Firefox overtakes IE in the developed world

[Covarr]

Also, I like the ribbon. Organizing your UI by principles and logical divisions makes far more sense than 'Here's another feature, let's bury it in a Tools submenu somewhere'.

This. A million times this. The old interface was not suited to Office as it is today, it's a remnant of a time when it had far fewer features. The ribbon isn't perfect, a few things could probably stand to be in different tabs, but overall, it's easy to figure out, and laid out in a logical way. Keeping the old way because it's already there doesn't make a whole lot of sense given the reason it was that way to begin with. If the new UI were genuinely stupid, there'd be something to complain about, but dislike it just because it's different is the same mindset that keeps people on IE.

Don't turn this into "bawww, you can't cope with change". That argument is very tired and get dragged out whenever a major company f*cks up something that worked fine (I remember Youtube using it liberally when people complained about their new video page).

I don't like having to relearn everything from scratch after years of using Word just because some idiot decided that catering to a few people who have never used a word processor before was more important than catering to hundreds of millions of people who have.

Tell me, if Obama and Cameron decided tomorrow that Britain and America's national language would be Ancient Greek from now on, would you be fine with that? After all, Ancient Greek is far more logical than English. Who cares that everyone has been using English since they were born? They just can't cope with change!

Poor analogy is poor. People have been using a language their whole life, but anybody who has been using Word their whole life is still young, and will have no trouble adapting. Also, Word's UI didn't work fine before. It was clunky, and difficult to find anything if you didn't already know where it was. With each new iteration, new features were being added, and stuck wherever they'd fit with little rhyme or reason. Unlike YouTube, this wasn't a random change for the sake of change. They saw a problem, and took a step toward fixing it.

Of course, for people who really don't like the ribbon, there are ways of getting the menus back. Personally, even though I prefer the ribbon, as I suspect most new users will, I will admit that I think it was stupid not to at least have menus available as an option.

[Kudistos Megistos]

Poor analogy is poor. People have been using a language their whole life, but anybody who has been using Word their whole life is still young, and will have no trouble adapting.

People have been using Word and programs with similar menus for the whole of their computing life. Anyway, analogies don't need to bear close examination. The point is that it's stupid to force a change on people when the current system works fine, when the change only offers small benefits to a few people and when the change requires people to relearn things and renders useless the knowledge they've spent years gaining.

Also, Word's UI didn't work fine before. It was clunky, and difficult to find anything if you didn't already know where it was.

Also, the UI doesn't work fine now. It is clunky, and difficult to find anything if you don't already know where it is.

Not to mention that it's fugly. What's with all the massive titlebars nowadays? Of course, MS isn't the only one doing this; just look at Firefox 4. It's strange that as the aspect ratio of monitors is becoming wider, windows are wasting more and more vertical space. Actually, they're not wasting much more, but having tabs that are continuous with the titlebar instead of a discrete menu certainly gives the impression of masses of wasted space; I don't like seeing 100 vertical pixels of empty Aero. And the ribbon is *huge*. Why can't people put sh*t like this on the side, where there are hundreds of pixels of empty space? Or have a drop-down ribbon?

Of course, for people who really don't like the ribbon, there are ways of getting the menus back. Personally, even though I prefer the ribbon, as I suspect most new users will, I will admit that I think it was stupid not to at least have menus available as an option.

I wouldn't have complained if there were an option to use the old menus. That would be better for everyone: experienced users would get the interface they were used to and newcomers would get the interface that MS decided was more intuitive.

Unfortunately, choices aren't very popular in the computer industry nowadays. Apparently, they confuse people. Or they get in the way of progress. The current mentality is "Das ist ein improvment! Das ist progress! Ve say you vill use der new feature, und you *VILL* like it!".

I blame Apple for this. the worst thing about Apple isn't all the sh*t they do, it's that everyone else feels the need to copy them.

[JazzyG]

I use Chrome almost exclusively now because it is so fast. I also believe it is safer than Firefox, because its harder to get a virus.
The plugins available for Chrome are even better. I have less problems with Malware after switching to Chrome.  cyber defender

[Jaitsu]

i use firefox, pretty damn fast, great skins (i use bloody red, love it). its powerful and moderately speedy, and good for downloads if you get its down DownThemAll! plug-in. so of course, i'm happy for it becoming a higher grade browser in the charts eyes. as for Windows 7, i use it as well (now) and absolutely love it. looks good and i find it works for most if not everything i wanna do. i agree XP needs to go into its retirement. its been around a very long time (for an OS of windows -.-) and its time it got a "true" successor, which as its appearing at the moment to be, Windows 7.

[Tekkie.X]

I'm a Firefox man, I'm not a fan Google so using Chrome isn't gonna happen any time soon.

[Bosola]

I wouldn't have complained if there were an option to use the old menus. That would be better for everyone: experienced users would get the interface they were used to and newcomers would get the interface that MS decided was more intuitive.

Unfortunately, choices aren't very popular in the computer industry nowadays. Apparently, they confuse people. Or they get in the way of progress. The current mentality is "Das ist ein improvment! Das ist progress! Ve say you vill use der new feature, und you *VILL* like it!".

Really, it isn't. It just multiplies development time.

Debugging is a horrific process as-is.

I blame Apple for this. the worst thing about Apple isn't all the sh*t they do, it's that everyone else feels the need to copy them.

Apple *do* have a bad habit of locking down functionality (and making users pay a premium to access more) all under the aegis of 'usability'.

[Jenova's Witness]

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