In my opinion, the new Office 2007 user interface is one of the most innovative things to come out of Redmond in years. It's nothing less than the death of the main menu as a keystone GUI metaphor. This is a big deal. Historically, where Office goes, everyone else follows. It's already starting to trickle down: IE7 does not show its main menu by default, and neither does Vista. You have to press Alt to expose the menu. The main menu has been demoted to a sort of configuration panel for advanced users; for everyone else, there's the Ribbon and toolbar buttons.GUIs are characterized by their WIMP characteristics: Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing device. Office 2007's Ribbon is a compelling argument in favor of abandoning the creaky old main menu GUI metaphor. I'd also argue that Office, in every new version, has further de-emphasized the highly problematic MDI windowing standard. Even without the vagaries of MDI, I spend far more time wrangling windows than I should. That's why I work with maximized windows 99% of the time (albeit across multiple monitors). So I'm inclined to think that windows themselves aren't all that useful as a GUI construct either, either. So, if Office 2007 drops the W and M from WIMP, what are we left with?IP. Icons and Pointing Devices.It's a radical change, right? Perhaps, until you consider the world's most popular GUI environment, the web browser, has no Menus or Windows. It's nothing but Icons and Pointing Devices. And yet people seem to adapt to the web much more readily than traditional WIMP apps. If anything, Office 2007's UI overhaul brings it in line with the rest of world that lives in your web browser.Still, it's impressive that Microsoft was willing to make such a large change to their flagship application. Vista, in comparison, makes almost no changes to the core Windows GUI. Jensen Harris' blog documents exactly how Microsoft arrived here:The Why of the New UI (Part 1)
Ye Olde Museum Of Office Past (Why the UI, Part 2)
Combating the Perception of Bloat (Why the UI, Part 3)
New Rectangles to the Rescue? (Why the UI, Part 4)
Tipping the Scale (Why the UI, Part 5)
Inside Deep Thought (Why the UI, Part 6)
No Distaste for Paste (Why the UI, Part 7)
Grading On the Curve (Why the UI, Part 8)
There are dozens of related articles in Jensen's Office 2007 UI bible, but these background articles are essential.Kudos to Microsoft on the UI changes in Office 2007. It's the first version of Office worth upgrading to.
Microsoft Says Tabs in Windows 10 Not Ready Yet
Out of habit, I work on Windows. I dont have the IT skills to embrace linux. The option given by Neil (run Linux under windows) was promising. I unlocked the "developer mode" of my Windows 10... But could not go any further. I tried several time but always got the "There has been an issue on our (ie: Microsoft) side. Try again later. " I dont have the "IT" skills to embrace linux. I had very bad experience with harware setup (GPU, Wifi board, USB->VGA connector) and Solidworks under 'Wine' emulation is a pain. I dont have the "IT" skills to embrace linux. Yet. But It's on my bucket list. HTML and website I am used to work in Python (under Spyder environment) and in Arduino C. I know HTML/CSS from afar. I needed an "advanced" text editor. My "IT master" classmate advised Atom. It is cute, open, and seem to have a big community. Sold! After few days on reactivating the weird html syntax, here I finally was: EDIT: I'm now used to Atom. I did find out that it has been developed by the GIT "guys", including Monsieur Linus Torvalds himself. Linux en Open-source all the way. When trying to install Atom on one of my Raspberry PI (the most famous linux board-computer): I was reminded that "Linux" is many. Unfortunately it won't work on my Raspbian OS, because Atom is ARM not ready yet.... 2ff7e9595c
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