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[rickynumber24]

Inspired by events today and a line from a movie,

It's the helpful ones you have to watch out for: You never know when they're going to do something incredibly ... useless.This was inspired by some things someone did today, but I later realized that it's also the problem I have with any Microsoft product released more recently than Windows XP and

Comments

[telemenar]

I've actually slowly come to the opinion that if you get used to the new interface in 2007 it is actually better. Also if you knew 2003 well enough to use keyboard shortcuts for everything those are still there. There is just this narrow zone of people who had used office 2003 enough to know which menus to look in but not started using keyboard shortcuts that now have to learn locations of things again.

[rickynumber24]

I'm pretty sure I don't use any sort of office-like product enough to pass above the realm of only knowing the key shortcuts that almost every program has in common. (cut, paste, etc.) The problem is really for things I'm pretty sure never had a key shortcut for in the first place, like "save as" or the font and paragraph dialog boxes. (I eventually figured out where they hid those, and I guess it makes sense, but I feel like they sort of cheated themselves out of any reasonable place to put things like that in the process of getting rid of the menus.) I suspect the real thing that bugs me is that I never liked toolbars because almost everything on a toolbar was stuff that it was easy to learn a key shortcut for, but the way I learned key shortcuts was to notice them listed next to the entry in the menu. Without the menus, I have no way to learn key shortcuts anymore, because I don't know how to find out what they are. Essentially, I feel like they took out the menus, which are good for learning shortcuts, and replaced them with

[telemenar]

They actually now have a really good way to learn shortcuts. If you hit the ALT key it pops up the key for each ribbon and once you select a ribbon it lists a key for basically every item on the ribbon.

As for menus being easier to find things in, I'm not sure I really agree with that. Especially for your average user. They really did do ALOT of studies on this before they did the switch.

[rickynumber24]

They actually now have a really good way to learn shortcuts. If you hit the ALT key it pops up the key for each ribbon and once you select a ribbon it lists a key for basically every item on the ribbon.
That functionality sounds nifty.

This may sound like a slight about-face, but it just occurred to me that what I have been actually complaining about, including the person whose acts I never actually described, has been generally, "I wanted to do something quick, but you guys were trying to be helpful and sprang things on me that I need to worry about and don't want to." Admittedly, my only complaint about Vista that I haven't been able to fix is that they hijack any game install and steal the link out of the old menu directory, which means I need to click more to find those things.
Then again, it's still agents trying to be helpful doing useless things which, well, might be helpful, but they don't help me solve the problem I'm trying to solve.