The second and final part of my interview of Matt Stein has now been published on the Cadalyst site. There were some other questions I would have liked Matt to answer, but some unfortunate logistical problems prevented that from happening. Never mind, I guess it ended up plenty long enough anyway!
I have really been giving the Ribbon and Menu Browser an honest effort over the past few weeks (my menubar is OFF and NO toolbars are visible) – but it is virtually unusable.
It is so slow to react to mouse clicks. Sometimes, mouse clicks are just ignored. So after waiting 3-4 seconds, you have to start over. The MB is especially frustrating.
I still fail to see how the combination of these two items (Ribbon and Menu Browser) offer any advantages over a set of pull-down menus and a few toolbars.
The entire “Real-estate awareness” paragraph is just fluff. Tools take up space, period. The ribbon, when fully collapsed, takes up the same amount of space as a nice set of pull down menus. When I want to use a tool on the Ribbon, it pops down. When I want to use a tool in a pull-down menu (in 2008 for example), it pops down. Both vanish when I am done choosing the tool.
If other users like the Ribbon and MB, that is fine, but the rest of us should not be subjected to the performance hit if we would rather use the pre-2009 UI, which is not even completely achievable (i.e. mandatory color schemes -> light/dark, and the Big Red “A”)
Based on your blog posts I expected a lot of tough questions, but the interview has none. It is a fluff piece advertising the most disappointing versions of AutoCAD since R13 fiasco.
“velo”, I’ll respond to your comment with a full blog post.