Popularity Contest.
Another day, another bit of Office 2007 idiocy (courtesy of Jensen Harris). Today the new look of the "options" dialog box was revealed, the most obvious change being a new categories index. This is not in itself a bad idea, although it's also nothing new: existing versions of Word already sport a similar categorization system, but the existing systems use tabs, not buttons, so, uh, there you go. In any event, the categories have been reworked, and I invite you to take a look at the first category in the new dialog."Popular."
What the hell? How is Popular a useful category label? If I open the options intending to change, say, my language settings, how am I supposed to know whether or not it's under Popular? I'll have to read through the whole category, clearly, in order to know. I'll have to read through the whole category for every option I look for, in order to determine whether or not it's Popular! It's a completely useless category! Actually, it's worse than useless: it's a hindrance to navigation, since it slows down the process of finding an option. It's a hindrance to learnability, too, because you can imagine the Popular settings will change in every subsequent service pack, or as new features are added. Right now, according to that screenshot , "Show Developer tab in the Ribbon" is a Popular option. After a year or two, do you think it'll still be there? Probably not. It'll be replaced by "Underline things that might be book titles" or some shit. So in this way, the Popular category not only destroys navigation now, but it also lays the foundation for re-destroying navigation in the future as well. How efficient. What a great idea.
And, speaking of efficiency, the same blog post mentions the term "ScreenTips." What's a ScreenTip? Have you ever heard of that? .. As it turns out, no one else has either. Explains Harris, "Yes, tooltips are called ScreenTips in Office for some reason. Don't ask."
..
Now remember, the main feature of Office 2007 is the new UI. Aren't you glad no one asked?
posted by avixe @ 12:46 PM
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