J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

More Ribbon-Based Apps

Today I installed two apps from Windows Live Essentials (beta): Mail (an email client) and Writer (a blog posting app). The apps in this product all sport a new Ribbon interface. I was familiar with both of these apps, so I was curious to see how the Ribbon improves them.

In my opinion, neither of these products was really in need of a new interface. They worked fine, and there was no hint of the menu/toolbar overload problem that plagued the pre-2007 Office apps. So, this seems to be a case of adding a Ribbon for the sake of adding a Ribbon.

Overall, I'd say that usability was not improved at all. In fact, both of these apps now seem more cluttered, and I'm forced to look at icons that I didn't have to look at before.  And, apart from the Quick Access Toolbar, no customization is allowed. I also found that some of my old keyboard shortcuts no longer work -- but maybe that will be fixed in the final version.

As much as I like the Ribbon UI in Office, the changes I see in these two apps add nothing at all.

Windows Live Essentials is free, so there's no basis for complaining to Microsoft.

Update: It's even worse. The main reason I've been using Windows Live Mail (and previously Outlook Express) is that it's very easy to insert boilerplate text into an email message. But guess what? That feature has been removed from the Mail app in Windows Live Essentials. I can understand why Microsoft would do update with no new features so they can implement the Ribbon UI. But why would they remove features? Fortunately, Windows Restore got rid of this mess, and I'm back to a version that's usable and not so ugly.

- Reader Comments -

(No comments have been posted for this item.)