Two changes supposedly coming to the next version of Windows, according to veteran Paul Thurrott:
Metro apps running in windows on the desktop. As you can today with third-party utilities such as ModernMix, the next version of Windows will let users optionally run Metro apps in floating windows on the desktop.
Start menu. After bringing back the Start button in Windows 8.1, Microsoft will take the next logical step in the next Windows version and make the Start menu available as an option. It’s possible this will appear only on those product versions that support the desktop.
This would be Microsoft admitting they got Windows 8 all wrong.
If they only admit it now… they’re the last ones to do so.
Edited 2013-12-09 23:53 UTC
Yeah they were under the impression that to get people to use their product, they had to make it utterly horrible to use.
Also the fact that they had no confidence in metro. If they had any confidence in metro applications they would have allowed them to be used in a completely integrated fashion and succeed based on their own merits.
Personally i like the Metro on the tablet, but on the desktop its “all wrong”.
It’s hard to believe that a decision was made to go All-In on Metro with Microsoft failing understanding the enormous risk they were taking with their most important product.
However on the other hand, the Modern style development has now clearly superseded the past and is established. You can even see its signature iOS and Android. So i guess in hindsight it does take some pain and risky decision’s to move the field forward.
I wouldn’t describe that influence as a move forward though… YMMV.
Edited 2013-12-10 12:25 UTC
I know another OS once sold by MS that allowed me to use just a single application at a time (or multiple ones in a very awkward way), full of square widgets with aberrant colors and always in fullscreen. It was called “MS DOS”.
The so called modern application is a step back, not forward. It is a paradigm created to be used by smartphones back in a time that their hardware barely managed to smoothly run a single application in a appealing way to their public (full of fluid animations in a high resolution display).
By all intents and purposes, this style of applications denies 30 year of evolution done in desktop computers. We near killed yourselves working to create computers capable to run multiple graphical applications simultaneously, so we can increase the productivity, just to have all this evolution thrown in the garbage so kiddies could have blinking animated applications with huge cool typography to play.
I’m still to see a application that follow this “Modern UI paradigm” capable to do serious work in real life environments, like a home office or a business. This paradigm works great for twitter clients, but when you do have to keep open a SAP, a IDE, 5 spreadsheets, a couple of text documents, a chat window with our co-workers, access network shares and keep all files organized, nothing beats the good old stacked window.
The Modern UI failed to conceive the most basic functionally on desktop computers: do real job.
I really hope that Thurrott is right.
Windows 8 never made sense on a non-touch desktop product. Having that daft Start Screen on my 2 24″ monitors (where those hot corners were a non-useable nightmare) was rubbish. The amount – and type – of pointer movement required was terrible. Large sweeping movements followed by fine fiddly difficult ones.
It was such a headstrong move to make it non-optional. They would have lost nothing and KEPT headshare by putting the Start Menu as an option (default or not) instead of Start Screen on Desktop… so so obvious. I said it from the very first developer preview that they’d got it wrong but hoped they were keeping the Start Menu away to force the development world to work with Metro before adding back the options with the final release.
Anyway, I look forward to seeing if this is borne out when it is released. My PC which remains Windows 7 might get an update (there are still useability issues with the W8 desktop… white and pale grey window headers?) and the MBA I bought after seeing Windows 8 might end up my only OSX machine.
Edited 2013-12-10 01:06 UTC
“This would be Microsoft admitting they got Windows 8 all wrong.”
Of course Microsoft is not, after all they invested so much research into this product to make it perfect. It’s just that… users are so wrong. Fix the users !
Kochise
Suddenly it, makes a little sense why most of your posts are signed Kochise.
That’s why I sign my post when I share my computer. Though I was not expected to share my OSnews account as well. While the misattributed input was yet appreciated, the impudent was indeed thoroughly chastened.
Kochise
Edited 2013-12-10 23:10 UTC
What a waste of resources. They need to focus on Office.
I don’t think they got it ALL wrong. I’m not sure that having the option to run your tablet apps on a desktop is such a bad thing, and is something I desperately wish I had with Android. I don’t ALWAYS want to use browser apps and/or depend on some janky browser extension or bloated Win32 app for desktop notifications.
