Save me from shit UI (you can't be saved)
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@Snooder said:
Templates help your documents look good with only minimal effort.
I am not sure if I've ever used a template like that. I usually open Word to a new blank document, start typing and clicking things like "Header 1" or whatnot to "format" them. I usually leave whatever default template in place until I'm well along, and then if I realize it's gross I'll click through templates until I find something vaguely reasonable, then mouseover the 24 almost identical low contrast color schemes (whatever happened to contrast, anyway?) until I get one of those that looks OK.
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I've been a long time lurker on this forum, but this topic has inspired me to actually finally sign up and post something...
As a vision impaired person MSFT's UI changes to Office --- starting with Office 2007, and now especially with the excerable Office 2013 --- are an absolute pain in the ass. From nice, relatively easily navigable menus, and toolbars with all my oft used --- and less oft used --- things in Word 2003 to the "I hate screen reader users" ribbon of 2007. Thank you Microsoft, I really did want to spend time screwing around trying to find things because I don't remember the shortcut keys for fucking drop caps, and I especially wanted everything to be designed in such a way that I need to constantly play with the zoom on my screen reader/magnifier to find things too. The new Metro UI design is even more wonderful from an accessibility standpoint (no, of course I don't want to get any work done, I want to play with Office and my screen reader trying to figure out "HOW TO WORD").
Trying Office 2007 made me stick with my copy of Office 2003, with that compatibility pack thing that lets it open Office 2007+ documents. Since Office 2003 on Windows 7 is a bit of a PITA (especially with my screen reader/screen magnifier), I've been "encouraged" by the fact 2007+ are pain with screen readers and screen magnifiers to look at other options. Instead of dealing with Microsoft's horrible "new" UI, I took the time and invested in learning how to work with LaTeX, which has completely supplanted Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher for my document creation needs; I'm still stuck with Excel for a lot of my spreadsheeting, and occasionally I have to deal with Access. And frankly, eliminating 80~90 percent of my dependence on Office and letting me use a much more screen reader/screen magnifier friendly environment is an adequate trade off for the reduced productivity.
To address the reasons why I find the UI horrible from an accessibility standpoint, imagine the necessity of using a screen magnifier (and a screen reader, but ignore that for a bit). My monitor is only a small --- highly magnified --- window into the full desktop (if I turn off the magnification, you get normal size, of course). The large and easily visible buttons of touch-screeny goodness in Metro and its derivative UIs is easily visible when the magnification is down. Unfortunately, once they go away and you're at the actual point of entering text/doing something productive, the gigantic toy buttons are gone, replaced by normal sized "stuff" which is what I require the high magnification for. Of course, that high magnification paired with the GIGANTIC BUTTONS OF DOOM means that if I leave the magnifier at my normal working zoom the buttons are literally larger than the field the magnifier is looking at. That means to use the GIANT BUTTONS OF DOOM, I have to Ctrl+Num- until the zoom is small enough I can see WTF the buttons are, click te button, and then Ctrl+Num+ until my zoom is back so I can see what I'm doing. Same with the ribbon --- zoom out to see the buttons, zoom in after finding and then using the button.
Oh and being a long time user of Office prior to 2007 the ribbon itself is a pain for trying to find things on using a magnifier; as I mentioned I need to play the zoom game to use it, but what's more things are moved around and things I used but not enough I memorized the keyboard shortcuts are fun to try and find.
I think the only thing I still might use Word for is doing some spell checking on the body text of my LaTeX documents. And that's only because "fuck it, I'll learn to use hunspell some other time."
Sorry for all the rambling, but quite frankly I loathe Office 2007 and up, and I especially loathe Metro and things derived from it (like Office 2013) because not only is it "different", but it's a pain in the ass in tems of accessibility.
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@Creideiki said:
I took the time and invested in learning how to work with LaTeX, which has completely supplanted Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher for my document creation needs
So basically what you're saying is that it's a good thing Microsoft's UI team sucks because it made your documents look AMAZING. Indirectly, of course.
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@Lorne Kates said:
Fourth: Fuck it. I'm clicking Post.
To be honest, if this was the interface of Office 95, any attempt at changing it would be met with a wall of rage and frustration because that's what always happens every time Microsoft changes something. The old way was not better in any way, other than having keyboard shortcuts, but people are used to it and now they rage because it changed.
