That’s what I’ve woken up to today. The web is ablaze about Microsoft’s decision to put the ribbon into Explorer in Windows 8. Everybody seems to be an expert about the ribbon, and the critics are all busy bagging it out. Exhibit A
Now, a lot of people may well be correct when they talk about the ribbon taking up extra room, and showing items that normally are not used. But I take a very different view on the ribbon.
In file explorer, 95% of what I do is hidden in the right mouse click context menu, or it’s done with shortcut keys. nice… But in this new world of touch screens, how does this work? I can’t just right mouse click or press Control + N as I no longer have a keyboard or mouse…
The ribbon provides common ground within the OS, allowing all form factors to perform the same tasks using the same mechanism. Is this a bad thing?
I think my only concern is to do with the one size fits all. Microsoft’s previous incarnations of Windows Mobile all tried to turn Mobile phones into computers.. It didn’t work. Finally they came out with Windows Phone 7, the phone OS that’s not a computer. Are Microsoft about to come undone in the same way with tablets? Are they trying to hard to force a PC based OS onto a tablet. I hope not.
If you have any thoughts, great opinions etc, drop me a line, I’d love to hear from you.
Ed.