So yes, Metro DOES have its place on the desktop. Where they screwed up was trying to make it the entire OS
To be honest, I think Metro was a mistake on any device. Having used a Windows Phone for a few months, I found it one of the most horrible and counter intuitive mobile OSs I’ve used since the days of Samsung’s pre-Android dumb phones.
Half the time I can’t tell which widget is interactive and which are purely informative because buttons look like textboxes which look like coloured boarders; and Hyperlinks look like normal text. Then you have the mass of nondescript monochrome icons without any labels, leaving me guessing what their purpose is. Yet weirdly the application menus on that thing go completely the other way and places too much importance on text and not enough on the icon; which makes it a nightmare to quickly find anything if you’re dyslexic (like I am). And the horrible side swipe to view additional hidden panels on any given application means you’re never quite sure where anything is.
I really wanted to like Windows Phone because it was so very different from the masses of samey smart phone OSs, but I ended up feeling confused and lost for 99% of the time I was using my Nokia Lumia; before eventually I came to the conclusion that Metro was just one big usability fuck up.
*shrug* I don’t have a clue, since I’ve never used it on a mobile device. But a lot of people seem to love it.
~97% of people, so near everybody, does not buy it. Microsoft had more success and market share with the old Windows CE. That tells you something.
That tells me that the iPhone wasn’t out back then, or virtually noone would’ve bothered with Windows CE
And its probably not Metro that’s keeping people off of WP, as much as the lack of apps, and Apple’s slick marketing department.
Edited 2013-12-13 19:03 UTC
Enough already… get rid of Ribbons in Office !
I want my pull down menues…
The ribbons in Outlook are fantastic at hiding commonly used functionality, forcing you to poke around at different “tabs” in the ribbon toolbar. I sometimes just find it easier to use OWA.
No it doesn’t. The old office interface I remember using a lot when I was at uni had everything stacked 4 levels deep in some random dialog box.
It was rubbish. Now stuff is logically grouped under tabs … if you don’t understand how to use tabs (been on the web for how long), please don’t use a computer.
It’s most likely grouped the same way in the ribbon interface. Only now it’s a huge mess on each tab..
Does this translate into: If you don’t follow the ms way please dont use a computer?
No it isn’t, this is a screenshot from my PC of Word 2007:
http://i.imgur.com/1pF9gS3.png?1
Each item is logically grouped, each set of insert types are grouped by type and are clearly labelled. You can see it in the screenshot. Each grouping is self evident.
Maybe if you can’t read it would be a problem.
Oh comon. Tabs are hardly Microsoft centric, as I previously said they have been on the web easily for the last 10 years. It is a well known.
So you find the one clean one and make claims from that one? Look at the home tab and tell me thats clean.
I have only seen this Ribbon failure on microsoft systems. There are tabs in my browser yes but it os not nearly as complex as a wysisg text editor
Statement made previously:
I can’t win with you guys, the home tab:
http://i.imgur.com/YkP7VXu.png
You will notice:
* Font settings and style is in the font grouping
* Paragraphs settings and style is in the paragraph grouping
* Style settings are in the Styles group.
I could go on for every grouping … but I won’t.
Again each section is clearly labelled, and everything is logically grouped.
Compare this to Word 2003:
http://www.mokonamodoki.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/word03_files…
I honestly cannot fathom why anyone would think the Word 2007 ribbon interface isn’t logical and well thought compared to what was there before.
If you are going to blather on about familiarity, as far as I am concerned it is fifth monkey effect.
http://jeffhurt.com/monkey.html
Edited 2013-12-10 13:23 UTC
Agreed. You’ve gotten so use to arguing that MS is perfect and so used to defending their cluster-f–ks that you can’t even remember why it is that you like them. You just defend them because you’ve always defended them.
For what it’s worth, I hate the ribbon bar too. Whether it’s because I’m used to the old menu based system or whether it’s because ribbon really is a mess – the fact remains that I can never find a sodding thing in any of the applications that use ribbon yet I can find stuff quickly in any menu based application even when I’ve not used it in years. So as far as I’m concerned, ribbon slows productivity and raises my stress levels – which much means ribbon fails to address the fundamental problems it set out to solve.