I liked the Ribbon - it is easier to use for people who don't know how to work a computer, which is a lot of the userbase (just try and explain to an entire project group how to use Word styles. If nothing else, W07 has reduced the entry barrier to that function to the point where people might not refuse to use it, though they probably will forget how to). Sure, the Ribbon required relearning everything and it absolutely should have had keyboard shortcuts, but it's just a freaking menu bar, how hard to learn can it be if you claim to be good at computers?
I like this save interface as well because it has a clear left-to-right workflow. Click save, click where you want it, click the folder you want (or the big browse button with obvious functionality), done. Sure, I never needed it, you never needed it, but the people who save everything on their desktop do. And these are the people who complain that computers are hard and messy and buy a Chromebook. This is not an endorsement of the horrid interface that should be labelled a radiation hazard for users with CRTs OR THE DOSSHELL STYLE RIBBON TAB NAMES.
Windows 8 is unusable, but not because "whaaa QQ my start menu" but due to its lack of workflow. Once they fix the start screen (by turning it into an overlay in a screen corner, which is exactly what they're about to do) people may actually appreciate the tiles. It is a sad thing that MS came up with a new concept that actually has advantages over the start menu and then borked it so hard that people feel vindicated in thinking that the old ways are always the best.
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As for the dumbing down, remember the outcry about Clippy? Remember the complaints that Luna looked like Fisher Price My First OS (and especially the search doggy)? Remember the complaints that the start menu in Windows 95 was too noob friendly? That's what MS has been doing all along, because as it turns out, you sell more computers if you make computers easier to use for nabs.
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@Creideiki said:
Instead of dealing with Microsoft's horrible "new" UI, I took the time and invested in learning how to work with LaTeX, which has completely supplanted Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher for my document creation needs;
I guess if I couldn't see, I'd probably use Latex, too..
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@Ben L. said:
@Creideiki said:
I took the time and invested in learning how to work with LaTeX, which has completely supplanted Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher for my document creation needs
So basically what you're saying is that it's a good thing Microsoft's UI team sucks because it made your documents look AMAZING. Indirectly, of course.
Ben, are you the most retarded person on this forum? I mean, it's gotta be a tie between you and bridget.
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@Brother Laz said:
As for the dumbing down, remember the outcry about Clippy? Remember the complaints that Luna looked like Fisher Price My First OS (and especially the search doggy)? Remember the complaints that the start menu in Windows 95 was too noob friendly? That's what MS has been doing all along, because as it turns out, you sell more computers if you make computers easier to use for nabs.
No, it's horrid! Horrid! We need to go back when the only people who can use computers are pathetic nerds who camp out in the computer lab. Improving interfaces just lets the popular, handsome jocks use computers, and it's better if everything came in a command line interface YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP GO LATEX WHOOO
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@Brother Laz said:
As for the dumbing down, remember the outcry about Clippy?
Clippy was annoying because it was just close enough to looking intelligent and useful to show up how thoroughly stupid and useless it was. Changing the avatar to something without eyes and the text to something less personal reduced the annoyance a lot.
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@Ben L. said:
@Creideiki said:
I took the time and invested in learning how to work with LaTeX, which has completely supplanted Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher for my document creation needs
So basically what you're saying is that it's a good thing Microsoft's UI
team sucks because it made your documents look AMAZING. Indirectly, of
course.In a round-about fashion, yes that is exactly right. Whoever is running MSFT's current UI team sucks, and because of their suck my documents now look amazing without me needing to do nearly as much work as with Word (2003).
@morbiuswilters said:
[quote
user="Creideiki"]Instead of dealing with Microsoft's horrible "new" UI, I
took the time and invested in learning how to work with LaTeX, which
has completely supplanted Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher for my
document creation needs;I guess if I couldn't see, I'd probably use Latex, too..[/quote]
Given the choice of "lose all productivity playing with the ribbon and the EVERYTHING IS A TABLET interface" and "learn yet another thing I can shove onto my CV" I'll take the latter. Plus given that I know WTF fontspec is, my documents actually don't look like ass because I specifically stay far the fuck away from the tedious Computer Modern (I use Adobe's Garamond Premier Pro actually, and the font looks lovely).
