Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

Dupe

not funny — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 18:01:50 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/03/476412.aspx

re: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

Brad Corbin — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 18:54:39 GMT

Jensen-

I know you had a full post on this a few days ago, but to prevent all these inane comments "duh, you've done this before! huh, huh.", you'd better change the post title slightly, and put a disclaimer at the top of each of the repeat posts. How about something like:

Classic Posts: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

(For those who weren't around when I first started this blog, I am re-running some of the original posts that explained the reasons for the UI change. This post originally appeared at [URL].)

I personally think it is great to re-visit these classic topics. You could even do a mix of old/new stuff on a regular basis. Its pretty obvious from some of the more recent comments that many people HAVEN'T gone all the way back and seen where we started.

Keep up the good work!

re: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

dave — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 19:08:17 GMT

I remember Wordstar 1.0 running on a machine with DOS 4.2! And that was only in 1983 a mere 23 years ago - how time flies when you're enjoying yourself but how fast things have changed too!

Thank goodness we don't have to worry about putting .pl80 .lm10 .rm15 before we can start typing!

Nice refresher as to why we want Office 2007 sooner please!

re: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

Markus — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 19:14:52 GMT

I am using Word (2003) regularly, and it is the second-most-frustrating program I know (the most-frustrating program is Outlook).

One of the things that irks me is that many commands can't be reached via the menus, but are hidden in toolbars or other hard-to-find places. This violates one of the basic assumptions I "learned" when first using windows, namely, that every command should be reachable by a menu.

Since a hieararchical menu system should be capable to host a nearly unlimited number of commands, there is no good reason not to put every command into a menu.

A related annoyance is the absence of key-shortcut-information for toolbar buttons. Take one of the most commonly used functions, "copy format" (or whatever it is called in english, my germany word
calls it "Format übertragen"). I suspect that there is some form of alt-ctrl-shift-v/c magic that invokes the command, but i haven't been able to find this out, at least not using the build-in help system (which, for "Format übertragen", does not even mention the command. maybe nobody else uses it?)
For functions only found via dialogs, such as "insert unformatted text" (which is use constantly when pasting text from a browser into word), it is the same problem -- maybe there exists a shortcut, but how am i to find out?

re: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

Brian — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 19:42:01 GMT

Word for Windows 2.0 and Word for Macintosh 5.1 were the best word processors ever written. Hands down. I would still use them today, if I could. In fact. Word for Mac 5.1 still runs under OSX in Classic Mode.

I miss the simplicity of those tools. Am I the only one?

re: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

PA — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 20:41:19 GMT

"It's much more difficult for people to form a scanning strategy with hierarchical menus: you have to keep track at each moment which levels you've visited and which you've haven't."

Not to mention it's physically more cumbersome (does Windows BTW let one select the bottom most objet in a sub-menu by moving directly diagonally towards that, or do you first have to move yourself horizontally to the sub-menu?).

I don't know how familiar you are with the current Mac versions of Office, but they utilize less hierarchial menus than Windows version. For example Footnote and Caption are directly accessible in the Insert menu, whereas on the Windows version they are hidden in a sub-menu if I remember correctly.

Any information about the future of UI of Mac Office would be interesting, too, as the Mac OS top menubar doesn't work too well with the ribbon concept. Is the Mac BU following your work at all?

Looking forward to the remaining parts!

re: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

Dennis DeRobertis — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 23:28:19 GMT

"I miss the simplicity of those tools. Am I the only one?"

Yes. ;-)

Microsoft Office UI Evolution

TenBrink Tech — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 23:50:23 GMT

The Office User Interface Blog shows interfaces from old to new in part 2 of an 8 part series of what...

History of the Office UI

Thomas Williams — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 03:50:46 GMT

Jensen Harris is posting an interesting series on the history of the user interface in MS Office. In...

re: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

Martin Westphal — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 07:24:11 GMT

Very nice history lesson - I still remember working with word 6.0....

By the way : What happened to Word 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 ?

Martin

Taking bets

bookie — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 07:51:44 GMT

My prediction for tomorrow's post: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/10/479123.aspx

Any bets?

Office 12 Watch » You’ve come a long way baby!

Office 12 Watch » You’ve come a long way baby! — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:44:28 GMT

PingBack from http://www.office12watch.com/youve-come-a-long-way-baby/

Hello

phuong — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 07:16:26 GMT

Xin chao, Minh den tu HL, minh mong muon duoc lam quen voi tat ca cac ban. Thanks you

Hello

phuong — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:10:24 GMT

Xin chao, Minh den tu HL, minh mong muon duoc lam quen voi tat ca cac ban. Thanks you

Hello

phuong — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:28:06 GMT

Xin chao, Minh den tu HL, minh mong muon duoc lam quen voi tat ca cac ban. Thanks you

I'll take you back in time

Wouter van Vugt — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:32:45 GMT

Combating the Perception of Bloat (Why the UI, Part 3)

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:00:30 GMT

This is the third part in my eight-part series of entries in which I outline some of the reasons we decided...

re: Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)

Aaron Bregel — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 07:26:38 GMT

"Word 95 was the first 32-bit version of the product, designed to ride the wave of hoopla from the Windows 95 launch in August 1995".

