Complaining about the Ribbon

It depends on who those 5% are - are they IT heads, Excel monkeys, and so
forth, that have to use the program everyday, and make/influence buying
decisions for a company? Or are they merely reluctant normal users? In my
case, it would be the former, and I have a hunch that the *relative*
percentage of tech-savvy people are higher in complaining group than in the
happy/indifferent group. For instance, many people I know who work in
financial institutions have refused to upgrade because of Excel ribbon
issues, even though Excel 2007 has some much wanted features (larger # of
rows, for example).

Note - I don't intend to argue these points, only to note how, even though
only a minority may dislike the ribbon, that minority could be influential.
The best way of "arguing" is likely to be with the pocketbook. However,
'meaningless' was definitely used incorrectly here and makes no sense in
context.

"Harlan Grove" wrote:

FH wrote...
Says who? Companies yield to pressure from consumers all the time. And I am
afraid you don't know what meaningless means.

Meaningless may have been an incorrect term. If the people who
thoroughly despise the new interface amount to less than 5% of all
Office users, then insignificant would have been more appropriate.

In a nutshell, Microsoft likely believes they face less effective
competition using the new interface than the old interface. If so,
your feelings, no matter how strongly or frequently expressed, won't
affect their decisions. No doubt they were figuring on some percentage
of Office users refusing to upgrade.

I understand the considerations, but I had to ask. But even a generic one
will do. I don't know if I got through to Jensen Harris.

"JoAnn Paules" wrote:

There's no one here who will give you an email address. Even if we knew some
Softies' addresses, only a fool would post them on a public newsgroup
without their direct consent.

--

JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]
Tech Editor for "Microsoft Publisher 2007 For Dummies"



"FH" wrote in message
...
I'm looking for this: an email address that I can use to make suggestions
about office. Not a request for technical help.

"FH" wrote:

I want to know where I can email the relevant office staff to suggest
changes
(i.e, bringing, or at least allowing, the 2003 interface back). I could
not
find an email link for feature suggestions or commentary on the help
page. I
seriously cannot work with the Ribbon anymore. Today is the last day I
will
put up with it (At least at home... unfortunately, I don't have a choice
when
working with some clients, although luckily my firm has refused to adopt
2007
because of the ribbon.) I won't buy another Office product again that
"features" it. The loss of productivity is still staggering, and I have
been
using it for at least 11 months now. Office 2007 has a lot of great
features
I have come to love, but the ribbon is not one of them. I don't care if
it's
there - as long as the old menu is also there, too. I have a lot more
things
to say and arguments to make, but I'll save them for the relevant
parties. If
anyone knows the proper email address(es) to contact the Office 07 UI
team -
or at least someone who could pass along the message - please post.


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http://www.microsoft.com/office/comm...ic.office.misc

Hi F.H.,

On the right hand side of http://support.microsoft.com/ph/8753 click on the
Send Us Feedback=Help us improve Office 2007 link.

It is somewhat generic, allows only brief feedback content and has no provision for attachments, but there is at least some
possibility for being heard on specifics.

Additionally, the 'Did this information help' links on the bottom of each of the pages in Office help and at
http://office.microsoft.com are, as I understand it, also monitored. What impact any of these channels might have on future Office
products is unknown, many of the decisions are driven by Microsoft's chosen business model as Harlan mentioned earlier, but every
little 'nudge' helps

You may also wish to use http://connect.microsoft.com for signing up for an Office 14 Beta when that opportunity becomes available,
although that wouldn't be until at least sometime in 2009, to be able to provide feedback during the tuning cycle for that version.

'Hints' are starting to be 'dropped' g about what some of the focus of the next version might be, ('cloud' vs desktop, etc) such
as this from the recent Microsoft Prof. Dev Conference
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/PDCNe...ice-14-for-Web
to begin to get developers 'on board' (prepared for?) what may come next.

=============
"FH" wrote in message ...
I'm looking for this: an email address that I can use to make suggestions
about office. Not a request for technical help.
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

"Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)" wrote...
"Harlan Grove" wrote in message
....
Possibly, but avoidance isn't. Time to give OpenOffice a look.

