Friday, October 14, 2005 - Fri, 14 Oct 2005

I was reading the Sept 19th issue of eWeek magazine (yes, I’m several weeks behind in my reading) and there was an interesting article on the new user interface to accompany Microsoft’s Office Version 12. Specifically, it was the new “ribbon” that intrigued me. It is designed to replace the set of task panes, menus and tool bars in previous versions of Office. It is a radical change, but one intending to emphasize Microsoft’s goal to become more task-oriented rather than command-oriented - something I very much believe in.

I’ve have in my plans to add some sort of “task panes” to Behold in Version 2.0 to aid in the entry of the various types of events, dates, places, people, notes, etc. But I’ve never really liked the way Microsoft implemented task panes in Office. Instead, this new “ribbon” concept might be closer to what I’m looking for to make proper genealogical data entry efficient and obvious. I’ll see where this takes me as I develop my concepts as I approach Version 2.

If you want a few links to get an idea what I’m talking about, see Microsoft Office 12’s Radical New Look and before you prejudge it, read: Office 12 Ribbon Screenshots and Impressions of Office 12.