This is not actually correct. Microsoft shipped a 32-bit version of Word 6.0 and Excel 5.0 about a year before Office 95. Basically it was a 32-bit SKU of Office 4.3 but it still had a 16-bit version of PPT. It was built to run only on NT 3.51. In the box along with x86 was a version of Office for the DEC ALPHA and the IBM PowerPC chips as those were the other flavors of NT at the time. Later Microsoft shipped a Dec ALPHA version of Word/Excel 97.

Evans Thompson’s Take on Tech » Blog Archive » Jensen Harris Explains the New UI in Office 2007

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 18:00:27 GMT

PingBack from http://www.evansthompson.com/2006/04/02/jensen-harris-explains-the-new-ui-in-office-2007/

Tipping the Scale (Why the UI, Part 5)

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:06:31 GMT

This is the fifth part in my eight-part series of entries in which I outline some of the reasons we decided...

Converge » links for 2006-04-01

Converge » links for 2006-04-01 — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 04:29:09 GMT

PingBack from http://toddmundt.com/blog/2006/03/31/links-for-2006-04-01/

My homepage

Nancy — Tue, 09 May 2006 08:07:35 GMT

Nice site!
<a href="http://fvydwatv.com/glug/ikge.html">My homepage</a> | <a href="http://vkxtkaol.com/gzyk/tjwd.html">Please visit</a>

My homepage

Phillip — Tue, 09 May 2006 08:07:59 GMT

Great work!
http://fvydwatv.com/glug/ikge.html | http://gqboamrz.com/iusj/crdb.html

Never forget your roots

Office Rocker! — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:05:21 GMT

I had the privilege of presenting to some sixth formers at Eton college today about a career in IT. ...

Microsoft Word vs Writely « My Two Cents!

Microsoft Word vs Writely « My Two Cents! — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 11:15:49 GMT

PingBack from http://jaganath.wordpress.com/2006/08/26/microsoft-word-vs-writely/

I'll take you back in time

Wouter van Vugt — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 22:16:20 GMT

With Jensen's museum of Office Past

pschmid.net - Patrick Schmid: Putting You & I back into Office 2007’s UI - The Office UI Bible

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:30:33 GMT

PingBack from http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/10/09/58

Los textos de qweos.net» Blog Archive » Office 2007

Los textos de qweos.net» Blog Archive » Office 2007 — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 17:03:56 GMT

PingBack from http://qweos.net/blog/2006/03/17/office-2007/

Web 2.0 » Blog Archives » Microsoft releases Windows Live Writer - new word processing app

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:10:45 GMT

PingBack from http://chaespot.com/web2.0/2007/03/30/microsoft-releases-windows-live-writer-new-word-processing-app-2/

?????????? ?????????? » ???? ???????? ?? ???????????? ???????????????????? Microsoft Office (?????????? 2): ?????????? ???????????? ????????????

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:46:59 GMT

PingBack from http://p1uton.ru/2008/08/12/ye-olde-museum-of-office-ast/

Как развивался интерфейс MS Office? | Fresh: новости мира юзабилити

Как развивался интерфейс MS Office? | Fresh: новости мира юзабилити — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:26:05 GMT

PingBack from http://fresh.gui.ru/2008/09/19/ms-office-ui-history/

?????????? ?????????????????????? ?????????? ?????????????????? Microsoft Office at ALSEDI Group

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 11:59:58 GMT

PingBack from http://alsedi.com/blog/zachem-pridumyvali-novyj-interfejs-microsoft-office/

The Office 2007 UI Bible at MS Tech News

The Office 2007 UI Bible at MS Tech News — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:47:22 GMT

PingBack from http://mstechnews.info/2008/10/the-office-2007-ui-bible/

细品RibbonX(1)：MS Office界面发展简史 | 完美Excel

细品RibbonX(1)：MS Office界面发展简史 | 完美Excel — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:31:03 GMT

PingBack from http://www.excelperfect.com/wordpress/2009/03/23/ribbonxstudy1/

Jensen Harris An Office User Interface Blog Ye Olde Museum Of Office | bar stools

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:45:49 GMT

PingBack from http://barstoolsite.info/story.php?id=4040

Jensen Harris An Office User Interface Blog Ye Olde Museum Of Office | unemployment office

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:58:58 GMT

PingBack from http://unemploymentofficeresource.info/story.php?id=8204