exactly what they are trying to accomplish. I'm sure there's a million ways they could have done it better, but staying with the old menus and mouse-only GUI was not an option.