Not So Set In Our Ways After All

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

John Topley — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:10:09 GMT

What does the little arrow to the right of the Bullets button do? Does it toggle between bullets and a numbered list?

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Nate — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:21:27 GMT

The styles icon seems hard to understand. You've said it yourself before - it's difficult to fit much information in a 16 x 16 icon. How much more width does the word "styles" take? Personally I'd remove the painter icon to do it.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Sanjaya — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:23:18 GMT

In that context, the font color icon sure lookes like underline.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Andrew T — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:23:36 GMT

"Center is now a toggle button which toggles between Center and Left Justify (if you click Center on centered text, it left justifies.)"
I realise this is how the Bold and Italic buttons behave but then they have always had toggle behaviour. The paragraph justification buttons always behaved like a group of radio buttons though. Will this centre button have an indicated (pushed in) toggle state (like Bold and Italic)? If not then having a button that shows centred text that can, when clicked, result in left justified text would appear to be most confusing!

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

JW — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:24:50 GMT

I think you need new icons for the indent and un-indent buttons. I have to get pretty close to the screen to tell the difference.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Nikhil — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 20:01:12 GMT

Great blog Jenson, been reading it for a while.

Anyways, using beta 1 at the moment myself, and the mini toolbar is definitely a great feature. The ways you've modified look good, apart from the omission of underline. I would be more comfortable with underline in there. (though agree that all the justify, right align etc shouldn't!!)

Is this toolbar gonna be available for the technical refresh, or just beta 2?

Keep up the good work, office 2007 is shaping up to be excellent.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

aidan_walsh — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 20:46:58 GMT

I agree with Andrew T, changing the behaviour of the Center button to a toggle seems wrong.

Perhaps when the Mini Toolbar is brought up over centered text, or when text is changed to centered, the icon for Left Justify can replace it?

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

jensenh — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:00:00 GMT

Aha... discussion about the Center button.

Now let me add a little bit of information: the Center button is _already_ a toggle, even in the version of Word you have. Clicking it reverts back to left justify.

We didn't actually change the behavior, it's just a shortcut to "uncenter" something which already exists.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

jensenh — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:02:15 GMT

Nate,

We can't label items on the Mini Toolbar because it needs to be ultra-small. If the work for Styles is huge in some language, all of a sudden, the bar would be 4 times longer--something unacceptable for a UI which comes up on selection.

The good news is that there are labeled versions of all the styles commands in the Ribbon.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Jon Peltier — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:03:55 GMT

I can get used to a toggle on the Center button. In Excel, the Indent button will Outdent if you hold Shift while clicking it. Is this a possibility if you need room for another button?

Is the Mini Toolbar going to be essentially locked in, or is there room in the UI or OM to customize which controls appear? The difficulty or complete inability to customize the interface is a major drawback to Office 2007, compared to our capabilities as developers (and even as users) in Office 97-2003.

Customize

Jeremy Johnson — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:04:30 GMT

Any chance the Mini-Bar can be customizable?

That could serve the needs of the power-user even more.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Lars Malm — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:19:42 GMT

Looks great! Big improvement from last time. I think I might get irritated when I find the bullet-list button but not the numbered-list button though. But maybe I'm just set in my ways. :)

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Michael Zuschlag — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:21:26 GMT

I never thought to even try clicking the Center button when text is already centered in my current version of Word. Nonetheless, I think you got the Center button behavior right. If I saw the Center button showing an "on" state, then, with no alternative buttons, I think I'd click it to de-center the text, which to my English-writing brain means align left.

Now my only question is, given discontinuous text selection, is the format painter really sufficiently useful to have a place on the minibar?

Styles

David Heffernan — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:56:17 GMT

Well done for listening to the feedback and putting the styles button in. If you hadn't done this it would have turned the mini-bar into an anti-feature, one that tempted you to do things the "wrong way".

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Justin — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:26:35 GMT

Could it learn from your most common Ribbon choices? For example, if I underline text frequently, but never outdent, the mini-Toolbar could shuffle around the choices?

Possibly add an option to turn this on (off by default).

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Brandon Bloom — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:58:44 GMT

I also motion for user customization of the Minibar. I for one know that I would add Justify to the Minibar right next to Center.

However, I am weary about plug-in extension to it.

As it is, I have to do a lot of hard work to remove the annoying Adobe PDF toolbar icons that the "PDF Maker" plug-in insists on putting back no matter how many times you remove them. I had to edit a whole bunch of registry keys (and have to do it again each time I update my Adobe Suite).