@morbiuswilters said:
@Brother Laz said:
As for the dumbing down, remember the outcry about Clippy? Remember the complaints that Luna looked like Fisher Price My First OS (and especially the search doggy)? Remember the complaints that the start menu in Windows 95 was too noob friendly? That's what MS has been doing all along, because as it turns out, you sell more computers if you make computers easier to use for nabs.
No, it's horrid! Horrid! We need to go back when the only people who can use computers are pathetic nerds who camp out in the computer lab. Improving interfaces just lets the popular, handsome jocks use computers, and it's better if everything came in a command line interface YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP GO LATEX WHOOO
Improving the interface is fine by me. In fact I found the inteface changes between XP and Luna to 7 and Aero to be wonderful, and a joy to work with (and in fact I dread going back to XP machines because the 7+Aero experience has spoiled me with actually be good and competent). Conversely the UI change from 7+Aero to 8+Metro was/is an enormous step backwards, at least for me and my specific needs. I wouldn't mind Metro on a tablet or phone, but on a desktop, or laptop? No, just no.
As to command line interfaces, they are... interesting, when trying to work with a screen reader. I'll say the DOS and Windows command prompts are at least somewhat friendly to screen readers (so to is the DCL command interpreter for VAX/VMS, RSX-11/M+, RSTS/E and RT-11, but I'm letting my classic computer hobbyist out when I mention those), mostly because the relatively "English" form of the arguments means that the screen reader sounds relatively normal. Linux/BSD/UNIX command lines? Well put it this way "ls -la" turns into "liss laaa", and it only goes down hill from there... Not to say I don't like them as dev environments or servers. But trying to use a Linux machine as a desktop was not a fun time. Apparently, at the time I was tried using it the "Orca" screen reader's opinion of its options page was "I will ignore everything you set and go with my defaults as soon as you exit the options page" the options, of course being "fuck you, no zoom for you; oh and I'm going to read everything like a man dosed up with every stimulant in the world simultaneously."
And like I mentioned my options were really "learn LaTeX", "use OpenOffice" (haha, no), or "lose productivity to the ribbon, THE WORLD IS A TABLET, and zoom game". I picked LaTeX, since I can put that skill on my CV. (And being vision impaired, anything at all extra for one's CV is a godsend becuase no one wants to hire a half-blind man.)
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@Creideiki said:
Conversely the UI change from 7+Aero to 8+Metro was/is an enormous step backwards, at least for me and my specific needs. I wouldn't mind Metro on a tablet or phone, but on a desktop, or laptop? No, just no.
I agree that Win8 had a number of mis-steps. Trying to make everything into a tablet was a bad idea. I think they're reversing that now, but damn that was a mistake. Still, a lot of things about Win8 are better. For example, I think the minimalist styling looks a lot better than Aero. (Although I understand that's not something you would care about.)
@Creideiki said:
But trying to use a Linux machine as a desktop was not a fun time.
Believe me, this statement is doubly-true if you can see.
@Creideiki said:
And like I mentioned my options were really "learn LaTeX", "use OpenOffice" (haha, no), or "lose productivity to the ribbon, THE WORLD IS A TABLET, and zoom game".
I mean, I honestly cannot comment on how Microsoft's UIs work in a screenreader, so I'll take your word they are worse. For me, the Ribbon is absolutely fine, but I'm also not a big enough users of Office to have a strong opinion either way. About my only complaint about the new Office is that they changed some modal dialogs (like when you save a file) into standalone screens. I have no idea what version that change occurred in, but it reeks of Win8 "Let's make everything a tablet!" bullshit. I guess you could say I'm just a Luddite who is used to the old idioms and finds this "Let's jump to an entirely new screen to do a simple task" thing obnoxious because I didn't grow up with it, and maybe that's true, but I still do not care for it.
@Creideiki said:
(And being vision impaired, anything at all extra for one's CV is a godsend becuase no one wants to hire a half-blind man.)
This raises the question: how do they know? I could see how a fully-blind person would have trouble hiding it, but I wonder if you could get hired without them even knowing? The only hiccup would be if they needed you to read during an in-person interview.
(And yes, I know they can't legally discriminate, but that only helps some. In fact, I'd bet more-often-than-not the discrimination isn't even conscious. A lot of them are probably thinking "I'm open-minded enough to hire a person with a disability, but I've got two other candidates who just wowed me more," perhaps not realizing their interview process is subtly biased.)