People who hate the Ribbon say that a lot, and yet they still spend week
after week, month after month here in this newsgroup complaining about
the Ribbon.

Instead of over in the OpenOffice newsgroups complaining about why
OpenOffice Calc doesn't cleanly open all of their Excel files. *:-)
....

Aside from some screwiness with some chart types and some of the more
obscure Word Art, I haven't seen anything commonly found in Excel
workbooks that recent versions of OpenOffice Calc (or Gnumeric, FWIW)
can't handle.

Aside from that, there'sore traffic in Office newsgroups, possible
because there are more Office users, but also possibly because Office
users have more problems with Office. Whatever, I follow some
newsgroups because of the frequency of misinformation desperately
needing correction.

Did you take the time to view the presentation by Jensen?

I would be interested to hear your review.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375


After furious head scratching, FH asked:

| Telstar, you are hopeless. You have no idea of what you are talking
| about. You have some deep inherent confusion that I won't take the
| trouble to tear out, but that is clearly borne out by your
| contradictory, incoherent rambles. Every time you post, you dig your
| own hole (of unreason) deeper. Either you are a troll, or just a very
| confused individual (or both). In any case, as I stated previously, I
| have no intention of arguing with people like you, so I'll let you
| get back under your bridge.
|
| "Telstar" wrote:
|
||
|| "FH" wrote in message
|| ...
||| You really must speak for yourself, Telstar, because you proved my
||| point exactly.
||
|| No.
||
||| First you erroneously say a feeling is meaningless, as if the term
||| could even be applied like that.
||
|| Absolutely. This is science, not feelings. Do you think they did
|| not consumer test this?
||
||| What you of course meant to say is that the
||| effort is futile, but you obviously could not properly phrase it
||| due to some
||| limitation on your part. Basically, you offered a "get over it"
||| response. How
||| is that useful? It's not. Just like you - useless.
||
||
|| Resistance is futile. Yes.

Thanks alot Bob. Just what I needed.

I haven't forgotten about this. I find the talk fascinating in regard to
considerations that were made in UI development, but some claims are
unsubstantiated or anecdotal, and some do not follow from the evidence he
displays. I'll write more on this in the coming days when I finally finish
the video, but a lot of time I am left asking,"So you have identified so and
so problem - but how does the ribbon fix it?"

"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:

Did you take the time to view the presentation by Jensen?

I would be interested to hear your review.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375


After furious head scratching, FH asked:

| Telstar, you are hopeless. You have no idea of what you are talking
| about. You have some deep inherent confusion that I won't take the
| trouble to tear out, but that is clearly borne out by your
| contradictory, incoherent rambles. Every time you post, you dig your
| own hole (of unreason) deeper. Either you are a troll, or just a very
| confused individual (or both). In any case, as I stated previously, I
| have no intention of arguing with people like you, so I'll let you
| get back under your bridge.
|
| "Telstar" wrote:
|
||
|| "FH" wrote in message
|| ...
||| You really must speak for yourself, Telstar, because you proved my
||| point exactly.
||
|| No.
||
||| First you erroneously say a feeling is meaningless, as if the term
||| could even be applied like that.
||
|| Absolutely. This is science, not feelings. Do you think they did
|| not consumer test this?
||
||| What you of course meant to say is that the
||| effort is futile, but you obviously could not properly phrase it
||| due to some
||| limitation on your part. Basically, you offered a "get over it"
||| response. How
||| is that useful? It's not. Just like you - useless.
||
||
|| Resistance is futile. Yes.

Thanks for taking the time to watch the video. I think that the conclusions
are the best that are available right now. However, with all generation 1
iterations, there is certainly room for improvement.

