19 February 2009

Here comes the Ribbon

As you probably have seen, many of the latest applications coming out are now based on a user interface with a MS Office ribbon look. While the issue of "is it better" will never be put to rest, the history of how this came to be is rather interesting (to me anyway).

So I did a little digging and found a video just about this vary issue. It is big at 146meg but shows where we were and how the ribbon idea came into existance. Here is the link to the file and below is a snippet description.

Title: Beneath the Surface: The Natural Experience
VisionSpeaker(s): Daniel Makoski

Description: Come hear how the Surface User Experience team is focusing on design and user experience as a key driver for creating more natural, intuitive and emotional products. Learn how Surface shifts the approach that has been used for more than thirty years of making users learn the language of computers and products to an entirely new approach where technology, computers, and products learn the language of people: touch, voice, and gesture.

3 comments:

cadalot said...

Death to the Ribbon!!

If it ain't broken why fix it?

Having just purchased your book for 2009, I will be more than just a little upset if 2010 is that much different in the menu structure, unless like AutoCAD it has a classic button somewhere?

David Harrington said...

Well the why is really unknown to the public but if i had to guess it is because Autodesk marketing believes that people will buy more if the program is *improved* aka different.

As for having an classic option, since the API for RST is very basic and the 2009 had no ability to do a lot of customization (unlike AutoCAD) I would suspect not. None of the screen shots and verbage about 2010 have indicated the 2009 would be an option.

cadalot said...

Drat and Double Drat .......

Looks like an real investment in shortcuts has to be the way forward, there is a great thread on this on the AUGI forum at the moment.