Edited 2013-12-10 14:12 UTC
Your attitude seems to show you are the sixth monkey as we making lame insults to make some dubious point.
This is what you are doing:
http://xkcd.com/1172/
Arguing whether something is better UX because you find it more difficult in your experience is completely misunderstand what UX is about. UX is about learn-ability. e.g. Until I used Word 2007, I had no idea that Styles event existed, this would suggest it is more learn-able … but anecdotes don’t make an argument.
As for the snarky Mis-quote you can f–k off. My argument I think it is pretty sound and I backed it up with some evidence, instead of making a dubious statement and making out like it was a fact which is what OP is guilty of.
I prefer to use Google Docs these days because it is easier to share and collaboratively edit docs.
Edited 2013-12-10 15:26 UTC
No it’s not. My user experience is no less important than anyone else’s and if I have issue with the UX of something, then I have every right to explain why.
I do happen to find the ribbon completely unusable. I hate it. This obviously wont be the case for everyone, but it is the case for myself and the others who have argued with you in this thread.
Since experience is anecdotal, I beg to differ.
No, I’m just using the same dumb attacks you made against the other person. If you don’t like it then perhaps you should stop acting like such a pathetic child whenever someone disagrees with you about your precious Microsoft – who apparently can do no wrong. Here’s a news flash for you: not everyone considers every idea to come out of Redmond to be a triumph. And their opinions matter too.
Anyway, insults aside, I can accept that some people like the ribbon, but I do not. It does look messy to me because you have a seemingly random splodge of large icons, smaller icons, some icons with labels, some without, some you click to reveal a drop down menu, others you click to execute. And then there’s that silly overflow button in the bottom right corner (which took me months to find!). And you have all of that hidden under more tabs than there were top level menus in the original layout.
Being dyslexic, I struggle reading through tabulated and lined data enough at the best of times, I don’t need an interface that randomly places different sized objects and with different interactions. That’s just nasty to use. And yes I know there is a structure to it all, but that structure isn’t obvious to me. If anything it just looks like they had to fill a space of specific dimensions and then set out to try and fill that – which would have been fantastic if the aim of the exercise was to create a mosaic :p
Well I am sorry it is less important. If 95% of people find the one UI paradigm easier than I am going to bet that most businesses will cater for majority, not the minority.
It kinda like why I don’t bother supporting IE7 or Safari on Windows at work anymore, because nobody visits our site with that browser.
No actually they stated that it was usable as a matter of fact and then they alluded to this not being logically organised.
i.e. Both quotes
And
Both statements are saying that the layout is a mess, which means that not a lot of thought has been put into something. All I did was say this wasn’t true and gave screenshots illustrate the opposite.
I have issues with people stating something as a if was matter of fact when it is their opinion.
I said it was. I was mirroring you statements.
When did I do a personal attack? I gave screenshots supporting my point of view. I did say that really if you haven’t seen tabs in user interface (they are used not only on dialogs, browsers and website interfaces) that you shouldn’t use a computer, it is a ridiculous statement to make … which means I think what they stated was ridiculous.
I think calling someone out for being ridiculous is okay.
It not like the ribbon interface is that new anymore it is 7 years old, even the “I am used to argument” doesn’t make sense any-more.
ANECDOTAL AGAIN.
I am dyslexic and so is my brother … neither us have problems. So don’t pull the disability card.
As I said before, it’s useless trying to have a discussion with you because you’re so polarised in your opinion that you don’t even bother to read other peoples posts before lecturing them about how right you are.
At least I can acknowledge and respect that other people might like the stuff I don’t. You only berate them for being different.
http://xkcd.com/386/
I wasn’t berating anyone Laurence.
I presenting my idea and I backed it up with screenshots to illustrate and obvious point about how things were logically grouped. I made no other claim about the usability of the system, except to dis-spell the notion that it is some sort of illogical mess, because it obviously isn’t after just looking at the basic interface.