However, going backwards is not a step that I would consider progress. YMMV
and has. I look forward to discussions about how or what should be the
Ribbon or Ribbon alternative.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375


After furious head scratching, FH asked:

| I haven't forgotten about this. I find the talk fascinating in
| regard to considerations that were made in UI development, but some
| claims are unsubstantiated or anecdotal, and some do not follow from
| the evidence he displays. I'll write more on this in the coming days
| when I finally finish the video, but a lot of time I am left
| asking,"So you have identified so and so problem - but how does the
| ribbon fix it?"
|
| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:
|
|| Did you take the time to view the presentation by Jensen?
||
|| I would be interested to hear your review.
||
|| --
|| Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
||
|| Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
|| How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375
||
||
|| After furious head scratching, FH asked:
||
||| Telstar, you are hopeless. You have no idea of what you are talking
||| about. You have some deep inherent confusion that I won't take the
||| trouble to tear out, but that is clearly borne out by your
||| contradictory, incoherent rambles. Every time you post, you dig your
||| own hole (of unreason) deeper. Either you are a troll, or just a
||| very confused individual (or both). In any case, as I stated
||| previously, I have no intention of arguing with people like you, so
||| I'll let you get back under your bridge.
|||
||| "Telstar" wrote:
|||
||||
|||| "FH" wrote in message
|||| ...
||||| You really must speak for yourself, Telstar, because you proved my
||||| point exactly.
||||
|||| No.
||||
||||| First you erroneously say a feeling is meaningless, as if the term
||||| could even be applied like that.
||||
|||| Absolutely. This is science, not feelings. Do you think they did
|||| not consumer test this?
||||
||||| What you of course meant to say is that the
||||| effort is futile, but you obviously could not properly phrase it
||||| due to some
||||| limitation on your part. Basically, you offered a "get over it"
||||| response. How
||||| is that useful? It's not. Just like you - useless.
||||
||||
|||| Resistance is futile. Yes.

"Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)" wrote:

"Harlan Grove" wrote in message
:

"Telstar" none@none wrote...
Resistance is futile. Yes.

Possibly, but avoidance isn't. Time to give OpenOffice a look.

People who hate the Ribbon say that a lot, and yet they still spend week
after week, month after month here in this newsgroup complaining about
the Ribbon.

Instead of over in the OpenOffice newsgroups complaining about why
OpenOffice Calc doesn't cleanly open all of their Excel files. :-)


-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author - The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/5m3f5q

There are three camps on the ribbon. Those who like, those who have to like
it, and those who hate it.

Those who like it:
-Inexperienced users
-Microsoft UI design team members
-people who like change for the sake of change

Those who have to like it:
-Microsoft employees
-Microsoft MVPs
-Microsoft Partners

Those who hate it:
-Experienced users
-Everyone not covered by any of the above catagories

I personally know 1 person who honestly likes the ribbon.

There was a small outbreak of office2007 in my organization, and for a
moment it looked like we might lose containment. So I installed it on my
primary machine and used it for 6 months so I could support it if I had to.
I watched Jensen's presentation on what they where thinking. I went through
all of the online training on using the new ribbon. I used to flash widget to
track down where all of the commands went on the new system, and gave it much
more time and effort than a simple UI change should ever consume. After all,
I may someday have to support some poor user on a o07 machine.

While the MVPs and Microsoft people kept claiming it would get easier over
time, it only got more aggravating. There was one command in particular that
put me over the edge: In excel, Insert-Row. Its a simple command, I use it
a lot maintaining lists of things like IP addresses, hardware components,
budgets, action items, etc. The problem? The insert commands are not on the
Insert ribbon. They are spread all over the place. The one I need is
actually on the home ribbon. In theory, it should be easier to find because
most of the time the home ribbon is the active ribbon. But muscle memory
is a hard thing to overcome, and every single time I went to insert a row I
found it missing on the Insert ribbon. In the end, I found it so frustrating
to use I formatted the machine.

Office2007 is a no go in our organization. We simply do not have the
resources to retrain 2000 users on a new office interface. Even if Microsoft
decided to fund the retraining, the ribbon isn't even the primary factor
preventing its deployment. Its just the one I personally found the most
irritating.



"Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)" wrote:

"Harlan Grove" wrote in message
:

"Telstar" none@none wrote...
Resistance is futile. Yes.

Possibly, but avoidance isn't. Time to give OpenOffice a look.

People who hate the Ribbon say that a lot, and yet they still spend week
after week, month after month here in this newsgroup complaining about
the Ribbon.

Instead of over in the OpenOffice newsgroups complaining about why
OpenOffice Calc doesn't cleanly open all of their Excel files. :-)


-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author - The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/5m3f5q