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Recently I have found a couple of screenshots of the work in progress ribbon UI that looks like it's going to be the style that Microsoft is moving their applications to in Windows 7. We first saw this UI in Microsoft Office 2007. The person who created that interface "Julie Larson-Green" came over from the Office team to work with the Windows 7 team.
There are screenshots of Wordpad and MSPAINT in ribbon UI. I have a few things to say about this. First of all it reminds me of how some people where liking how Apple windows look because they don't have menu bars at the top of each window.
Quite a few people in the community started hiding their menu bars and people at Microsoft (such as Ms. Larson-Green) may have taken notice. There's only one problem with this. Apple doesn't do away with the menu bar. There is a global menu bar at the top of the desktop. Simply hiding the menu bar in the window denies you access to the functions that are in there. Fortunately I have noticed in applications like IE7+ that Microsoft has given the user alternate access to the functions housed in the menu bar in other places. IE7 for example has the most important things from the menu bar in a special menu in the tab bar. I was thinking however that if they must hide it the menu bar should accessible from a popup menu that pops up from a button located in a corner. Perhaps the application icon on the top left of the title bar.
Anyway, It seems to me they make the toolbars more cluttered than they should be. The toolbars are certainly very cluttered on those two screenshots. I am not a fan of having too many things in the toolbar.. in fact it may be even more visually cluttered than having a menu bar at the top of each window. Also in IE7+ the tabs have extra UI elements that I feel are unnecessary and serve mostly to add clutter. So while I'm glad to see Microsoft attempting to make their UI better I'm not sure this is the direction to go. Well, if it works.. I suppose. But if\when I am using those operating systems I would like to be able to eliminate all the stuff that I don't want or enable things that I do want.
There are screenshots of Wordpad and MSPAINT in ribbon UI. I have a few things to say about this. First of all it reminds me of how some people where liking how Apple windows look because they don't have menu bars at the top of each window.
Quite a few people in the community started hiding their menu bars and people at Microsoft (such as Ms. Larson-Green) may have taken notice. There's only one problem with this. Apple doesn't do away with the menu bar. There is a global menu bar at the top of the desktop. Simply hiding the menu bar in the window denies you access to the functions that are in there. Fortunately I have noticed in applications like IE7+ that Microsoft has given the user alternate access to the functions housed in the menu bar in other places. IE7 for example has the most important things from the menu bar in a special menu in the tab bar. I was thinking however that if they must hide it the menu bar should accessible from a popup menu that pops up from a button located in a corner. Perhaps the application icon on the top left of the title bar.
Anyway, It seems to me they make the toolbars more cluttered than they should be. The toolbars are certainly very cluttered on those two screenshots. I am not a fan of having too many things in the toolbar.. in fact it may be even more visually cluttered than having a menu bar at the top of each window. Also in IE7+ the tabs have extra UI elements that I feel are unnecessary and serve mostly to add clutter. So while I'm glad to see Microsoft attempting to make their UI better I'm not sure this is the direction to go. Well, if it works.. I suppose. But if\when I am using those operating systems I would like to be able to eliminate all the stuff that I don't want or enable things that I do want.
