[LINK] Even thieves don't want Vista

[Ivan Trundle]

On 01/09/2008, at 2:41 PM, Richard Chirgwin wrote:

> Yes, this *is* a complaint about "getting to know Office". It's an
> extremely mundane program - WP, spreadsheet and presentations - and
> there's no good excuse to say to users "we want you to do things our  
> way
> and if you don't like it, tough, because we're ditching the menus and
> we're ditching the macros". In this, at least, I feel no compunction
> calling on the cliche that "the customer is always right": why  
> should I
> change my ways of working, just because someone in the design office  
> got
> bored with menus?

I tried a Google search for "Microsoft Office 2007 usability" and the  
response was 'No results found for "Microsoft Office 2007 usability".  
Fair enough. Without the quotes, once you get past the MS shills, some  
interesting gems surface about their 'Microsoft Office Fluent' UI.

I'm all for maximising space for content, and leaving menu items and  
toolbars at a bare minimum, and it looks as though Office 2007 fails  
to address this at all, and yet forces users to learn a new interface  
altogether.

It still stuns me that many user resort to menus and drop-downs/pop- 
ups, and avoid learning (or making) keyboard shortcuts: even for  
obvious things such as copy/paste/cut/undo/save/print.

iT