Steve Kleha said:
Two questions. First, Excel 2007 has retained the 2003 key
commands, but I've noticed that keying in these 2003 commands
takes much longer than it used to. . . .
There's almost certainly going to be a lag because XL2007 has to
interpret whether your keystrokes match the ribbon or the prior
version 'Classic' menu. It also displays your keystrokes in a little
box as you type them. No doubt that's been, er, optimized for Vista so
it'd only takes a few extra MB RAM and a few hundred milliseconds of
CPU time.
Sarcasm aside, I wouldn't want to bet this feature survives into the
next major version.
Second, I'm wondering how many people are going to stick with
the new interface or go with Shah's add in. Any strong feelings
here?
Lots of strong feelings. It was never self-evidently obvious to me
that spreadsheets, word processors and other application types would
benefit from the same basic UI. MSFT seems intent on taking this to
absurd extremes. Also, if MSFT can adict Office users to the ribbon
UI, and since it won't license the ribbon UI to any direct
competitors, and since Lotus Development Corp. vs Mosaic Software and
Paperback Software International is still operative law in the US,
potential competitors may not be able to clone the ribbon's look &
feel, MSFT is further cementing its monopoly, er, competitive
advantage by forcing the ribbon on Office users.
The ribbon may be better for GRAPHICAL tasks like selecting themes,
but it's less reading bits of text on different lines spread all
across the screen than it is reading a list (which is what Classic
menu entries are). That means the ribbon is not better for all tasks,
and it's certainly not better for more advanced users of previous
versions. However, it meets MSFT's goal of crushing what little
competition there still is quite nicely.