I think it is unfair for a plug-in to decide "Well he installed me, so I guess my functionality must be available at all times because clearly he needs me".

Maybe Mini-bar customization could easily be made discoverable by including a "dialog launcher" icon in the corner just like a ribbon panel?

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Lex — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 03:47:54 GMT

What Adobe has done with the Office plug ins recently borders on that of malware - it really is unbelievable.

I like the new Minibar though - to often we make concessions to consistancy that realistically have no benefit

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Nas Hashmi — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 05:59:00 GMT

WE affected the Microsoft Office team decision? This is truly history in the making.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Sumod — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 07:53:11 GMT

+1 to Jeremy Johnson

Please allow customisation of the minibar... this is too valuable a ui tool to leave to 'most common'.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

JanL — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 10:12:44 GMT

first of all, this is a great blog.

umm just wondering, if paste and copy and cut are among the most used functionalities, why are they not included in the minibar (while for ex. the format painter is--which anyway did not make it to the top 5 most commonly used)? the minibar pops up so much and and is more accessible than copy and paste since i have to right click to use copy and paste or travel all the way up to the ribbon to use copy/paste. whenever i highlight comething it's usually to replace text(in other words paste) or copy or cut, and it's great the minibar pops up to assist but why aren't the most common functionalities in it?... pop-ups are annoying if they don't have what you want, but they are great if they have what you want. and most of the time it's paste, copy, and cut.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

JanL — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 10:16:29 GMT

More O12 UI from Jensen

Wouter van Vugt — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 10:27:51 GMT

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Magda Charles — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:33:11 GMT

The format painter is definitalely one of those commands that get under-used because of bad placement/low discoverability. Putting it on the MiniBar will allow many more people to discover it. It's a great tool!

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Mario Goebbels — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:00:39 GMT

You know what'd be great? If there'd be an option to switch the font and style buttons, means with a global options, the drop down box lists the styles (including the active style as default option) and some font button that unfolds into a font list. For some persons, including me, that way would be handier.

Now, lets run to Betaplace...

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

PA — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:06:29 GMT

I've never used the highlighter tool but I constantly use format painter and think it's a shame that not too many users know about it.

I guess the problem is you have to remember where to put the cursor _before_ selecting the tool which makes it kind of noun-verb-noun interaction. IMHO it would be better if it worked like the clone tool in Photoshop.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Greg — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:46:38 GMT

I don't care so much about what the buttons on the minibar *are*, as much as what they *do*. The problem at the moment is that Bold, Indent, etc apply direct formatting to the selected portion of the document rather than to the appropriate style, which leads to complete unmaintainability (is that a word?) in complex multi-author documents.

For example, if selecting a run of text and clicking Bold applied a bold character style, and selecting a paragraph and clicking Bold set that paragraph's style to an appropriate bolded style, I'd be fine with the minibar.

There's nothing worse than trying to maintain a doc in which every paragraph is Normal style (not Body Text - why don't folks get this?) with a bunch of direct formatting applied.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Mario Goebbels — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:17:46 GMT

You'd think that marking text bold or italic would assign the respective styles, which are Strong and Emphasis.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Keff — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:05:37 GMT

Will it be possible (please, do :)) to customise the contents of a mini bar? Maybe a little bit hidden, but still possible?

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Simon Cooke — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:37:44 GMT

Could you by any chance include the One Note keyboard shortcut for a bulleted list in the next version of word? (CTRL+.)

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Eric J. — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:46:39 GMT

Allow me to add my voice to those asking for customization. My guess as to why Cut/Copy/Paste aren't on the mini-bar is because users overwhelmingly use the keyboard shortcuts rather than buttons to perform those actions.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Leigh — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 01:05:07 GMT

Customization = Good,
Consistency = Good

I think Keff had the best compromise -- hiding the customizability a little. This would prevent novices from ruining the interface while allowing power users to really take advantage of the mini-bar. I really hope an otherwise great version of office isn't limited by the one size fits all mentality.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Klaus Linke — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 06:24:22 GMT

