4 ms·

I think I would mind //graphical menus// less than the change to an always in your face ribbon. What I loved most about the seriously ancient UIs, way back in

I think I would mind //graphical menus// less than the change to an always in your face ribbon. What I loved most about the seriously ancient UIs, way back in the Win 3.x days and forward, was that not only were the options categorized, they also had prominently displayed (right justified instead of left) the keyboard shortcut you could memorize if you knew you were doing it frequently. Yes, that sort of still exists, but you have to go out of your way to do something extra to see it: these days you have to tap a modifier key while in the focus area of the menu.

WorldMaker 7y ago
> I think I would mind //graphical menus// less than the change to an always in your face ribbon. The ribbon has always been collapsible / "auto-hidable" to just a menu bar (double-click the active tab; admittedly not entirely easily discoverable). It's very much a graphical "pull" menu in the classic sense in that mode and the two-step Alt+ shortcuts might feel a lot more understandable/close-to-home in that context, as it is just like menu bars have always worked (Alt+E,C or Alt,E,C for Edit > Copy as opposed to Alt+H,C or Alt,H,C for Home > Copy; and in Office the old menu shortcuts still work to this day if you have muscle memory of them, you just don't get visual feedback). > What I loved most about the seriously ancient UIs, way back in the Win 3.x days and forward, was that not only were the options categorized, they also had prominently displayed (right justified instead of left) the keyboard shortcut you could memorize if you knew you were doing it frequently. Yes, that sort of still exists, but you have to go out of your way to do something extra to see it: these days you have to tap a modifier key while in the focus area of the menu. In addition to the Alt bubble pop ups, hovering every ribbon command has always provided a tooltip with command name and description and in that tooltip has always shown the most direct shortcut key in bold if there is one. Maybe silly to use the mouse to discover the fastest shortcut, but it's roughly the same discovery process as classic menus. (For instance, Format Painter shows Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V as opposed to Alt+H,F,P.) (Not to mention, Windows stopped showing Menu keys by default way back in Windows 95, and even stopped showing some menus entirely unless Alt was pushed over the years. So the Windows 3.x days where everything always had underlines and macOS-like right-justified keyboard keys were relatively fewer than the many years of push Alt to see keyboard stuff on Windows. The ribbon wasn't a big shift in that department.)
- rjmorris 7y ago
  > The ribbon has always been collapsible / "auto-hidable" to just a menu bar Sadly, this is no longer true in Outlook, at least in the version recently pushed to my work computer. The only two options now are the "simplified ribbon" and the classic ribbon (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-the-simplified-ribbon-44bef9c3-295d-4092-b7f0-f471fa629a98 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-the-simplified-...). You can no longer hide the ribbon completely. I assume other Office applications will soon follow suit.
  - drieddust 7y ago
    I have latest outlook and I keep ribbon hidden on laptop so this might be your company admins enforcing some weird policy. See below https://support.office.com/en-us/article/show-or-hide-the-ribbon-in-office-d946b26e-0c8c-402d-a0f7-c6efa296b527 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/show-or-hide-the-ri...
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    Both options for the ribbon still support collapse and auto-hide. It may be confusing that the switch between Simplified and Classic Ribbon is a Caret button that looks like it should handle collapse / auto-hide (but that's still the odd boxed arrow icon in the title bar, right click menu options, and double-click the active tab name). (Interesting to me is that the Simplified Ribbon in Outlook actually feels more useful to me and less space wasting than its Classic version and I switched my preference in Outlook from collapsed to shown because of it.)

WorldMaker 7y ago

> I think I would mind //graphical menus// less than the change to an always in your face ribbon. The ribbon has always been collapsible / "auto-hidable" to just a menu bar (double-click the active tab; admittedly not entirely easily discoverable). It's very much a graphical "pull" menu in the classic sense in that mode and the two-step Alt+ shortcuts might feel a lot more understandable/close-to-home in that context, as it is just like menu bars have always worked (Alt+E,C or Alt,E,C for Edit > Copy as opposed to Alt+H,C or Alt,H,C for Home > Copy; and in Office the old menu shortcuts still work to this day if you have muscle memory of them, you just don't get visual feedback). > What I loved most about the seriously ancient UIs, way back in the Win 3.x days and forward, was that not only were the options categorized, they also had prominently displayed (right justified instead of left) the keyboard shortcut you could memorize if you knew you were doing it frequently. Yes, that sort of still exists, but you have to go out of your way to do something extra to see it: these days you have to tap a modifier key while in the focus area of the menu. In addition to the Alt bubble pop ups, hovering every ribbon command has always provided a tooltip with command name and description and in that tooltip has always shown the most direct shortcut key in bold if there is one. Maybe silly to use the mouse to discover the fastest shortcut, but it's roughly the same discovery process as classic menus. (For instance, Format Painter shows Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V as opposed to Alt+H,F,P.) (Not to mention, Windows stopped showing Menu keys by default way back in Windows 95, and even stopped showing some menus entirely unless Alt was pushed over the years. So the Windows 3.x days where everything always had underlines and macOS-like right-justified keyboard keys were relatively fewer than the many years of push Alt to see keyboard stuff on Windows. The ribbon wasn't a big shift in that department.)

rjmorris 7y ago
> The ribbon has always been collapsible / "auto-hidable" to just a menu bar Sadly, this is no longer true in Outlook, at least in the version recently pushed to my work computer. The only two options now are the "simplified ribbon" and the classic ribbon (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-the-simplified-ribbon-44bef9c3-295d-4092-b7f0-f471fa629a98 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-the-simplified-...). You can no longer hide the ribbon completely. I assume other Office applications will soon follow suit.
- drieddust 7y ago
  I have latest outlook and I keep ribbon hidden on laptop so this might be your company admins enforcing some weird policy. See below https://support.office.com/en-us/article/show-or-hide-the-ribbon-in-office-d946b26e-0c8c-402d-a0f7-c6efa296b527 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/show-or-hide-the-ri...
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Both options for the ribbon still support collapse and auto-hide. It may be confusing that the switch between Simplified and Classic Ribbon is a Caret button that looks like it should handle collapse / auto-hide (but that's still the odd boxed arrow icon in the title bar, right click menu options, and double-click the active tab name). (Interesting to me is that the Simplified Ribbon in Outlook actually feels more useful to me and less space wasting than its Classic version and I switched my preference in Outlook from collapsed to shown because of it.)