e-Novels vs. e-References
It's funny; when people first started talking about ebooks, there was a feeling that they'd catch on more for reference books than casual reading, that it woulkd take a long time for newfangled gadgetry to make inroads on the comfortable, traditional feel of curling up with a good book
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At work, I have to contend with our in-house proprietary software, which has an interface most generously described as "quirky" (and more accurately as "sloppy" and "inconsistent"). It has multiple modules for various work operations, and frequently, common tasks that you need to do in multiple modules will be accessed in COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAYS from module to module. "No, no, on this screen, you have to RIGHT CLICK to do that ... no, not in this column, in THAT one."
I also just upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2010 this week (hooray, I'm only four years behind now!). I am adjusting to "The Ribbon" better than I thought I would, though I still resent the amount of screen real estate it takes up to do the same thing as the sleek, narrow button bars of earlier versions.
In the case of Office, I've had a couple of moments of "Where did you put this function that I use all the time? Wait, 'Paste Special' is now a KEYBOARD SHORTCUT instead of a nested menu function? I LOVE YOU GUYS!"
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However in AUTOCAD, which has hundreds and hundreds of commands, it's just silly. Blocks of icons are fine for those oft-used commands. But for the rest of them, ones that you use once a week, month.. year, a list with a short description is what you want. In fact, many commands simply aren't in the ribbon at all unless you add them yourself. So the fact is that with the ribbon I find myself using the GUI less and the CUI more. That sounds like a failure of a GUI to me.
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