Excel 2007 dispenses with the classic paradigm of menus and accelerator keys. It uses a new "results-oriented user interface" (ROUI). What would happen I wonder if MSVC were to switch to a ROUI, would productivity be significantly enhanced? Also, Excel now supports up to 16 million colors. Why do I need that in a spreadsheet?
Quoting MS: "Commands and features that were often buried in complex menus and toolbars are now easier to find on task-oriented tabs that contain logical groups of commands and features. Many dialog boxes are replaced with drop-down galleries that display the available options, and descriptive tooltips or sample previews are provided to help you choose the right option."
Hang on...complex menus? That's why we have menu accelerator keys....what's going on here?
From Charles Ellis: "On the product team, we differentiate between accelerators, which are keyboard ways to access the Ribbon, menus and toolbars, and shortcuts which are essentially everything else. This list isn't meant to include accelerators, not because they aren't a big part of what keyboard users use (ALT+E+S+V+Enter and ALT+E+A+A come immediately to mind), but rather because shortcuts, unlike accelerators, are much more difficult to discover; the UI only lists a handful of them and good and reasonably complete documentation is often difficult to find."
Difficult to find? Microsoft used acclerators since 1991, at least. Accelerators work. Ribbon? No thanks.
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