I really don’t know if you have a reading comprehension problem, but anything you say is anecdotal unless without presenting hard numbers behind it (A/B testing, eye tracking analysis, heat maps or anything similar) is a waste of time discussing UX. Google do everything via data, and I will take Google’s methodology over some random guy on the net.
I work in a company that has it profit in hundred of millions (no it isn’t fortune 500, but they only care about cash money being gambling), and unless I back everything up with hard verifiable numbers or methodology, I won’t get it past senior management.
Half the time, I comment from that mindset. If you think that is unreasonable, well I can’t really do much about that.
Edited 2013-12-10 22:28 UTC
I really don’t want to tare your post apart because really I only came on here to talk about what I personally prefer from a UI. But your post is so full of hypocrisy that I really need to address those points first, in the hope that we can drop this stupid attitude.
First of all, you cannot use your own anecdotal evidence if you’re going to bitch and moan at others for doing the same.
Secondly, you cannot argue that other people need to cite evidence while yourself making sweeping generalisations without any evidence.
Thirdly, you have no right to claim that I have a reading comprehension problem when you’ve constantly ignored my comments and at several points completely misunderstood what “anecdotal” and “experience” even means (for the record, listing off the aesthetic properties of the ribbon isn’t anecdotal, it’s literally just the same as your screenshot evidence but expressed verbally rather than pictorially)
And lastly, you have no right to come on here and spout superiority over unverified claims that you happen to work in IT. We all work in IT. This isn’t the Dail Mail forums; this is a technology forum. So I bet 99% of us (myself included) have successful careers in IT. If you want us to be swayed by your arguments then you have at least bother to make a logical argument to begin with because we’re all smart enough to spot when someone is bullshitting us. And by that I mean all of us; you, me, and everyone else commenting and lurking on OSN. So don’t think I’m going to respect you just because you type that you work in IT for a big company.
Now to get back to the crux of my argument; my point was only ever about why I, personally, don’t like the ribbon bar. Nothing you can say nor do will change that opinion because even I cannot control that opinion. I just like something or I don’t. I may be able to substantiate why I don’t like something, but that doesn’t mean that my preference was a conscious decision. And this is why I mentioned about the dyslexia – it wasn’t to pretend I have some kind of disability (in fact people who blame things on their dyslexia are people who really wind me up rotten). I merely offered up that as one possible explanation as to why I see white noise rather than signal (metaphorically speaking, of course) when glancing at the ribbon bar. So you’d do better by respecting my personal preferences just like you choose to respect your own preferences and those that fall into the mythical “95%” figure which I’ll go into next. And just like I respect the fact that you like the ribbon bar (and I mean that sincerely!)
However your point about, and I quote, “95% of people find the one UI paradigm easier” DOES need citation. So either put up some hard numbers (as you like to call them) yourself or stop demanding that I have to evidence my own personal preferences. Or better yet, stop telling me I’m wrong because my preferences happen to differ from yours.
Anyway, I wish I never bothered to open dialogue with you because I’ve now wasted several hours of today when I should have writing a caching daemon for one of my webfarms.
Edited 2013-12-11 00:47 UTC
Your opinion. Opinions are like nipples everyone has at least a couple.
I provided screenshots of Word. Those screenshots are a fact, not an opinion, they are screenshots of the actual application running with the UI presented “AS IS”.
The logical grouping is self evident. If you choose to argue otherwise, I cannot convince a person that wishes to discount reality itself.
I dunno how a screenshot of an application running can be called “an opinion”.
Didn’t do that.
There is an image with logically grouped functionality, which I took from a running system with the applications that first implemented the Ribbon.
It is there in the image. I dunno how there can be an argument when there is a picture illustrating my point.
Each grouping is labelled clearly, each grouping has functionality that is described in the label. It is shown quite clearly with the screenshots I have provided.
I do, because you have either ignored or misunderstood it. I have consistently said the same thing now for quite a number of replies in different way. I have now lost patience.
Why should I bother with yours?
As for word definitions:
Anecdotal – Based on personal experience.
Experience – comprises knowledge of or skill of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event.
