> > Your idea of a "ribbon" turned into a "sidebar" by 90° rotation
> > imho is nothing else than the revival of the old (pre-Windows)
> > Lotus 1-2-3 menu system. Pulldown-menus (and dialog boxes) are a
> > far more advanced concept. Besides the issues with screenspace.
> >
> > A concept that could be a *lot* more useful imho would be to allow
> > tearing off individual (sub-)menus and placing them as floating (or
> > docked if the user prefers that) "toolboxes" next to the workspace.
> > See typical graphics software or e.g. RagTime. When I was working in
> > RagTime (or FrameMaker, but that was more than a decade ago), all I
> > had on-screen besides the document itself and the pull-down menubar
> > above were the listboxes with character and paragraph styles and
> > very few other floating palettes.
>
> Hmmm, that sounds interesting. To be honest, I liked the image I
> picked, but I think that when starting, it makes sense to consider
> other designs. If it turns out you don't want a "radically different
> toolbar", then my proposal is a bad idea.
In fact what must be absolutely avoided is to create several different
parallel GUIs ("toolbars" vs. pull-down menus) for the same
functionality. If the "primary" GUI is not ergonomic then fix it. Don't
add another, redundant GUI, this is just confusing.
Use only pull-down menus, but allow them to be torn off as floating or
docked palettes, at the choice of the user. Allow menu items to be text,
icons or any combination of both (icons only is a toolbar then). Allow
the menu contents to be edited by the user. Allow for definition of
shurtcuts for all menu items by users, so that the complete GUI can be
entirely used without ever using the mouse, which is important for
proficient users.
Get rid of those idiotic redundant "assistants", "wizards" or whatever
they are called, since they are just yet another parallel redundant
GUI. Instead, restructure menus and dialog boxes to make them more
ergnomic.
A truely ergonomic GUI is necessarily visually spartanic.
Application GUIs are work tools that have to follow the rules of
ergonomics.
They are *NOT* fashion objects.
Sincerely,
Wolfgang
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