4 ms·

The old menu system approach was spectacular for education. Menus were more like categories, types of operations, and within those sections of the menu grouped

The old menu system approach was spectacular for education. Menus were more like categories, types of operations, and within those sections of the menu grouped like operations. Each menu had a shortcut for invocation, usually Alt + the first letter of the menu, but sometimes an underlined second letter, or maybe FN key directly. Within the menu most entries had an underlined key - if the interaction focus was in that menu, that key would invoke the related option / operation. If there was an action the end user wanted to do frequently, nearly always there was also a direct keyboard combination that could trigger it while in the edit plane. Many users learned of Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V (copy, cut, paste, respectively, for early 'dos' / Windows) or even on Macintosh whatever the respective keys were, from the edit menu. They tended to work in most applications and in the standard OS widgets (think text boxes of just about any sort). - These days, that sort of in-situ power user education, to empower new users is much harder to come by. It really doesn't help with so many things are designed mobile phone / web (no OS at all) / console and ported to PC (OMG all the times that inventory or design system in a game irks you).

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
In the 90's, all these features shifted to buttons - Office / MS Word especially had heaps of them, a whole system to configure and move these buttons to your preferences, and I'm sure there were lots more if you had plugins. Then the 2000's came around and Office 2000-something introduced the Ribbon, in an attempt to reduce the amount of UI elements and streamline the process. But the focus was on less UI clutter. Nowadays there's WYSIWYG editors in web browsers for writing documents like that one from Dropbox or Notion, intentionally limiting how much markup you can do; they're text/word processors again, instead of full design suites.
- benj111 3y ago
  Buttons/ ribbons should be in addition to the menu though. And a keyboard shortcut is still faster. The menu shortcut system is really good for those large enterprise systems, where multiple users use it in very different ways. If you're just inputting data, you can slowly learn the shortcuts for that. If you spend your time generating reports, you can learn the shortcuts for that. There doesn't need to be any assumptions about how the software will be used. There doesn't need to be loads of effort put into a flexible UI.
galad87 3y ago
We spent the last 15 years avoiding the menu bar in mobile devices, and in the end we reinvented it in the worst way. Hidden under either the hamburger button on Android, the "…" or whatever other button on iOS.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

In the 90's, all these features shifted to buttons - Office / MS Word especially had heaps of them, a whole system to configure and move these buttons to your preferences, and I'm sure there were lots more if you had plugins. Then the 2000's came around and Office 2000-something introduced the Ribbon, in an attempt to reduce the amount of UI elements and streamline the process. But the focus was on less UI clutter. Nowadays there's WYSIWYG editors in web browsers for writing documents like that one from Dropbox or Notion, intentionally limiting how much markup you can do; they're text/word processors again, instead of full design suites.

benj111 3y ago
Buttons/ ribbons should be in addition to the menu though. And a keyboard shortcut is still faster. The menu shortcut system is really good for those large enterprise systems, where multiple users use it in very different ways. If you're just inputting data, you can slowly learn the shortcuts for that. If you spend your time generating reports, you can learn the shortcuts for that. There doesn't need to be any assumptions about how the software will be used. There doesn't need to be loads of effort put into a flexible UI.

galad87 3y ago

We spent the last 15 years avoiding the menu bar in mobile devices, and in the end we reinvented it in the worst way. Hidden under either the hamburger button on Android, the "…" or whatever other button on iOS.