User Interface Blog

A new JDK update - JDK 1.5 Update 5 - has been released.

Microsoft presented the new user interface design (code-named “ribbon”) of Office 12 at the Professional Developer Conference (PDC) 2005. Look at the screen shots or watch a video with Julie Larson-Green - group program manager for the Office User Experience at Microsoft.

With Office 12 Microsoft introduced a new user interface (UI) design and I think it is a big step forward for the Office usability. They have introduced a more visual grouping of the available functionality, since menu bars and tool bars are replaced with the ribbon which is the only place to look for commands. Other key features of the new user interface design are “galleries” which give you a visual representation of the formatting choices and “Super Tooltips” which tighter integrates the help topics. The “Quick Launch Toolbar” allows you to customize the UI by adding commands to a toolbar. This new user interface is added to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and the authoring part of Outlook.

Should this user interface used as an application model? Julie Larson-Green said in an interview that the design is chosen cause of the huge amount of available functionality (Word 1.0 had 100 commands and Word 2003 now has 1,500 commands) in the Office package and she also noted that

“It’s important to note that the new UI is not intended to be a general-purpose application model. It’s not a replacement for menus and toolbars for all applications. There’s nothing wrong with menus and toolbars. It’s just that our powerful authoring applications have lots of commands, so we needed a different model –a higher-level way of presenting commands.”

But when should you choose such a UI design for your own applications - only when having a huge set of available commands in it? Is this really more usable than the separation of menu bars and tool bars? Can it be easily used for novice and expert users?

Personally I really like the design of the new Office 12 and can’t wait to test it. Have a look at the new Office 12 and share your opinions.

(more images…)

Google launched a blog search at http://blogsearch.google.com/.

frogDesign is well known for its influential design work - Sony Trinitron TV, the Apple IIC computer, Logitech’s Interface and Branding, SUN SparcStation, SAP user interface, to name only a few of their great designs.

Luke Williams from frogDesign has published an interesting article about design through design language.