Hi Yves
Fitts's Law. Yes, it is interesting that Microsoft paid homage to it very selectively! When they dropped the dreadful ORB, they could have easily moved the Word logo from the top left corner and made the new FILE button meet Fitts's law. In fact, they could have combined the W logo and FILE into one larger button. But in their haste to dump the Orb, they didn't think. Something like:
Although the W does have some functions, I don't believe I have ever used it to execute any of those function. I bet most users don't know it is anything but the Word logo!
There' is just so much they have messed up when they decided to implement the Ribbon. I'd love to run the Office team and get that interface sorted out. I assure you that Fitts's law would be far more evident and ALL the ribbon would be drag and drop customisable.
Terry
From: Yves Dhondt
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2010 7:15 AM
To: Terry Farrell
Subject: Is Office 2010 better than Office 2007
Terry,
There is a law called Fitt's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law) which is rather important when it comes to designing user interfaces.
The Office orb follows Fitt's law perfectly. As it is located in the top left corner (assuming a maximized window), you basically could 'throw' your mouse in the direction of that corner and you ended up in the correct place. The new File button is located a lot lower. It becomes much easier to 'overshoot' when aiming for that button with your mouse. So from a UI design perspective, they should have put it higher (more towards the corner).
I rarely use a Mac and am a dedicated Windows user, but when it comes to user interface design, the designers at Apple clearly new what they were doing when they put the menu bar for every program at the very top of the window. It's a lot harder to miss them as you basically have unlimited access on the top side of the menus as you can't move your mouse of the screen.
Your remarks that dialog launchers are too small is also correct according to Fitt's law. They require almost perfect hand/mouse-eye coordination to hit them, assuming you already know what they are. So they are clearly a design flaw no matter what the Office UI design team says. I believe their point was something along the line of your mouse already being in the correct group and most likely at a standstill when you realise you need the dialog launchers. So you wouldn't be moving at full speed yet when you reached the button. But that's based on a lot of assumptions.
Yves
On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Terry Farrell wrote:
Yves
I'm not quite sure what you mean: the File button is approximately in the same place as the carbuncle. Perhaps you have only seen the early beta. And IMHO, the icons are much clearer now. See cropped screenshot below.
Terry
From: Yves Dhondt
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 8:21 PM
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.word.newusers
Subject: Is Office 2010 better than Office 2007
They might have replaced that "idiotic Office carbuncle" with something more sensible, but they forgot to put the more sensible thing in the sensible place, namely where that carbuncle was...
I can't find it back right now, but I have seen screenshots showing that the quality of the icons and text is actually becoming worse with each version of Office (starting from Office 2003). Apparently, everything depends on your screen settings.
I would update if you want to use equations in Powerpoint (as it now has the same possibilities as Word) or want to be able to manipulate images more easily from Word. The ribbon is hardly a reason to upgrade.
Yves
"Yves Dhondt" wrote in message ...
They might have replaced that "idiotic Office carbuncle" with something more sensible, but they forgot to put the more sensible thing in the sensible place, namely where that carbuncle was...
I can't find it back right now, but I have seen screenshots showing that the quality of the icons and text is actually becoming worse with each version of Office (starting from Office 2003). Apparently, everything depends on your screen settings.
I would update if you want to use equations in Powerpoint (as it now has the same possibilities as Word) or want to be able to manipulate images more easiliy from Word. The ribbon is hardly a reason to upgrade.
Yves
"Terry Farrell" wrote in message ...
I agree with Tony.
My take is that some (not all) of the terrible blunders of 2007 have been addressed. Not perfectly, but there's some better thought put into the interface in particular. For some examples, the Ribbon is now much more easily customised (though still far from as user-friendly as menus in 2003) and that idiotic Office carbuncle has been replaced by a sensible file button (blue background with File in white letters).
All the Ribbon icons are much cleaner and easier to read. Though one glaring error (which I will still argue with the developers until I win) is that those stupid miniature arrows (Dialog Launchers) are still used in the Group Title bars to select the dialogs. Their defence in not making the whole title bar into a clickable button is that users may accidentally press the title bar to launch the dialogs! I find their argument is crazy: users will only be clicking in the title area to launch the dialog because the title bar does nothing!
The old Print Preview Pane seems to have been replaced by a sub-standard offering, but in fact, it has merely been hidden from the users and the command can be added back to the QAT.
Oops! Just climbing down from my soap box.
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Terry Farrell - MSWord MVP
"kristain via OfficeKB.com" u59322@uwe wrote in message news:a8d239ff3e705@uwe...
Is Office 2010 better than Office 2007
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