Microsoft design in a nutshell.

[kickaha]

http://www.betalogue.com/2008/05/20/word-2008-how-to-assign-command-g-to-find-next/

This beautifully encapsulates why MS products are so damned hard to use, and are full of ubiquitous WTF.

Comments

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

...and Office is systematically taking over the rest of MS. By this date, it is likely that the previous sentence should have been in the past tense in order to be fully correct.

I have a lot more to say on this topic, but given my situation it would be inappropriate to do so in a public forum. :) I will merely ask if y'all have settled on dates for your trip yet.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Nope. :/

And yeah, I'm waiting for the ribbon to replace the menu bar in all apps. Which isn't going to solve anything. Menus, when done with a minimum of care, are spiffy keen fine. Menus, when done ala MS, are a nightmare of playing "where did they hide that functionality". Menus were never the problem. Their complete lack of thought of how to lay them out, that was the problem.

But of course, by throwing the baby out with the bathwater, they get to claim 'innovation'... oy.

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

I have seen enough quiet backing off on the ribbon that I would not be too surprised to see it fade to the background in future releases.

They won't abandon it, obviously; that would mean admitting they fsillied up. But I think you'll see a "classic menus" option in the next release of Office, and the ribbon will not get a whole lot more development cycles. I would definitely be surprised (and emphatically not pleasantly) to see the ribbon extended into Windows 7.

I don't *know* anything, nor have I heard any rumors along this line. And the backing off I've noticed has been pretty subtle. So I could be way off base. I hope not.