Sorry I understand these terms rather well.
In the words of Tupac “I ain’t even mad at ya”.
I honestly don’t care whether you agree or not at this point. It quite obvious you don’t want to listen.
Again, I have provided screenshots, I have provided my reasoning. All I have heard from you is your personal opinion about me my apparent love for Microsoft (even though I own a quite a few Macintoshes, bought OpenBSD releases and extol the virtue of using Linux in the Amazon cloud for PHP, Python and Node web apps at work) and the Office
Ribbon.
In fact I am so fed up of it, I just taken a web cam pic of me with the actual media (I have many more releases, these were easily at hand):
http://i.imgur.com/xxJIT3g.jpg
I have even provided you with the situation in which I work so that you may understand my attitude better, yet still you are using terms like “who are you to say” and “christ almighty”.
You have not presented anything that approaches a hypothesis, let alone data to support you claims.
I don’t even know why you are getting so upset.
And my point is unless there is hard data your opinion is pointless to the company that produces the application when their data for the majority of their users doesn’t support it.
This it the reality. Don’t get upset with me because I merely explain it.
Again it is a reading comprehension problem on you part. I said “If 95% of all the people that used this” I even backed it up with a browser statistic and my thinking behind it to illustrate the point further.
The number was picked to illustrate a point.
Not my fault you don’t understand.
I am fed up with this now.
Edited 2013-12-11 01:21 UTC
Yeah, you’re definitely over compensating now. I’d wager your “career” is failing and you’re little more than an opinionated 1st line support officer who thinks the world owes him a break while simultaneously wasting most of your working life dossing on message boards telling everyone how important you are.
Most sane people respect others opinions – just like I have yours. But you need a serious chip on your shoulder to be carrying on the way you are just because I happen to dislike your precious ribbon bar. I mean seriously dude, grow the fuck up.
I expect you’ll use your multiple fake accounts on here to down vote me – and I’m certain that’s what you’re doing because no sane person would have read through the numerous pages of our exchanges and not have lost the will to live before now. But honestly, I think this post deserves down voting anyway.
I work in Gibraltar in the gaming sector. I doubt it is particularly difficult to find out who I am and what I do from the information I have given on this website and a bit of Googling.
In previous comments when you have got upset you have resorted to saying I am some sort of dead end job or such other rubbish.
I think to be perfectly honest you are trying to project your own person feeling onto me.
No you didn’t respect mine, you called me a Microsoft loving idiot on your first reply. Go fuck yourself.
I honestly don’t think you believe I would bother doing that. I think sane people may have found this amusing.
BTW AGAIN, This is me the Microsoft lover holding up OPENBSD Install Media I bought sometime in the past:
http://imgur.com/xxJIT3g
Yes I do look about 14 when I have a shave.
Fair enough. Sorry mate, I hope you can accept my deepest apologises. And I genuinely mean this
Actually I do respect your opinions. I respect that you like the ribbon bar, I have no problem with that. I just don’t want to be told that I’m wrong because I happen mention that I dislike the ribbon bar. And this is what you’re doing, not just to me, but to everyone in this topic.
The ribbon looks messy at first (and at second), but I just went over all the buttons and then I have a good idea what’s possible and where everything is.
You can customize the ribbon. Just get rid of everything you dont’t need or don’t understand. Then it looks much simpler.
You can customise toolbars as well. Just get rid of what you don’t need and make them simpler.
Oh, wait, they got rid of those too. If we could already make the existing interface simpler, why the need to replace it whole-hog?
Either because of extensive UI testing and investigation, marketing (change for the sake of change so we have something to say and promote, never mind if it’s an improvement or not) or a combination of both.
I can understand a ribbon is better for less skilled users as the options already in view instead of hidden in a menu structure. A menu structure is better for able users as it takes up less screen estate and it makes the application look much cleaner.
The problem with the ribbon is that you have 4 (if not more) different sizes of icons. Some sections have 1 row, some 2 rows, some 3 rows of icons, all next to each other, with different vertical spacing. Some sections have icons linked together, others have them separated by whitespace. Some sections have drop-downs mixed in with icons. All with multiple different fonts being used.