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@morbiuswilters said:
I agree that Win8 had a number of mis-steps. Trying to make everything into a tablet was a bad idea. I think they're reversing that now, but damn that was a mistake. Still, a lot of things about Win8 are better. For example, I think the minimalist styling looks a lot better than Aero. (Although I understand that's not something you would care about.)
The minimalist styling I find nice on tablets, though it really isn't that well suited for the vision imapired, especially since "minimalist" has somehow translated into "THERE MUST BE NO DELINATION BETWEEN THINGS" in some brain at MSFT. That is the major pain with "minimalist" UI's for the vision imapired, no clear delination between "things" makes it harder to navigate a zoomed in screen. Although if they would make things a bit more delinated --- and higher fucking contrast --- as well as a little less treating the user like a child, the Metro UI would be a boon to the disabled. But as it stands from my previous experiences, it's not good and Aero is frankly better.
@morbiuswilters said:
I mean, I honestly cannot comment on how Microsoft's UIs work in a screenreader, so I'll take your word they are worse. For me, the Ribbon is absolutely fine, but I'm also not a big enough users of Office to have a strong opinion either way. About my only complaint about the new Office is that they changed some modal dialogs (like when you save a file) into standalone screens. I have no idea what version that change occurred in, but it reeks of Win8 "Let's make everything a tablet!" bullshit. I guess you could say I'm just a Luddite who is used to the old idioms and finds this "Let's jump to an entirely new screen to do a simple task" thing obnoxious because I didn't grow up with it, and maybe that's true, but I still do not care for it.
For the sighted people I know, the Ribbon was something to adjust to, and while annoying at first they found quite useful. I though find the "old" Word 2003 type tool bars and menus much nicer and easier to use. Mostly because the toolbars are nice and small enough to quickly zip over with a zoomed in screen magnifier (if I moved at the speed of a decreipt old woman I could have my screen reader actually read all the tooltips); while the menus are easy to navigate becuase the menu expands in a logical fashion that easily allows trackign with said zoomed in magnifier. The Ribbon doesn't and requires a zoom out and then borwsing side to side to find things. Also, exactly what you said about the change from modal dialogs to standalone screens.
@morbiuswilters said:
This raises the question: how do they know? I could see how a fully-blind person would have trouble hiding it, but I wonder if you could get hired without them even knowing? The only hiccup would be if they needed you to read during an in-person interview.
(And yes, I know they can't legally discriminate, but that only helps some. In fact, I'd bet more-often-than-not the discrimination isn't even conscious. A lot of them are probably thinking "I'm open-minded enough to hire a person with a disability, but I've got two other candidates who just wowed me more," perhaps not realizing their interview process is subtly biased.)
Reading during the interview is usually what clues them in. Also other subtle clues. I'm completely blind in one eye, and low vision in the other, so depth perception for me is non-existent, and my view of myself in the mirror is slightly asymmetrical. Combined with the tendency of my prothetic eye which when it gets irritated requires constantly fiddling to make sure it's positioned right. The bias in the interview process is more often then not subconscious, though I have found the occasional interviewer who is a titanic prick who, upon learning of my vision problem tries to make me GTFO as quick as possible.
Also, one quick question: WTF is with this forum software? It's made of arsebiscuits, seriously. I think I have some BBS software on my PDP-11 that works better than this.
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@Creideiki said:
Also, one quick question: WTF is with this forum software? It's made of arsebiscuits, seriously. I think I have some BBS software on my PDP-11 that works better than this.
Community Server: Disappointing Literally Everyone Since 2004
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@Creideiki said:
...though I have found the occasional interviewer who is a titanic prick who, upon learning of my vision problem tries to make me GTFO as quick as possible.
Man, I would follow that guy home and set his house on fire. And maybe poop in his car.
@Creideiki said:
Also, one quick question: WTF is with this forum software? It's made of arsebiscuits, seriously.
Yeah, it's terrible. It makes for some amusing irony, though. There are plans to move the whole forum to Intercourse, though.
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@morbiuswilters said:
There are plans to move the whole forum to Intercourse, though.
It'll be the closest some forum users here get to it.
