The Lair

Obsessively passing through my mind. I made the upgrade to the new Office 2007 a while ago. The ribbon is the main (perhaps only) thing that immediately catches the eye in the upgrade. Now, while I was using Word - the ribbon wasn’t a big deal. I know all the keyboard shortcuts and I never need to take my hands off the keyboard.

Never having to take my hands off the keyboard - for example, to click on pretty buttons or menus - is a huge interface win for me. I’m much faster and more productive that way. But this is Word, a piece of software I’ve been using for a while now.

Because I like pretty graphs and I have a need for said pretty graphs, I had to use the new Excel and that’s where my problems started. Ma, I can’t find my old menus anymore. And since I maintain compatibility with older versions, I usually get an irritating dialog when I save telling me that there will be minor loss of fidelity. I uh… press save on average about three times a minute, a muscle memory holdover from the times when Office was crashy and power supplies were akin to a flickering light bulb.

So, I’m pondering a facelift for Office. This is it. I’ve officially become a User Interface conservationist. And get off my lawn, you damn kids.

Perhaps I should have stuck to Gnuplot or R, eh?