A Separate Piece

re: A Separate Piece

Nate — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:39:58 GMT

Great idea. Also, they don't take much more room than current divider lines do. I've always thought the dividers are too tall, but text dividers seem just right for what they do.

re: A Separate Piece

Mal Ross — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 19:39:09 GMT

This is the first thing I've seen in the new Office UI that I'm not struck dumb by. I can definitely see the value in using the separator titles for obscure command areas, but in the examples you've provided, it just feels like extra visual complexity.

For example, in the chart gallery, I can *see* the kind of groupings into which the chart styles are separated. The titles just slow me down here. And in the menu example, I suspect I would ordinarily just scan the first menu item in each section and get similar results to scanning the separator text.

Overall, I wonder whether the textual separators are always going to add enough value for the visual hit they're imposing. I know they're not used everywhere, but from the examples given, it looks like they might still be overused. I guess the proof of the pudding's in the eating, though, so I'll wait and see how it feels in the final product. :)

P.S. Great blog - best thing on the web today.

re: A Separate Piece

Brandon Bloom — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:19:42 GMT

I love this idea, but I noticed that the "Visibility" section only has one element: "Hide & Unhide"

It seems like the heading is a waste here. I have to read one line of text in order to summarize another single line of text?

It just seems sort of redundant. I'm not sure what is inside the Hide/Unhide submenu, but I would assume that if they were placed on the base menu, it would be cluttered. Maybe separators could have submenu arrows as well?

re: A Separate Piece

Dave Solimini — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 21:05:09 GMT

Brandon --

It seems like the Visibility tag is there because otherwise the hide/unhide would be either "under" cell size, or would be orphaned with just a regular separator on the top of it... which might just look weird.

it seems that once your menu has more than a few of these textual separators, you can't use regular separators as well...

re: A Separate Piece

raul — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 21:43:42 GMT

Textual separators are ok with menus composed of images, but when they are interspersed within a normal text menu the result is visually confusing especially when they are rendered in a font the same size/weight/color as the rest of the menu (the fact that they have a different background is not enough differentiation). At the very least textual separators should be dimmed to show they cannot be selected. Ultimately though they are unnecessary. In the example given all the items are fairly obvious and the further explanation is just more visual detritus. I would argue you don't even need them in the graph example.

re: A Separate Piece

Brandon Bloom — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 21:54:37 GMT

"I would argue you don't even need them in the graph example."

I will have to disagree completely. I think they are MOST VALUABLE in the graph example if for nothing else other than to simply name the choices for the purpose of verbalization.

re: A Separate Piece

Lars Jensen — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:28:01 GMT

I can remember people asking Apple for these in 1984; maybe now they will get off the stick... :)

However, it would be nice if they could be made less visually complex. Perhaps this is an opportunity to visually simplify menus in general. If you make the separator text grey, remove the colored backgrounds (including the stripe down the left side) and removed the lines (both the existing separators and the "3D" at top and bottom of text separators), you get something pretty clean-looking.

re: A Separate Piece

Mal Ross — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 23:35:07 GMT

"they are MOST VALUABLE in the graph example if for nothing else other than to simply name the choices for the purpose of verbalization."

Good call! I hadn't considered that. :)

re: A Separate Piece

Craig H. — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:18:12 GMT

Jensen:

Why not have a Default Height under selection for Rows?

re: A Separate Piece

Adrian — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:54:42 GMT

Pretty cool, but I would agree that the visual design needs a tad more work. It seems these would be easier to scan if the labels were a tad closer to the group they label than to the next group.

If you just glance at the middle of the menu or the gallery, it takes a second to realize they are labelling the items below (like a heading) and not the items above (like most captions). Part of the problem for me might be that the highlight color on the top scanline of the text separator matches the background color of the menu, making them feel more connected to the items above than the ones below.

In the end, I think the labels will help with learning, but a user familiar with the menu will experience the labels exactly like traditional separators.

re: A Separate Piece

jensenh — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:55:53 GMT

Craig,

It's because Excel doesn't have that feature. The default row height is calculated based on the default font used in the workbook.

re: A Separate Piece

jensenh — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:56:45 GMT

Adrian,

Thanks for the feedback on the visuals, we're still working on them.

New Blog Software

jensenh — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 03:15:56 GMT

By the way, if you haven't noticed, all of MSDN blogs has been upgraded to a new version of Community Server. There are a still a number of problems, including a lot of "access denied", RSS feed problems, comments with extra empty lines at the end of them, etc.

Hopefully, people are working to help get the issues fixed behind the scenes. Keep trying if you can't get through!

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".

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

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

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...

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...

Office 12 UI Coolness

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

Office 12 UI Coolness

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

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.

The Office 2007 UI Bible | MS Tech News

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