Submission details
Menu Bars
Every single application, framework, etc has it's own way of drawing menu bars. Some have animations (ie: File Explorer), some don't (Internet Explorer). Some do mouse tracking painting the background blue (both Explorers), most apply a bevel (Notepad). Even between both Explorer, the foreground color is different. Don't get me started with Office, Visual Studio and the NetFx, or even worse, WFP.
The applications that hide the menu bar don't always show it the same way. The explorers insert it above the command bar, while WMP shows it as a contextual menu. Live Mail and Messenger (not core OS apps, but still) hides it after any key is depressed, the explorers hide it after any key is released, and WMP only hides it after 'esc' is depressed.
And, by the way, the command bars in Internet Explorer, File Explorer, Media Player, Mail and Calendar, are all different too. And I'm not talking about the color of the bar. File Explorer and WMP (and Live Mail and Messenger) don't have animations. The others do. The mouse tracking effect in Internet Explorer is much less pronounced than the others. And, well, the bar in WMP is a complete different animal, though I concede that it has a very different purpose than in other apps.
Exactly how many times did you code the exact same widget??
Set a single design in stone, and use it everywhere.
Yeah, it's a huge task. You buried yourself there.
Medium
Low
Not fixed
Discussion (8 comments)
Yeah, the rounded hover frame flickers and then blue fades in.
Microsoft is terrible at consistency... Just look at what happened to Windows Live.
+1. I heard that there is already a mandate to standardize Most of the Windows 7 interface to use the Office 2007-style Fluent/Ribbon Interface.
+1 for everything in Windows using the Ribbon bar
(Which is likely, since the guy who led Office 2K7 in leading Windows 7)
Hopefully 7 goes even further than Vista turning Menus off by default, and is like Office 2007 or even better.
Menus are a Kludge. They were a fast way to add a 'list of commands' to a GUI and have never been significantly improved on. Apple set the bar (pardon the pun) and people need to be shoved away from Menus. (In a GUI word, remembering or using a list of 'words' is insane, there are NOW better ways to do what Menus do.)
Toolbars were the first step in reducing the Menu dependency, and the Office 2007 Ribbion is a progression to throwing them out.
We have hardware and resources to handle things older and early GUIs didn't have access to, and we no longer need to memorize 'LISTS OF WORDS' called menus to use software, or there is something really lacking the 'Graphical' design of the software.
I have a feeling MS is moving forward to wow people on this topic, especially when Office 2007 hit was a bit dramatic, and surprisingly most people love it in comparison to the older Office Menu/Toolbar type of interface.
So lets hope UI progression in 7 just skips Menus and implements the next generation of UI concepts.
Changed problem description.
As for the question: Consistency between Applications can probably be achieved only when it's the default menu/ribbon you get when calling AppendMenu/AppendRibbon API - and people stick to it, rather than rolling their own.
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As for the real reason for replying:
Ribbons? I guess you don't like to hear *that* again - but - Ribbons = Yuck!
I see a few cases where ribbons are worse for the power user, but I can also accept a concious tradeoff between power users vs. novices. What I don't get is how they passed user testing with a suitable size.
Apparently, a segment of users - likely a minority - is thoroughly annoyed.
Judging by the signs it can't be just me - there are "search command" addins, "classic menu on Word 2007" addins and an interactive command finder from Microsoft themselves (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100744321033.aspx)
The question is of course: if 60% of your users like it much better, and 10% run away screaming - who wins? (numbers picked at random, no universal answer expected)
Now I still hope with some time they can mature into something usable - but just for the sake of consistency?
tino is right.
What is this?? two widgets for the same function??? in the same place??
tino wrote on June 4, 2008, 7:51pm
If you watch closely and you the mouse on the legacy menu in Windows Explorer you can see that under the blue background is the right design. Crazy.
At the end I would suggest to just kill the old style menus and focus on the new command bar for simple apps and the ribbon for complex ones.