“For years, Microsoft has been trying to add features to Office without them getting in the way of people who already know their way around the software.
Unfortunately, the company was a little too successful at making its innovations unobtrusive. In user testing, Microsoft found that nine out of every 10 features that customers wanted to see added to Office were already in the program.
'They simply don't know it's there,' Chris Capossela, a Microsoft vice president, told a developer crowd last week. 'It's just too hard to find it.'
Indeed, Office has become a case study for feature creep--the phenomenon in which a simple technology becomes complicated and unmanageable through the addition of new features. Office, which once had 100 commands neatly organized into menus, ballooned to contain some 1,500 commands located in scores of menus, toolbars and dialog boxes.
Having sensed that the software has reached the limits of functionality, Microsoft has been preparing its most radical overhaul ever for Word, Excel and friends. With Office 12, due next year, the company plans to do away with a system that depends on people remembering which series of menus lead to a particular command. Instead, users will see a 'ribbon' of different commands above their document, with the options changing depending on the task. Microsoft previewed the new look for Office at last week's Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles.
The move could help Microsoft in its perennial quest to come up with enough reasons to prompt current Office users to upgrade, and might also stem some defections to rivals, such as OpenOffice. At the same time, it risks alienating some loyalists, as well as prompting some businesses to question the cost of retraining those accusaccustomed to the current Office.”
I don't see how a ‘ribbon’ is going to solve the problem. Features will still be hidden from users.
I don't believe the problem has ever been features people want to use all the time, but, features used rarely that usually come up when there's a deadline, leaving you barely enough time to do the task. Never enough time for the luxury of searching documentation online or off for the function you need.
Barring a breakthrough in A.I. combined with a telepathic program, I don't see how this is going to work. I think they're assuming a general familiarity with program features most users just don't have. Most people I deal with are only familiar with the specific features they use to accomplish their daily tasks.
Alfred Ingram
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5873597.html?tag=nl.e589
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