I've been really enjoying Word and Excel 2007. They work as expected and I actually prefer the new "ribbon" to the old toolbars and menus. I even know where to find most of the functions :-) However, the Outlook 2007 interface is a little "inconsistent" (the program itself is fine). First, a quick screenshot: Here are my five gripes on the Outlook 2007 interface: Outlook should use the "ribbon" interface. I like the "ribbon". Word uses it. Excel uses it. Why can't Outlook? The double-chevron above the To-Do bar expands the To-Do bar, and "pins" it. However, only the double-chevron is selectable which presents...

Here's an interesting metric (via Usability in the News) for testing websites: Q: “What percentage of your interface contains stuff that your customers want to see?” 10% 25% 100% If you answer a, or b then you might do well, but you'll probably get blown out of the water once someone decides to enter the market with option c. (continued at "A really simple metric for measuring User Interfaces" at iQ Blog) This test could easily be applied to utility-type software whether web or windows e.g. Flickr or WinZip (it would be a little harder to apply the principle to fully-fledged applications, where "infrastructure" user interface...

Since 2002 I've used an Internet Explorer enhancement/replacement called Maxthon which even back then had tabbed browser windows. If you've worked with Firefox or IE7 (and I'm sure other browsers), you'd know how useful the tabbed interface can be. Maxthon added a whole lot of other stuff over IE, but I mainly used it because of the tabs. The other day I came across Terminals, a Remote Desktop enhancement/replacement that presents Remote Desktop sessions in a tabbed interface. It too does a whole lot of other stuff to help manage multiple connections, but tabbing is IMHO the most useful feature. (If you check...

I don't know why I was thinking about this the other day - but it came into my head that I really like "split buttons" and think they are very usable, for the right situations. I'd better explain. "Split buttons" are buttons that also have a drop-down menu. Pressing the button should carry out an action*; alternatively, clicking on arrow to the right of the "split" should display different but similar actions that can be performed by clicking on the menu item. I don't know if "split buttons" have a better name or are even accepted controls, but they've been used...

Jensen Harris is posting an interesting series on the history of the user interface in MS Office. In Part 2 he talks about Word and how little the interface has actually changed (and I though I was the only one who noticed) from version 2 to Office 97, and from Office 97 to 2003. Good reading. Technorati tags: user interface, Microsoft, Word