UI revamp
The next UI revamp for Office 2020, we'll get rid of the toolbar, and invent the new latest k00l toy, the menubar! Everyone must conform to the new UI standard.
Microsoft's incoming updates to Outlook on Windows and web aim to strip away the cruft that has built up in the interface over the years. Outlook for Windows The veteran email client has seen its interface become gradually ever more cluttered, with the divisive ribbon inflicted on the toolbar just over 10 years ago. The update …
Who wants to bet that all the keyboard shortcuts will change again?
Nonsense - they're easy.
^C for Copy will become ^D for Duplicate
^V for Paste will become ^G for Glue
^X for Cut will become ^S for Slice
^P for Print will become ^H for Hard Copy
^W for Close will become ^W for We Love Clippy!
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"I needed a Microsoft account to activate my Office 2016"
I purchased a MAK key for Office 2016 on eBay. Worked just fine. No Microsoft account required to activate. (Although some purchase formats require Microsoft account to convert a voucher to get the license key.)
(Microsoft cant stop people reselling licences under EU law.)
"Outlook 2016 and later requires an Office 365 account & I won't go there."
Retail versions of Office 2013 and Office 2016 require a Microsoft account for product activation, but neither version requires Office 365 by any means. It's a right pain to activate several copies of the retail product of either version, often requiring to phone their activation service and enter a long string of numbers after online activation fails.
That said, Office 2016 mostly seems like a more colorful and less shouty version of Office 2013 with an added search function. Why Microsoft ever thought it was a good idea to MAKE ALL MENU HEADERS ALL-CAPS is beyond me.
Purchasers of Office 2019 will, alas, not get the new toys because, let's face it, Microsoft would really really like you to climb aboard the Office 365 train.
There's someone in MS who knew very well what they were inflicting on the general public with the ribbon but they did it anyway.
Well I'm going to stay on local Office and learn to love the ribbon after a decade. That'll learn 'em.
"There's someone in MS who knew very well what they were inflicting on the general public with the ribbon but they did it anyway."
That person no longer works at Micro-shaft. Maybe this is why it's starting to get a face lift? Same person responsible for ribbon AND "the metro" in case anyone wondered (see link), even though Sinofsky (allegedly) had taken the fall over 'the metro' and Windows 'Ape'.
Then again, "fixing" the ribbon (instead of completely obliterating it) is lipstick on a boar, but this time it IS on the oinky end.
“Julie Larson-Green .. oversaw the successful launch of .. Windows 7 .. She has had between 1,200 and 1,400 program managers, researchers, content managers and other members of the Windows team reporting to her.”
Amazing how a handfull of people came up with Go's PenPoint OS or BeOS
Ribbon may suck but rendering everything (including text) in some shade of gray (the newer the version the worse it got) is the worst offense of MS' UX team. I don't know how they come up with their design cues and what kind of users they survey, but surely all that forced telemetry proved of little use (unless they'll just dox us in the future).
Saying that, I mostly don't mind the Ribbon. Particularly in Outlook, where I've never used the more complicated features available - so pretty much everything I want is in one place. The only problem is when they move stuff and I have to find it again.
The same's true with Excel. I now mostly don't use the shiny bells and whistles, so most of the simple commands are on one screen - and that actually makes it easier for new and casual users.
The whole thing breaks down when you try to do more though - and last time left me cursing. Because stuff I wanted was randomly scattered all over the place - and it takes much longer to click on a likely looking tab and have to scan the whole width of the screen, than it did to click on a likely menu and see if the option you wanted was in it.
If only they'd left the menus as a fall-back option - they could have made everyone happy. But no! Modern UI designers are apparently infallible geniuses! Despite the abominations they keep producing. Whose stupid idea was it to replace perfectly good buttons with hyperlinks in the Windows 8 settings interface? And what is this obsession with removing all lines and obvious cues to the eye where to look for stuff?
What we need is to create a new group of "User Interface Designer Trainers" - and equip them with cattle prods and sticks with nails in. Then the next person who designs a website with dark brown text on a light brown background can experience the same pain that I do from eyestrain.
The designers or iTunes might not survive the experience...
"What we need is to create a new group of "User Interface Designer Trainers""
Or to give them their full job title - User Interface Designer Influencer, Overseer and Trainer, aka UIDIOT, which coincidentally is also what you'll probably find them saying quite a lot to their charges, just before applying the LART.
"I suppose herpes is "better" than bubonic plague..."
Not really. There is a treatment for bubonic plague that cures you. The treatment for herpes only manages the disease. You still have it and are still infectious and are required to take the treatment forever... Sounds exactly like an office subscription.
I've heard that term for years, often used in engineering circles to avoid more profane terms that mean the same thing. It deserves an actual technical definition, like 'CRUD'.
In the nuclear industry, CRUD is officially "Corrosion and wear byproducts in a nuclear reactor system that have become radioactive and are deposited and accumulated in related equipment". 'CRUD traps' are places where it accumulates the most, and they often get signs posted on them indicating the last measured radiation dosage rate. Some are so bad they get lead shielding wrapped around them so that you can spend more than 5 minutes nearby when working on stuff, without exceeding your radiation limits at any rate. But yeah it's the side effect of neutron-irradiating Iron 59 which turns it into Cobalt 60. CRUD.
I suppose CRUFT could officially become "any bloatware or overly implemented feature that can easily be eliminated without adversely affecting the usability or functionality of a software application."
MS can do whatever they like with Outlook, because there really is no alternative.
I think its Woody Allen than commented Science has bought us some wonderful things, but it's only when an 83-year old is left alone with a cocktail waitress and nothing happens, we realise it has failed us.
(With apologies for the of it's age misogyny)
That could be paraphrased as FOSS has bought us some wonderful things. But it's only when you try to deliver a decent Exchange-connecting Mail and Calendar client into Linux, you realise it's failed.
(The closest I have come is Thunderbird/Lightening. But they're buggy, lack features and a tad unreliable. Certainly not enterprise-grade apps).
"But it's only when you try to deliver a decent Exchange-connecting Mail and Calendar client into Linux, you realise it's failed."
Yet ironically, desktop Linux (well Gnome and KDE at least) have better native calendar integration with Exchange than Windows, which requires Outlook. In fact it works ad remains synced without even having to open the email client.
Seriously, I've deployed this stuff a lot.
Ten years on and people are still whining about the ribbon.
Because it's still there and it still sucks.
People are not not complaining about some corporate decision ten years ago... they're complaining about the way the program they used ten minutes ago has a crappy UI. The complaints are ongoing because the problem is ongoing!
What a good idea! We could call it a "toolbar", couldn't we?
Outlook design sucks. As I already said, it was designed by a drunk monkey with a severe mental illness, it was meant to disorientate users and is very successful at it.
Once they have redesign the UI, it would be nice if basic functionalities as searching for a mail were finally working as expected by the users.
Come on Microsoft, your phone experiment has failed, and it's time to make the desktop look like a desktop again. It's time to drop all of the "touch first" features and optimize every single one of your Windows and Office products for computers with keyboards, mice, and upright screens -- which is where 99.999% of Windows users are.
Or have the UI's as skins - one for mobile, one for desktop (and a separate one for touch? Does anyone actually use touch on their laptops?).
The mobile app is already different enough that it bears little resemblance to the desktop one and is really only useful for the most basic of functions.