After two years using it... still cannot get used to it

[JBGM]

Please allow users to bring the old menus back. The "genius" who spearheaded
the change in the menus in Office 2007, i.e. the ribbon interface, should be
fired. It is EXTREMELY frustrating having to go through all these clicks and
visual menus to find simple options that were more intuitively placed in
previous versions of Office. Do you think that younger people are unable to
read so you have to put pictures for the newer generations? It is so
frustrating that I have decided to leave this message, and let you know that
as of today, after using Office for... how many years? 15? 20?... I quit. No
more crappy Office 2007 menus. As of today I change to Open Office. Do you
think I am the only one frustrated? Practically every person I know is
lamenting the change. The new menu organization is ridiculous.

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[Peter T. Daniels]

Did you put the commands you actualy use onto the Quick Access Toolbar
(QAT) and position it below the Ribbon?

The single QAT is a lot more convenient than the old plethora of
toolbars in 2003.

And you may find, as I did, that OO doesn't come close to meeting the
needs you're accustomed to having taken care of by Word.

 

[Yves Dhondt]

When I read posts like yours, I always wonder about something. One of the
first times you ran an Office 2003 product, you got a question to
participate in the "Customer Experience Improvement Program". Basically,
what the program did was anonymously collect data about your usage of Office
2003. Did you allow that to happen? If not, then you are partially to blame
for the fact the ribbon is here today.

Anyway. Have you seen the prototypes for project Renaissance? They
introduced ribbons all over the place in Open Office. Of course those are
only prototypes which will most likely never make it to production. But
still... And lately, there have been prototypes with mixed interfaces. They
have the ordinary menu structure, but ribbon alike contextual tabs showing
up in several places. If you have Java 6.0 installed, you can check them out
for Impress (the Powerpoint alternative) using the following like:
http://tools.services.openoffice.org/impressprototype/impressprototype.jnlp
All in all, Open Office might not have a ribbon today, but in the long term,
give it another 2 or 3 years it probably will.

Yves

 

[JBGM]

Peter, the Quick Access bar is a poor substitute. The bottom line is: why do
I have to be forced to always use an icon-driven universe of menus? It is far
more efficient to have text menus. New users might find themselves with a
quicker learning curve with the current ribbon interface, but as they
progress, they hit a productivity ceiling they do not even know it exists
because they do not know the advantages of the compact text-menu system.
Instead of using muscle memory, and geometric memory (memory of approximate
location of menus) I have to look at the icons and make sense of them...
which results in loss of productivity (now I have to scroll for nearly every
option). I have been using this interface for two years, and every time it is
an exercise in frustration, since I use Word perhaps twice a week or so.

 

[JBGM]

The suggestion stands: give users the option of using text-driven menus.
Peter, the Quick Access bar is a poor substitute. The bottom line is: why do
I have to be forced to always use an icon-driven universe of menus? It is far
more efficient to have text menus. New users might find themselves with a
quicker learning curve with the current ribbon interface, but as they
progress, they hit a productivity ceiling they do not even know it exists
because they do not know the advantages of the compact text-menu system.
Instead of using muscle memory, and geometric memory (memory of approximate
location of menus) I have to look at the icons and make sense of them...
which results in loss of productivity (now I have to scroll for nearly every
option). I have been using this interface for two years, and every time it is
an exercise in frustration, since I use Word perhaps twice a week or so.

 

[JBGM]

The suggestion stands: give users the option of using text-driven menus.
Peter, the Quick Access bar is a poor substitute. The bottom line is: why do
I have to be forced to always use an icon-driven universe of menus? It is far
more efficient to have text menus. New users might find themselves with a
quicker learning curve with the current ribbon interface, but as they
progress, they hit a productivity ceiling they do not even know it exists
because they do not know the advantages of the compact text-menu system.
Instead of using muscle memory, and geometric memory (memory of approximate
location of menus) I have to look at the icons and make sense of them...
which results in loss of productivity (now I have to scroll for nearly every
option). I have been using this interface for two years, and every time it is
an exercise in frustration, since I use Word perhaps twice a week or so.

 

[JBGM]

Yves, by the time ribbons become standard, you will hear a lot more
complaints, and both OO and MSO will have to provide alternatives. The ribbon
interface is simply inefficient for experienced users, although I concede it
is better for beginners. Why, WHY, do I have to scroll on nearly every option
so I can see a visual representation of the result? After a couple of times,
I know whet I want, and I do not need to see it again... but I am forced to
keep going through the icon universe.

FYI, I have participated in every "Customer Experience Improvement Program",
e.g. Office, Visual Studio, SQL Server. The success of the ribbon is due to a
cultural change rooted in the decrease of functional literacy. People are
getting more used to images, and that has permeated the Office design team.
Is liking a candy to kids. Do they like it? Sure! Is it good for them? Not in
excess... and that is exactly what has happened with MS Office: an excess of
visual candy that result in loss of productivity.

That's it. I have said my piece. I waited for two years, hoping that it was
just a matter of learning the new interface. But it is not. This a matter of
structural cognitive processes. Therefore, the recommendation stands: give
users the option of having text menus.

 

[Yves Dhondt]

Yves, by the time ribbons become standard, you will hear a lot more
complaints, and both OO and MSO will have to provide alternatives. The
ribbon
interface is simply inefficient for experienced users, although I concede
it
is better for beginners. Why, WHY, do I have to scroll on nearly every
option
so I can see a visual representation of the result? After a couple of
times,
I know whet I want, and I do not need to see it again... but I am forced
to
keep going through the icon universe.

