The Quick Customize Menu

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Francis — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:06:53 GMT

Is there a keyboard shortcut to this menu?

Why isn't the QCM enveloped by the QAT outline? There is no cue that the QC menu pertains to the QAT aside from proximity.

Why not push the QAT and QCM a few pixels to the right--it would reduce crowding in the NW corner, and the QAT outline could be made into a rounded rectangle in keeping with the rest of the UI (instead of the weirdly asymmetrical, not quite parallel to the Office button shape that it is now.)

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Francis — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:11:22 GMT

P.S. I hope that Undo and Save are not juxtaposed in the final release as they are in the screen shot. These two buttons make really poor neighbors (oh no, I just mangled my document, let me click undo--whoops that was save!)

re: The Quick Customize Menu

netfreak — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:15:29 GMT

Dear Jensen,

When will we be able to try TR? I am in beta since office 2003 but that time I haven't been so impatient about new build

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Giga — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:19:34 GMT

Francis,
If you miss Undo button and click Save, you can undo changes after pressing Save.

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Vorn — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:31:22 GMT

Is the QAT mile-high?

Vorn

Does this make things faster for users?

Nick — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:33:34 GMT

You describe the previous menu as "fallow" but were users not able to figure out how to use it? Were they not able to add the commands they want? When users wanted to customize the QAT, they clicked on the arrow; you make it sound like a failure that clicking on the arrow exposed a menu with an option to customize the QAT.

It seem to me that you may have actually increased the complexity of customizing this toolbar because the user will now want to scan the entire menu to see if the command he wants is there before maybe moving on to the "more commands" option. The command well already has a "popular" tab is this list identical to what is there? Either way, that may be more scanning for the user to find the command he wants.

To use an architecture analogy, it seems like you are putting a cache (or two?) between the user and the full list of commands, but if the user isn't going to customize the QAT frequently, and if the commands they choose are varied, then checking the cache may actually slow them down.

re: The Quick Customize Menu

A User — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:15:26 GMT

I agree with Nick. Even after I train myself not to read the short list of "popular" items I am not looking for, what I am looking for is the command well and I have to navagate down somewhere near the end of the menu to open it.

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Stephen Bullen — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:28:08 GMT

Before reading the article, I saw the dropdown with New, Open and Save, and thought "Wow, Jensen's actually listened to us and implemented multiple QATs we can switch between".

Then I saw Email and thought "Why would I want to email my QAT to someone? Oh OK, I guess I might want to share my QAT with a colleague."

Then I saw Print, Preview and Spelling and finally realised that all these buttons do is add the icon to the QAT, rather than operating on the QAT(s).

And now we've got this menu, there's no way we'll be able to have a similar-looking menu in office.next that does the operations we want.

Yet another win for the dumb user over the power user, and one that can't be reversed. I'm disappointed. Again.

Office 2007 Quick Customise Menu « MogBlog

Office 2007 Quick Customise Menu « MogBlog — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:31:42 GMT

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re: The Quick Customize Menu

Francis — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:35:05 GMT

Giga: You are right (though that was not the case in Excel 2003.)

Still, there is something to be said for keeping controls separate. Look at a car's dashboard: the brake is located far from the stereo, the gas nowhere near the A/C.

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Glad Francis doesn't write software for Microsoft — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:13:32 GMT

I fail to see what crowding you are referring to in the NW corner... there is an Office button and a tool bar... and the ribbon begins below that... just like the tool bar does now.

Anyway, you ask if there are shortcuts to the QAT... yes, and a single press of ALT would show it to you. ALT+1, ALT+2, etc... are assigned to each button. I only have 5, though, and I'm too busy poking fun at your post to find out what happens beyond 10 items.

Your analogy of the car's dashboard makes little sense. Speedometers and gas guages don't really make sense together either, but they're still in the same place, no different than the A/C and Radio.

Many of your posts to this blog are critical of every aspect of the new UI. It makes me wonder if you've actually spent any time with the beta, and if you have, why can't you come up with something positive to say?

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Sebastien Caisse — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:23:38 GMT

I'd have to agree that I'd expect the "More commands" to be on top (along with the Show below the ribbon option) rather then below. I gather that people won't be fiddling adding/removing buttons from the QAT all the time so once they've selected their appropirate options and feel confrtable with them they'll become irrelevant - although I can't deny them being hading with a single click access - hence the "putting them at the bottom" solution.

To Vorn:
Yes - it not being mile-high in beta2 was a bug, in fact - See previous blog entries for details.

re: The Quick Customize Menu

PSBS — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:22:56 GMT

Alert! Alert! Another UX Guide violation! There should be no ellipse after 'More Commands'.

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Claw — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:26:40 GMT

Wow, thanks for telling me about Draw Table! For a long time, I had no idea how to position vertically flowing Chinese text on a page with horizontally flowing English text. Everytime I used the Text Direction button it would end up flipping the entire page rather than just the section I wanted. Now I can do it within a table to get the results I want.

re: The Quick Customize Menu

steveg — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 03:52:08 GMT

Why doesn't the drop down graphic (orange in the image) match the drop down graphic in the bottom right corner of the tabs?

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Step — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 05:40:03 GMT

Wow - a little surprised to see the reactions here. My first reaction was "great, that makes a lot of sense. Nice to see another demonstration of the attention to detail the Office Team is giving this release!"

There are some good points above about the save and undo buttons being close to each other, as well as the strangeness of the curve and dropdown button. But I think putting the most frequent customizations on top of the arrow drop-down makes a lot of sense. Not to mention that Jensen clearly explains where this idea came from: actual users. Yes, I'm somewhat of a power user, but only as much as I have to be to get the job done, which (should be) true even for power users.

Thanks for keeping the articles flowing for so long, Jensen, and for all the listening and work your team is doing. :)

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Francis — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 15:35:50 GMT

Glad: I use the beta. For real work, every day. My comments stem from that use. I am here to offer suggestions for improvement--by definition, inescapably, constructive *criticism.* If that is not the point of this forum, or you take issue with any of my posts, I would love to hear (off-thread.) You have my contact info.

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Grimwanderer — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:32:09 GMT

Nice post... but one thing still bugs me abou the new Office UI: that is is not used on the main Outlook screens. The decision to not use the Ribbon throughout that program makes it feel like it is not really part of the Office Suite (the proverbial red-headed step child if you will). Perhaps a ribbon tab across the top for each of the main functions of Outlook (E-mail, Tasks, Calendar, Contacts, as well as one for settings and configuration). The only thing that might be different about the Ribbon in Outlook would be that clicking on the "Calendar" tab (for example) would display the calendar. Just a thought...

As a fan of the Ribbon, I wish that Microsoft would look at rolling this UI into other apps (such as IE and Media Player... both of which would be well served by the Ribbon).

Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh available Wednesday!!

GottaBeMobile.com — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:47:12 GMT

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re: The Quick Customize Menu

John F — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 16:38:09 GMT

Wish you wouldn't abuse the word "affordance" - we don't have much good terminology in usability, it's a shame to misuse it!

re: The Quick Customize Menu

Boris — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:18:01 GMT

Something I would like to see associated with the print button on the QAT would be a drop arrow to pick the printer. So many office environments have multiple printers. They've avoided one click of the mouse by allowing the print menu button to be next to quick print, but I would like to have that list of printers, something that repeated the last print job (e.g. remembering current page), and then the link to the print menu.

Heute kommt der Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh

Romansvillage — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:09:26 GMT

Heute kommt der Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh

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Heute kommt der Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh

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Heute kommt der Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh

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