If you want the Italic and Bold buttons (on the minibar and elsewhere, as well as the keyboard shortcuts) to apply character styles (Emphasis and Strong), you can do that with your own macros "Italic" and "Bold", as in previous versions.
BTW, I haven't come to like the mini-bar, and much prefer the context menu, which pops up when I want it. Though it pretty often doesn't have what I need. It would be great if the interface to customize it without programming could be brought back.
(Also BTW, and nitpicking a bit: "Center" toggles between center alignment and whatever is defined in the style. It also gets rid of leading and trailing whitespace, which can be handy)

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Klaus Linke — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 07:00:07 GMT

And again I have to eat crow:
The Left and Justify buttons toggle between each other, not to the alignment defined in the style. And if several paragraphs are selected, the toggled alignment is determined from the first paragraph.
I bet much thought and hard work has been put into making things *this* inconsistent <g>
(... though I doubt many people ever try to use those buttons as toggles on purpose, so it probably doesn't matter that much)

Smart mini-toolbar

Mike Harrington — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 22:16:38 GMT

Just a question, but why not have the mini-toolbar have some level of intelligence with it? If a user is always using a feature that is only available in the ribbon, swap it out with something in the mini-toolbar that is rarely used.

Just a thought.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Suzanne S. Barnhill — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 06:38:41 GMT

I agree with Eric J. that Cut, Copy, and Paste need not be included because users who don't know and use the shortcuts should be educated to do so (especially since there are so many places--across windows apps--where the shortcuts work even though the buttons are unavailable). But I also tend to use the shortcuts for alignment; I won't miss the Justify button as long as Ctrl+J still works.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Brandon Bloom — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:59:13 GMT

Keff, Leigh:

Reguarding "hidden" customization. What was wrong with my original sugession? Reproduced below:

Maybe Mini-bar customization could easily be made discoverable by including a "dialog launcher" icon in the corner just like a ribbon panel?

See:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/09/27/474382.aspx

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Leigh — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:35:44 GMT

Brandon Bloom:

The screenshots I've seen of the "dialog launcher" have the widget placed in the top right of a title bar like element. This would add too much size to the minibar unless it were used without the titlebar in which case it would be non-standard. Even without the titlebar it would still take up a portion of the mini toolbar for a widget that is not used every day.

I think a right click-customize option might work. It takes no extra space, is extremely discoverable for power usrs, and somewhat hidden for the novice.

That is if Office 2007 will even give us that level of customizability.

Smart bar

Guess Who — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 06:31:48 GMT

I too would like an auto-custumizing mini bar. I don't use indent or outdent at all. I would much rather have those be replaced by more helpful icons.

Also I think that instead of icons that increase or decrease font size it should have the fontsize drop down box, or atleast a box that you can type in the desired font size.

Just a few thoughts

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Jon Peltier — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 20:25:48 GMT

"Just a question, but why not have the mini-toolbar have some level of intelligence with it?"

Last time we let Microsoft do this, we ended up with Short Menus. The first feature I always turn off. The first feature I always add is some buttons, both regular menu items that don't appear on the toolbars and custom macros. This is a higher level of intelligence that I'd expect from a "smart" mini-toolbar. I get the tools I want where I want them, not where some algorithm decides is best for me, or best for everyone.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

Richard Gadsden — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:55:11 GMT

Can you please set the toggle on center to toggle between center and the justification set in the style (or Left if the style is centered), instead of between center and left. If, like me, most of your styles are fully justified then it won't "turn off center" which is what my mental model of a toggle does, but it will impose left justification.

[Oh, and can we have an English-UK localised version with centre].

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

JanL — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 03:46:45 GMT

I wonder if "Format Painter" should be called "Copy Format" or "Copy Style" in line with Cut, Copy, and Paste? "Copy Format" suggests to the user to use it because it's a verb, just like "Copy" and "Paste" and it registers more easily to the consciouness what it can do than if it's called "Format Painter" which sounds more like a TITLE. Format Painter is a really cool feature but it has an intimidating name. If a user selects an object and clicks "Copy Format" it's pretty clear that the function copies the format of whichever is selected, just like if he selects an object and clicks "Cut" it cuts the selected object. Unlike if he selects an object and clicks "Format Painter" then it doesn't register to the user that the format of the selected object has just been copied.

re: Not So Set In Our Ways After All

tom — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 08:30:45 GMT

IEBMaker lets you customize and build an Internet Explorer toolbar tailored to meet your company's needs. The software generates a small executable file that you can distribute to your customers. With this executable, your customers can install or uninstall your Internet Explorer toolbar onto their systems with ease.

http://www.yaodownload.com/internet-tools/browsers/iebmaker/

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