IOW, it’s visual vomit, and very hard to pick anything out without slowly reading every … single … icon … over … and … over … trying to find something.
And, it’s all animated. Things move around when you click and hover and drag.
If there were 2 sizes of icons, and 2 rows per section, and proper spacing and alignment, and 1 font type/size, then maybe the ribbon would be useful.
I’ve never seen anything move in the 2007 ribbon interface or the Windows Explorer ribbon interface. Maybe it is an Office 2010 complaint, I haven’t used Office 2010 for any considerable amount of time.
I don’t find the differing icon sizes a problem, it doesn’t seem to be too different than web design where you tend to make call to actions larger.
Edited 2013-12-10 23:18 UTC
Differing icon sizes in isolation would be bearable. But, as the former poster (and others in this topic) have said, there’s variety to the design of each element than just their icon sizes.
It’s when you incorporate all of those points into one “toolbar” when I start to struggle.
But you aren’t everyone. A fact you seem have difficulty in grasping.
WTF!? I’ve frequently said I’m only talking about myself and not everyone! That post even categorically says “when I start to struggle”
And I even wrote an entire paragraph in the other fork about how this is just my personal preference.
I really couldn’t be making my position on this more clear; this is my personal opinion and preference. I’m not trying to speak on behalf of everyone.
Okay, another ribbon hater here.
I used to have a single icon bar with the features I used the most, it occupied less area than the ribbon. Dynamic toolbars appeared as needed (for drawing,…).
My issues with the ribbon:
– Poor discoverability and organisation. There are many places to click and hidden dialogboxes and menus. For example : How to set the grid in PowerPoint ? There are both old style dialogboxes and pop-down non modal fields. Inconsistent.
– Hardcoded. Non user configurable. Many people use Office with all sort of crazy macros, which cannot be inserted gracefully into that bloody ribbon.
– Terrible when the width of the application is reduced. New, unfamiliar and useless icons appears…
– Word: Stylesheets. Braindamaged. Encourages modifying letters instead of setting styles.
– Bad for keyboard navigation. Microsoft never helped to learn key sequences.
There are many other issues I won’t bother detailing.
The right click popupmenu and icons are really a missed opportunity. IMHO, Microsoft should have made the icon set of this menu user configurable and dynamic. For the remaining functions, menus, and text search of commands…
I think we are going back into this territory.
http://xkcd.com/1172/
I dispute this if we were talking about Word or Outlook (as I use them all the time), but Powerpoint or Excel I rarely use so you could well be right.
I think the idea is that you aren’t supposed to.
After making responsive websites now, I have to agree. It pisses me off when I can’t snap a Window and have the controls work properly … note this is for a lot of applications (Visual Studio does this as well, And pretty much every inspector tool for browsers).
If I can do this with some CSS, it can be done on my Samsung S3 and on my iPad, I am sure they could do it with native applications.
It almost works like HTML / CSS, so maybe because I am a web dev but I really don’t see a problem. You give it the correct element type and when you change the style everything changes consistently …
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290938
It is either F6 or mashing the Tab button to get to the right menu item. I don’t understand why you would navigation the menu with a keyboard unless you mouse was broken?
Edited 2013-12-10 23:46 UTC
– For the last part, about keyboard, it is not so much ribbon related that the way Microsoft never shows keyboard shortcuts. There were almost absent in menus, they could appear in help bubbles on the ribbon elements.
Unlike Macs which show a lot of keyboard shortcuts.
The ribbon could be reflowing, like a responsive website. It would be interesting. Made of live tiles à la “Metro”.
Look at the pictures again and tell me which picture is the cleanest. Why would i want to look at stuff i am not gonna use? Lets say i would like to do a heading (styles). Then i can not see the relevans of the other 4 items
No i am leaving Windows behind…
The reason i do not like the ribbon is that it’s a huge mess when people like my self only use office 2-3 times a month.
Yes, the MS Office menus were a mess, with options hidden in weird places.
However, not every office suite had that issue. Nor did every application have that issue.
