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The Perils of CRIMPing
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Posted by Paul Korm
Jun 15, 2015 at 06:29 PM
Ken wrote
> we are moving to Office 365/Office 2013 tomorrow
Just in time for Office 365 2015 ;-)
Posted by Ken
Jun 15, 2015 at 08:57 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
Ken wrote
>> we are moving to Office 365/Office 2013 tomorrow
>
>Just in time for Office 365 2015 ;-)
Like many large organizations, we are always a bit late to the upgrade party.
—Ken
Posted by Ken
Jun 23, 2015 at 03:25 PM
Well, they “upgraded” our Office 2010 to 2013 and are starting to integrate our system into Office 365, and all I can say is “Yuck!”. I find Office 2013 to be quite harsh on the eyes with it’s “look I can be as minimalistic as any Apple OS” approach. I understand that some things needed to be changed for tablet and cloud use, but so many of the changes seem to be cosmetic, and they are certainly not a UI improvement IMHO. I complained that Asana had too little negative space, and I now have to say that Office 2013 has too much negative space. Many of my visual cues (colors and/or icons) have been replaced by stark white backgrounds and a monolithic font. Except of course in Outlook where the message header now has the senders name in a huge font that takes up more space than you can imagine. My advice is to check out Office 2013 on the PC before upgrading (if you have the choice). Just not my cup of tea, and I can only wait until we get firmly entrenched in SharePoint online. Can somebody find me my circa 1984 128k Mac please? I’m feeling a bit of whiplash from the fast pace of “progress”.
—Ken
Posted by Dr Andus
Jun 25, 2015 at 06:34 PM
Ken wrote:
>I find Office 2013 to be quite harsh on the eyes
>Many of my
>visual cues (colors and/or icons) have been replaced by stark white
>backgrounds and a monolithic font.
I completely agree with your sentiments, it’s like trekking on the North Pole. I have both Office 2010 and 2013 on my system (Win7, x64), but I never use 2013 for the reasons you mention, plus the infamous blurry font problem. It’s a software product that millions of people around the world have to spend their entire days staring at, yet MS can’t be bothered to make that visually bearable.
For these reasons I refuse to use any software for writing that’s harsh on the eye or doesn’t allow me to easily set up my own permanent colour schemes.
Posted by Ken
Jun 26, 2015 at 03:22 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>I completely agree with your sentiments, it’s like trekking on the North
>Pole. I have both Office 2010 and 2013 on my system (Win7, x64), but I
>never use 2013 for the reasons you mention, plus the infamous blurry
>font problem. It’s a software product that millions of people around the
>world have to spend their entire days staring at, yet MS can’t be
>bothered to make that visually bearable.
>
>For these reasons I refuse to use any software for writing that’s harsh
>on the eye or doesn’t allow me to easily set up my own permanent colour
>schemes.
That is a great description! I can somewhat tolerate this type of UI on a small tablet or phone where the environment is a bit more confined and my use time is limited, but it concerns me that MS took to this route as well for their desktop environment. I would love to know if there is any research backing up this type of UI, or is it just a design refresh for marketing purposes? It is a bit concerning that the first generation of GUI focused so heavily on standardization, and now the trend among so many companies is to keep recreating and changing their UI, as if change is good just for the sake of change. I hit icon overload quite some time ago, and am more inclined to not upgrade to “new” products unless it really makes sense. There are only so many commands and icons that I can remember, especially with programs that are not used on a daily basis, especially when I am working with devices that run three different OS’s, two of which rely on my fingers for navigation and selection.
—Ken