Cool new UI idea...

Someone has probably made an application that does it, but it's kinda surprising it's never been implemented before.

A search for menu items/tools of any application. Rather than trawling through menus trying to find some feature you have used before but don't know where it is or what it's called exactly, you type it in and an instant list of appropriate commands comes up. Why search help when you can just ask for the command?



btw, does anyone know where the option to switch of email notifications in pidgin is? It's really starting to piss me off...

got the email notifications thing btw...

Sounds like you are describing help?

nah help is an outside app telling you how to do things. I mean a search box in the menu that narrows menu items that you are looking for but don't use often. Also, there is room for improvement on pointing out keyboard shortcuts when you do select menu items, I had an idea for that too, can't remember atm...

sounds like the vista start menu.

yeah, exactly what i'm thinking of. that or spotlight, but app specific.

yup, pretty much.

Spotlight does exactly that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggoTQqNXOQs

Ah cool, not exactly the same implementation but awfully good without changing a major interface element/backend/compatibility I guess.

Can't imagine MS ever being able to implement that really...

Erm....they already to half of it already?

*do

The Vista+ Start Menu works exactly the same way as Spotlight, which is exactly what is shown in the video. The only bit missing is the opening the appropriate menu and an arrow appearing pointing at it.

Of course, the new Ribbon interface removes conventional menus totally so.....

What I can't imagine is a help system as unified as the one in the demo video.
Because the windows OS has a huge ecosystem of different developers of varying skills, and because MS don't really appear to have a UI design guide to follow to the same standard as apple and in fact because MS tend to be inconsistent in their own software interface design, I can't imagine ever seeing something that polished. Half the apps would not have something critical to it working implemented or not even have help, so the experience would be inconsistent and you'd get people like me bitching about how most of the time it doesn't work. I mean, we all know that consistent UI design is apple's strong point and MS's weak point and pretty much always has been. I find help pretty much useless even on 7. Never use it.

But in regards to the start menu search being the same as spotlight, I *think* spotlight might be a bit smarter. I think it has meta data attached to everything so it's context sensitive. A real world example is someone migrating from xp to vista might try to find add/remove programs because they can't find it in their new vista system because MS bloody renamed it... Typing in "add" or "remove" as a starting point wont find "Programs and Features". Where as typing related words into spotlight will probably find what you are looking for.

Goddamn it I'm not trying to start anything here, it should just be apparent by now I find observing user interface design (and it used to be all things related to ergonomics before computers became so ubiquitus) mildly interesting.

Actually the ribbon is something that would benefit from that idea because while my impression is that it's a good idea, it has left people trying to find things. No one should be left wasting time struggling to work out how to do something... especially on an application that they have been using for the last 10 years.

Yeah that's never really going to go away sadly, and it's the root cause of LOTS of issues with Windows.



They do have UI guides, but people can ignore them. People can ignore Apple's UI guides too, but it means their app gets ignore. Of course, Apple ignore Windows UI guidelines too, which is fairly ironic considering how demanding they are with their own OS. And yeah, MS have shifted the goalpost a lot of times, but that's improving. The fact that a lot of their own stuff doesn't match is a result of so many different buyouts of products over the years.




Neither, but that's because I can get better answers by typing a real language search into Google, rather than keywords.




Vista+ search actually is pretty good, assuming you haven't gone and turned indexing off, it does in fact work if people give it a chance. To use your example, by the time i typed 'add r' into the Start Search, the very first result was exactly what I wanted. Instantly. Done.



The Ribbon (remembering it's in early days) does away with the need for help. Every option is presented to you. The reason people have trouble with finding things is not because the ribbon is hard to use, but simply because it's NOT WHERE IT USED TO BE. That's a problem with how they have learnt. They have learnt how to click here, here and here. They haven't learnt how to actually use their product, haven't learnt basic fundamentals. People don't translate what they learnt in one task to another. I spent years training people, and this was the simple biggest thing.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO X!

Well, you do it exactly the same as you do it in Y.

WHAT?.....OH I SEE! YOU'RE RIGHT! OK I KNOW HOW TO DO THAT!

am still struggling with this one. seems like ribbon is a replacement for toolbars not a replacement for menus

also some functions feel like they are in random places. like for instance in MS Word the record a macro function lives in the View ribbon tab.

will be interesting to see other non-ms apps trying to adopt this.

hmmm, add r works in 7, but when I tried it yonks ago in vista I'm pretty sure it didn't. I could be wrong and I can't test it anymore. Good if they have improved their search though.

In MS world the toolbars and menu's are the same thing. Also if you take a few seconds and think about things they will actually make sense ... like Macro's, the first thing you do before you create one is to see "View" what you have. Once you have viewed it your "create" button is right there.

People are just lazy, put some thought into things and they will make sense.

"Add r" works fine in Vista however the search improvements from Vista to W7 is light years.

To be fair, Macros is about the only thing I can see out of place in Word. Everything else is in the right place.

you could argue the same case for bookmarks, but you dont find that in the View section. splitting hairs i guess.


also i reckon where they put 'Word Options' is a bit weird.


funny thing about interface designs with popular apps like this is that they always change. even if it doesn't really need to.


anyways..found this the other day

Thing with the Options button, is in theory, you set your options infrequently and don't have to deal with them again, so having it out of the way makes sense.

On that tip, you can go in there and customise the Quick Access toolbar, which is the little thing next to the 'Office Button' that by default has save, undo and redo on it. (Off the top of my head) so you could add the macros button there if you use it frequently enough.

All sounds very simple and easy to use to be honest.