Replacing a b0rked imlementation of a good idea (hierarchical menus) with a b0rked implementation of a bad idea (ribbon) is not progress.
Replacing a b0rked implementation of a good idea with a good implementation of a good idea is progress.
I really miss the smart dialogs that Lotus SmartSuite used. And I really miss the nice menus that WordPerfect used. It’s too bad neither of those are available on Linux, or for under $100 on Windows (still using WordPerfect 2000 on my Windows installs).
Everyone talks about it being borked as a fact when it is their opinion.
So I dispute that it is borked. I have never seen any data to support the notion.
You talk about it being fine as a fact when it is your opinion
So I dispute that it is fine. I have never seen any data to support the notion.
Edited 2013-12-11 01:04 UTC
You are really upset aren’t you?
Look you can do clever parodies all you like. The point is that there is no data i.e. statistical data you can link that says the Office Ribbon has bad usability.
I have said this in the other comment tree, I am quite willing to look at data that doesn’t support my opinion. There has been none presented by you or anyone else.
Edited 2013-12-11 01:28 UTC
No. Why would I be? I’m just making the point that you’re not even playing by your own rules.
So post some data that says the Office ribbon has good usability.
Anecdotal or not, we’ve at least cited reasons why we don’t like it. Meanwhile you’ve not presented any reasons as to why you don’t think the ribbon bar isn’t total garbage.
How about the number of people in this topic who’ve complained about it vs the number of people (ie just you) who’ve defended it :p
But as I said earlier; I don’t need to prove a personal preference any more than anecdotally. Which is still more than you’ve proven any of the points that you’ve been arguing.
Edited 2013-12-11 01:50 UTC
Just spend a few hours using the Eclipse based Lotus Notes and you will be crying for Outlook in no time.
I wish I could gave you an enormous mod up, so big is my Lotus Notes hatred.
The only people who love Lotus Notes are people who inflict bodily harm on themselves when they’re in a good mood.
It is our corporate mail system.
I feel your pain.
We had it in 1998, but we got rid to it. In 2008 we merged with another company and we got it back. We were all very upset. I used the Mac and Linux versions, but they were even worse than the Windows one.
The Mac version kept crashing and the Linux version, which also crashed a lot, kept breaking with each update despite me using Ubuntu and Notes on Ubuntu being “supported”.
When we got acquired the parent company had Notes as corporate email.
So we had to move away from Outlook to Notes.
Everyone that used to hate Outlook misses it deeply.
I have to admit that I actually like 8.1 better than 8 after building a new desktop image for sccm.
That said though, metro apps are *still* a waste of time, space and effort. running them in any situation is completely pointless.
> “This would be Microsoft admitting they got Windows 8 all wrong.”
This is more of a rumour.
Windows 8 is still incomplete. And most apps (99% of them) are terrible or have below features parity with their previous equivalent on the desktop. Older Windows Live apps versus their newer equivalent Metro apps.
There are still no worthwhile apps out there. And still no complex Metro app made for showcase.
Actually I blame the developers for the incompleteness of the apps themselves.
Modern UI and Windows 8 themselves are complete. The issue is that the devs who have focused on it have built apps that belong on a phone and wonder why they are not useful on the desktop…
I do not blame them: They are busy improving their apps for Android/iOS (where the market share and the money are) instead of writing stuff for Metro.
Sadly, Microsoft is doing the same. Their Android/iOS apps are better. They even have Remote Desktop on those platforms. My Lumia 820 will get it some day.
Apparently sorting photos in their Windows 8 Photo app isn’t necessary. And POP3 is too much to ask for the Mail app. Most included apps are garbage. I doubt anyone at Microsoft even uses Metro apps.
The navigating with a mouse issues aren’t fixed. Auto-hide panels weren’t a good idea in ’95. They’re surely not any good now.
Also I am sick of horizontal panning/scrolling apps. I hope the one who added it to the UI guideline gets punched in the nuts or the ovaries.
There’s is only one camp to blame: Microsoft.
At least they are willing to move off their soapbox and respond to their customers concerns. That probably wouldn’t have happened in the past.
They listened while discarding MS Bob…