The Future of Task Panes

re: The Future of Task Panes

Centaur — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:34:59 GMT

Oh! The Office Clipboard. It drives me nuts. In Office XP, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to disable its popping up on double Ctrl+C. I know there is an option in Office 2003, but in XP I seem to be stuck…

re: The Future of Task Panes

Mark Sowul — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:36:10 GMT

Hmm, I do think that PowerPoint was one of the few areas where the task panes made sense (slide design, templates, and animation settings). Of course if it duplicates the ribbons, I could see why you'd take it out.

re: The Future of Task Panes

Matt Lacey — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:59:07 GMT

Woo Hoo!
Research Pane is still around. This means I'll get to keep some of my most productive personal tools.

re: The Future of Task Panes

ChrisC — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:59:56 GMT

Centaur:
>The Office Clipboard... drives me nuts... I know
>there is an option in 2003, but in XP I seem to be stuck

There is an option, it just isn't where you'd expect to find it (IMHO).
hit [CTRL]+[C] a few times until it shows up in the tray
right-click on the clipboard icon in the tray.
move mouse over "options"
un-check "Show clipboard automatically"

-Chris C.

re: The Future of Task Panes

CS — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 20:13:19 GMT

Thank you for letting the user decide where to put the panes.

On automatic popping up panes: what about an option to disable the "Research" pane? It still comes up when I <ALT> and left-click, which messes with the "Magic Box".

Especially when you try to use the box in tables the only thing you get is the Research pane, which (in my mind) is far less usefull.

re: The Future of Task Panes

Michael Zuschlag — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 21:03:29 GMT

This sounds like a substantial improvement for task panes, but I'm still left wondering, what do you need them for? Or maybe the question is, when should a feature use a task pane and when should it use a modeless dialog box?

re: The Future of Task Panes

Michael Zuschlag — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 21:11:22 GMT

Centaur:
>>The Office Clipboard... drives me nuts... I know
>>there is an option in 2003, but in XP I seem to be stuck
ChrisC:
>...right-click on the clipboard icon in the tray...
There's also an Options button/dropdown menu at the bottom of the Clipboard Task Pane that accesses this setting. After unchecking the autoshow checkbox(es), I recommend you *check* Collect Without Showing Clipboard. That way you can still call up the Clipboard Task Pane to save your butt if you ever do the dreaded two-Ctrl-X's before Ctrl-V mistake.

re: The Future of Task Panes

Andrew Eberhard — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:24:10 GMT

"No Task Pane will show up at startup. This includes the Getting Started pane, which has been removed from the product."

Hallelujah!

I'd really like to see the UI process for associating an Office 12 doc (particularly Word) with an XML schema. Brian Jones has done a great job explaining the 2003 UI and the forthcoming XML file formats, but the Office 12 UI remains a bit of a mystery.

re: The Future of Task Panes

Hazz — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 05:30:37 GMT

Without getting into the rules governing when and why there should be task panes, I have to say that in O2003 the only one I consistantly use, is the Styles and Formatting pane in Word. In fact I turn it on in almost every session of Word I open. I appreciated its layout and the options it gives me right next to my active document. So I am glad to hear that it is still available. Also working on portrait documents on a 19" screen gives me some spare real estate to the sides. FYI I use the other side for the document map which I also have open in every session of Word I open. On that note, is the document map feature still in 12 and has its behaviour changed?

Thanks for your excellent Blog and sharing insights into interface design that are both fascinating and useful.

--
Hazz
Business Analyst

re: The Future of Task Panes

Stephen Bullen — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 21:20:28 GMT

Michael, from playing with it, the only differences between a custom task pane and a modeless userform is that task panes are sizable, dockable and can't be created with VBA.

re: The Future of Task Panes

Helen — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 12:24:43 GMT

I wholeheartedly second the halleluias. The choices you've made sound very sensible - the auto-launching Research pane just drives me nuts, but the Styles and Formatting pane is truly useful.

I long to see Office 12 in action!

I'm not sure if this has been asked already, but how much control will developers (VBA or .NET) have over task panes?

re: The Future of Task Panes

Mike Gallagher — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:30:53 GMT

I always thought that one of the coolest things about task panes was using them to display information from other back-office apps using the Information Bridge Framework.

re: The Future of Task Panes

C. Shamis — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 17:01:37 GMT

I have disabled the office clipboard from automatically opening 50 times. Yet every time I restart Word, the office clipboard will automatically launch. This is infuriating! I applaud MS's efforts in making the auto-opening feature user-configurable, but if word won't remember the settings... what's the point?

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