> With the View tab visible in Windows Live Photo Gallery, it takes two clicks to sort your photos by tag in reverse order. In iPhoto, it takes six clicks—after you sort by keyword (three clicks), you have to reopen the View menu, click Sort Photos again, and then click Descending (three more clicks). In fact, most options on the ribbon are one or two clicks away, whereas most options using iPhoto’s pull-down menus involve a minimum of two and often three or more clicks.
What? You don't have to click on sub-meus to open them up. You just move the mouse over them and they open.
The example he gives would actually be:
* Click on "View" menu.
* Move mouse pointer down to "sort photos", then right into the submenu.
* Click on "Descending".
Is "click on submenus to open them" a Windows thing that he's doing by habit? I haven't used a Windows machine in years.
also holy crap that "ribbon" thing is a big noisy bar of colors and illegible text, sheesh. No visual hierarchy whatsoever.
Many years ago Apple introduced the click/release alternative way of choosing menu options. Old school Mac users usually still select submenus by holding the mouse button down and sliding right. The volume control is a good example; I do it with a single dragging click, others (especially switchers) would do it with two.
The multiclick menu selection is useful for long scrolling menus, such as font lists. Click, release, type first letters, then click again.
Don't forget that the ribbon expands and collapses its individual blocks dynamically based on how big the window currently is, thus switching around the look and position of menu items (at least in Office, it does that). That can make re-finding 'menu' items painful.
In general, I applaud the idea of unifying the menu bar and the tool bar into a 'ribbon'. That said, many programs do not need much menu interaction at all. In that case, the ribbon just looks noisy (explorer 8).
I wonder if the resizing behaviour was based on data about the amount of time Windows users run programs in any state other than maximized - if they have the program window maximized (or manually dragged to fill the monitor) 99.9% of the time, then they'll almost always see the Ribbon in the same state. Of course, this could lead to user confusion when they move to a new computer with a different resolution (whether upgrading, switching between desktop and laptop, or using a friend's/library/work/etc) and the Ribbon they're used to has been replaced by something completely different...
What? You don't have to click on sub-meus to open them up. You just move the mouse over them and they open.
The example he gives would actually be:
Is "click on submenus to open them" a Windows thing that he's doing by habit? I haven't used a Windows machine in years.also holy crap that "ribbon" thing is a big noisy bar of colors and illegible text, sheesh. No visual hierarchy whatsoever.