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Microsoft and the de-menuing of everything

by Jordan Running on November 2, 2005 at 07:00 PM

PC World's Techlog has an interesting piece about Microsoft's impending elimination of the menubar in its products. We've talked about the new "ribbon" toolbar in Office 12 before, but PC World's Editor in Chief Harry McCracken has points out examples of this "de-menuing" all over Microsoft's Vista products. His main complaint, though he issues a disclaimer that Microsoft will undoubtedly be tweaking things a lot before Vista and Office 12's releases, is that it's all so inconsistent. Some apps still have conventinal menus, some have eliminated them entirely but introduce wildly different toolbar schemes, some take only half-measures to hide their menus..

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Victor Agreda, Jr.Nov 2nd 2005 7:55PM

Neutral

Well, it could be worse. They do like Apple and defy their own guidelines (oh wait, MS does that too), or make every app with a different UI so they all look like they were acquired by a team of drunks pub-crawling on a Friday night...

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TedNov 3rd 2005 8:38AM

Neutral

This means trouble for people who use screen reading software as a solution for low- and no-vision. Menus are easy to navigate, especially after you learn the alt + whatever shortcuts. Graphics are a pain unless properly labeled.And then they can still be a pain.

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RandyNov 3rd 2005 10:58AM

Neutral

The more things change... Solaris did this nearly ten years ago on their GUI desktop - when I saw the Microsoft version of the dashboard I got this incredible sense of deja vu. Interesting that they (Microsoft) decided to go with that paradigm after all this time.

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