The article asserts that MS completely got it wrong but it doesn't even attempt to persuade the reader with arguments as to why. To me it isn't obvious that adding a ribbon with the most frequently used features to the top of the explorer is a bad approach.<p>I think the ribbon was a mostly a success in MS Office, Notepad, MS Paint, Wordpad and so on. So why not also use a ribbon in the explorer?
The article assumes that Microsoft's goal is to empower and delight the user. This isn't really the case; their goal is to reduce support costs for corporate IT departments.
Many of Microsoft's strategies and tactics that seem nonsensical seem more sensible once you realize that corporate IT managers, rather than end users, are their customers.
When the F will people start seeing things from a non-power users perspective before writing such a rant?! At the very least, back up your post with some sort of an objective argument.<p>I know a lot of people who spend minutes looking for simple options that are hidden in menu entries. I think the ribbon is going to be of good use for such people who'd appreciate the most common use-cases/functions within the reach of a mouse-click.
><i>"It seems that essentially, every single command that customers have used or requested has been moved into a ribbon or wedged into some corner of the chrome. And many are rightfully lambasting it."</i><p>Being surprised by Microsoft employing the ribbon and persistent UI elements in a redesign of any software product is nothing short utter cluelessness.<p>The story of the ribbon: [<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4</a>]
I don't understand the complaint. The new interface clearly presents what options/actions are available with text names and pictures. Compared to hunting through various menus with only an action's name to determine what something does, this seems an improvment. I would agree that the Ribbon looks visually busy, but isn't it easier to scan through the Ribbon than search through multiple menus to locate an action, or to remember a option's location on the Ribbon than in a menu? Besides, a user knowledgeable of Explorer short cuts can hide the Ribbon for more usable space.<p>Useful information consolidated at the bottom of the new Explorer compared to the previous screenshot where the same information is either not present, or present in multiple places, feels like a good improvement as well.<p>With the push towards tablets and touch, doesn't the new Explorer make sense compared to interacting with the Explorer through menus, right click, or some other context sensitive input? I say this considering the Build keynote, where (I think) they mentioned that they believed in a future of even regular monitors being touch-enabled. Having main options clearly present and touch friendly works towards this.
I wish they'd fix all the annoying little things they broke in Windows 7 before moving onto anything new.<p>In Windows XP, copying files over a network worked. In Windows 7, some "improvements" seem to result in abysmal file copying performance on a very noticeable proportion of machines/networks. The Web is full of such stories, and the best anyone has come to fixing them is basically random tweaking of low-level network parameters that no user should ever have to go anywhere near on the off chance that turning off something supposedly beneficial will fix whatever incompatibility or feedback loop is crippling performance on any given system.<p>On Windows XP, you could navigate folders in the tree in explorer by clicking once to expand and open a folder. In Windows 7, I have yet to find any way to avoid double-clicking or aiming for those dinking little triangles to expand each folder, which is not terribly efficient on a modern large, high-resolution display. Also, why do they hide the triangles unless you're hovering in the correct area with the mouse? Might a user not want to know which folders they can see in the tree also contain nested subfolders? Again, Windows XP did this fine, and the Windows 7 behaviour is objectively inferior in this respect.
There's a difference between making something more (vs less) accessible based on usage patterns, and making things impossible to do at all.<p>Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, and as long as they don't touch cmd.exe or powershell.exe, the Windows org can do whatever they want to Explorer...
I think the point of the ribbon is to get rid of rightclick menus and the menu bar. This is certainly a requirement for making a touch-first UI.<p>That said, it will necessarily make mouse based interaction more clunky. But they are committed to touch first, so this is not negotiable.<p>My issue with the new explorer UI is more specifically about the choices they made within the ribbon. Why put something that provably is never used in there at all? Why not put context-aware stuff in a context aware tab like the image tab in Word (only visiblw when an image is selectad)?
Very very good article. Shit, in fact, the fact that I hurt my foot. But, other than that, not shit, but an excellent article. Not shit at all. Congrats.