Experienced users use keyboard shortcuts. They don't care if there is a
menu, a ribbon, or nothing at all at the top of their document. As soon as
you move your hands away from the keyboard, the efficiency of the process is
gone. Discussing the efficiency of menus versus the ribbon is like
discussing who gets silver and bronze at the olympics. True, it's
interesting, but in the end, it's only gold that matters. (Sorry if I'm
offending any athletes)

Visual representation of the result? Are you talking about the live preview
functionality? If so, turn it off if you don't like it (Office menu => 'Word
Options' => 'Popular' tab => 'Enable Live Preview'). But this has nothing to
do with the ribbon. You can provide the exact same functionality in a
menu-driven UI given that the menu is not in front of text you want the
preview of.

FYI, I have participated in every "Customer Experience Improvement
Program",
e.g. Office, Visual Studio, SQL Server. The success of the ribbon is due
to a
cultural change rooted in the decrease of functional literacy. People are

The success of icon based UIs is that they are certainly language, and
mostly also cultural, independent.

I'm assuming you are a native English speaker. Have you ever worked with a
Taiwanese/Chinese version of Word 2003? Trust me, the difference in
character set is more than enough to not find anything back in the user
interface. Even when I knew the location of most things on top of my head,
it was extremely difficult to find options. With an icon-based UI I don't
have these problems. Russian alignment icons look exactly the same as
English or Chinese ones for example. And when I come across a style name in
a foreign language of which I have no idea what it means, the live preview
is a real life saver.

Where you see icons, ribbons, and visual representations as a decrease of
functional literacy, I see them as the only real language that is understood
by everyone worldwide.

 

[Opinicus]

The bottom line is: why do
I have to be forced to always use an icon-driven universe of menus? It is far
more efficient to have text menus. New users might find themselves witha

See:
http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/index.php

I haven't actually used this myself because I didn't have an occasion
to: Having tried Word 2007 for a couple of hours I uninstalled Office
2007 and reverted to Office XP. I plan to stay there for as long as I
possibly can.

You might also want to check out:
http://pschmid.net/office2007/index.php

It provides some insights into how MS and Office got to where they
are.

 

[JBGM]

Dear Yves, first of all, thanks for your energy answering comments in this
post; I really appreciate your time and effort. Secondly, you are missing the
point. I am not against icons. I am against being forced to use an interface
that *only* has icons. Most experienced users remember shortcuts (I use them
all the time), but the problem comes when a user has to do an uncommon
activity... at that moment a user has to start browsing the icon collection,
trying to figure out what each icon means, and the performance hit ensues.
Contrary to your opinion, icons neither have intrinsic value, nor they are
universal. You present the example of other cultures, but you do not have to
go that far; just try teaching elderly people to user a computer, and that
will shatter your perceptions of icons. There is plenty of research in that
area. ANYWAY, icon use is not the issue... the point I am trying to make is:
the compact and hierarchical organization of text menus offer an efficient
way of presenting information for trained users. That was lost with the
ribbon approach, and after a two-year period, I (and others) still find it
frustrating. Again, I reiterate, I am not against the ribbon; however, I am
against the exclusive use of the current ribbon.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

(a) If you use the QAT, you _don't_ have to "scroll for nearly every
option" -- that's the point of it.

but (b) You are not "forced to always use an icon-driven universe of
menus." All the keyboard shortcuts from the earlier versions still
work, and if the things you frequently use happen not to have pre-
assigned ones, you can assign one to any command in Word. (I think it
needs to be placed on the QAT first, but you're certainly free to
ignore the QAT.)

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

? All the icons have labels beside or below them, unless your screen
is so narrow that the Ribbon's width is compressed; it continues to
show all commands by suppressing labels as necessary.

Moreover, the Ribbon is far _more_ hierarchically useful than the
menus were, since the tabs, "groups," and columns are always fully
visible. Whereas, by the time you've slid over to two or three layers
of nested menus, your cursor slips off the line it's investigating,
they all close up, and you have to go all the way back to the
beginning.

 

[Greg Maxey]

No each his own, but personally I hate the QAT and all the clutter it
can bring to the the UI. I didn't like the Ribbon either until I got
used to it. I don't know how old you have to be to be considered an
old dog, but I can still learn new tricks.

So can you, so you aren't forced into anything. You could learn or
hire someone to customize the Ribbon to your specific taste. If you
like the Classic UI, you can download a global template addin that
give you a pretty fair copy from my: http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Ribbon_Menu_Controls.htm

 

[Stefan Blom]

(a) If you use the QAT, you _don't_ have to "scroll for nearly every
option" -- that's the point of it.

but (b) You are not "forced to always use an icon-driven universe of
menus." All the keyboard shortcuts from the earlier versions still
work, and if the things you frequently use happen not to have pre-
assigned ones, you can assign one to any command in Word. (I think it
needs to be placed on the QAT first, but you're certainly free to
ignore the QAT.)

To clarify, it is quite possible to assign keyboard shortcuts to commands
that are not on the QAT: just use the Customize Keyboard dialog box (Office
button | Word Options | Customize | Customize).

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

 

[Stefan Blom]

I am not against icons. I am against being forced to use an interface
that *only* has icons.

Agreed. That is a huge limitation of the Quick Access Toolbar.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Especially when you can't customize them and can't even choose from a
limited selection (or use text instead) for commands that have no built-in
icon: instead, if you use a lot of obscure commands, you end up with a QAT
full of green balls.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Stefan Blom]

Again, I have to agree.