Monday, 14. August 2006, 10:58:47
office, opera, ribbon, usability
Remember me talking about the new MS Office interface, especially the
Ribbon, and how it could work for Opera? Now, while checking my feeds after getting back from vacation,
this video demo (3.3 MB) really made me drool
For those not clicking: it shows a Ribbon handling mode where it acts as a cross between menu and toolbars: taking minimal space while collapsed like an old-fashioned menu, only showing options when clicked - but then, it shows
all options in the typical Ribbon manner.
This is not something you can 'just' add to Quick (our cross platform interface layer), but I'd sure like to see this in Opera! Without having actually used it, I'd dare say it would improve usability quite a bit, giving that we want to both present a simple interface and give the user easy access to powerful features. No way to come even close with a customized toolbar this time, alas.
Tuesday, 7. February 2006, 02:30:18
office, opera, twelve, ribbon
...
Inspired by the new Ribbon interface design that is being developed for MS Office 12 [1], I wanted to see what you get in Opera, when doing away with the normal top-menu, panels and toolbars. Without sacrificing access to all the functionality Opera has to offer, of course. In this new setup, each function is available in one, easy to find, place.
Here's a screenshot of the result of this exercise, 'Twelve':
2006-06-29: updated screenshot
To try this setup yourself, install both the menu and toolbar from here:
Edit 2007-04-17: the links point to 9.2-compatible setups now
I did this by making the Alt+F11 shortcut work under Windows as well as Linux:
- Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Shortcuts
- Doubleclick the active keyboard setup, and enter 'F11' in the Quick Find field
- Remove 'Platform Unix, ' from 'Platform Unix, F11 alt', then click OK a lot
- Now toggle the menu bar away with Alt+F11
Use 'Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Toolbars' to return to your previous setup.
For more info, explanation, and screenshots, visit the page 'Twelve' on my website.
[1] You can read some background information on the Ribbon
Monday, 7. November 2005, 21:07:20
office, usability, opera
Jensen Harris, working on the Microsoft Office "user experience" team, is keeping a blog, to explain about the user interface changes there are doing in the next Microsoft Office. Fascinating reading every weekday, and frankly the research facilities they have make me jealous. Luckily, it appears they build their monopoly-winning older versions (until Office 003) using the good-old
wild guesses, justifications, and personal 'anecdotes' served up as fact
method. Somewhat like we do, though occasionally some people get abducted from Karl Johanns Gate in Oslo, to be released only after performing some tasks in the latest Opera under the watchful eye of UI developers.
But MS now has a "Customer Experience Improvement Program", where users can opt-in to send
all their actions in Office to Redmond. Harris shares a little bit from the vast store of data they've collected in a few years, the
Top 5 Most-Used Commands in Microsoft Word 2003:
- Paste
- Save
- Copy
- Undo
- Bold
He also shares that, although Ctrl+V and the context menu are the most used methods to activate 'paste', the paste button is still the most used button in Word.
I'd
love to have data like this for Opera usage....
What do you think are the most usd commands in Opera? I'm afraid I can't give prizes for the best answer, because that is simply unknown
