A Separate Piece

Jensen Harris An Office User Interface Blog A Separate Piece | Green Tea Fat Burner

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The Office 2007 UI Bible | MS Tech News

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re: A Separate Piece

Paul Coddington — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 01:44:23 GMT

I would also make the header text half the size of the menu item text and have an option to switch them off and revert to lines.

Rational: These are great for newbies, but once you are familiar with the app you probably don't want them at all due to having extra fluff to read.

Office 12 UI Coolness

Wouter van Vugt — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 09:45:35 GMT

Office 12 UI Coolness

Wouter van Vugt — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 09:45:08 GMT

Rich Menus

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:00:37 GMT

You may remember that
last week
I described the textual separators that we use in Office 12 menus to...

re: A Separate Piece

Dan McCarty — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:54:08 GMT

Yeah, I think I have to give it the thumbs down. (I'm gonna guess that it'll still ship in Office despite my thumbs down, though.)

The problem is that I need to see what the menu items are, but the highlighted "textual separators" keep drawing my attention instead. And, as another person commented, once you use it once, you're kinda stuck using them for the whole menu. In the example you posted, there's no real reason for a "Visibility" separator for one menu item.

BTW, did anyone see that study a week or so ago about how people form an opinion of something within the first 50ms of seeing it? The first time I saw the contextual separator I knew I didn't like it, it just took a few minutes to come up with the reason why...

re: A Separate Piece

Kevin Ulland — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 20:51:42 GMT

When using some of these menus with galleries and very graphic-heavy options, the screen gets very cluttered (see some of the screens from the Excel blog with colorful pivot tables behind galleries).

Is there any chance that you can apply a filter to the document/spreadsheet when galleries and menus are accessed from the Ribbon which would fade or grey-out the document/sheet so that the menu and it's options are the focus. That way the graphics and options from the menus don't get lost.

For example: http://www.isamrad.com/dgainer/2_12-20-2005.png

Those little chart style options get lost. Now, maybe they fade into view or some other visual cue alerts the user where to look when the menu appears, but yikes, that little menu almost got lost.

What if you did something like:
http://img492.imageshack.us/full.php?image=212202005new7eo.png

That way the menus stand out more?

re: A Separate Piece

jensenh — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:45:27 GMT

Kim: Maybe, maybe not. When your professor tells you to use Excel to make a Surface plot, you'll be glad the label is there. In my mind, there are minor advantages and hardly any downside.

re: A Separate Piece

kim — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 06:48:08 GMT

Don't think they are needed. Why does someone need to know a bubble graph is called a "bubble".