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@drurowin said:
@morbiuswilters said:
There are plans to move the whole forum to Intercourse, though.
It'll be the closest some forum users here get to it.
Is Intercourse the port of Discourse to INTERCAL on Rails?
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@Ben L. said:
@drurowin said:
Who wants to give him the talk about the birds and the bees?@morbiuswilters said:
There are plans to move the whole forum to Intercourse, though.
It'll be the closest some forum users here get to it.
Is Intercourse the port of Discourse to INTERCAL on Rails?
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@drurowin said:
@Ben L. said:
@drurowin said:
Who wants to give him the talk about the birds and the bees?@morbiuswilters said:
There are plans to move the whole forum to Intercourse, though.
It'll be the closest some forum users here get to it.
Is Intercourse the port of Discourse to INTERCAL on Rails?Enough with the furry stuff.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@drurowin said:
@Ben L. said:
@drurowin said:
Who wants to give him the talk about the birds and the bees?@morbiuswilters said:
There are plans to move the whole forum to Intercourse, though.
It'll be the closest some forum users here get to it.
Is Intercourse the port of Discourse to INTERCAL on Rails?Enough with the furry stuff.
Jeeze, I'm talking about Intercourse, not intercourse. Get your mind out of the gutter.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Enough with the furry stuff.
Objection! That was using the typical euphemism for explaining sex to him, and was not furry related in any way.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Enough with the furry stuff.
While I whole-heartedly agree, I'm surprised to hear that coming from you. Just yesterday, you strongly implied you were one o' them preverts.
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@HardwareGeek said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Enough with the furry stuff.
While I whole-heartedly agree, I'm surprised to hear that coming from you. Just yesterday, you strongly implied you were one o' them preverts.He doth protest too much.
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@morbiuswilters said:
About my only complaint about the new Office is that they changed some modal dialogs (like when you save a file) into standalone screens. I have no idea what version that change occurred in, but it reeks of Win8 "Let's make everything a tablet!" bullshit.
Your hunch is right, those changes came in Office 2013. I've used both Office 2010 and Office 2013. Office 2010 is very similar to 2007, with some actual usability improvements, and a few minor UI tweaks that help it look more in place with Windows 7. Office 2013 is an abomination that should be burned with fire.
One thing I'm surprised no one has mentioned is the way that Microsoft changed the licensing for Office between 2010 and 2013. About a year ago, I bought a 3-system license for office 2010 for about $200. At the same time, I could have bought a similarly priced license for Office 2013, but I would only have been allowed to install it on one system. Before that, I hadn't purchased an Office license in about 6 years.
I know they're doing it to encourage people to sign up for Office 365 at $9.95/month for up to 10 systems (5 PCs or Macs plus 5 tablets). But that adds up to $119.40 a year, and since I last purchased Office in 2007, I'm looking at 6 year replacement cycle. Hmmm, $716.40 over 6 years, or $200 for a quick, one time transaction that'll last me just as long?
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@abarker said:
@morbiuswilters said:
About my only complaint about the new Office is that they changed some modal dialogs (like when you save a file) into standalone screens. I have no idea what version that change occurred in, but it reeks of Win8 "Let's make everything a tablet!" bullshit.
Your hunch is right, those changes came in Office 2013. I've used both Office 2010 and Office 2013. Office 2010 is very similar to 2007, with some actual usability improvements, and a few minor UI tweaks that help it look more in place with Windows 7. Office 2013 is an abomination that should be burned with fire.
One thing I'm surprised no one has mentioned is the way that Microsoft changed the licensing for Office between 2010 and 2013. About a year ago, I bought a 3-system license for office 2010 for about $200. At the same time, I could have bought a similarly priced license for Office 2013, but I would only have been allowed to install it on one system. Before that, I hadn't purchased an Office license in about 6 years.
I know they're doing it to encourage people to sign up for Office 365 at $9.95/month for up to 10 systems (5 PCs or Macs plus 5 tablets). But that adds up to $119.40 a year, and since I last purchased Office in 2007, I'm looking at 6 year replacement cycle. Hmmm, $716.40 over 6 years, or $200 for a quick, one time transaction that'll last me just as long?
Yeah, that annoyed me, too. I just signed up for 365 because my work was paying and I figure it'll auto-renew for years after I'm gone before anybody notices.
