Shoutbox

What do you think it will look like? I am wondering if it will incorporate a ribbon style type interface. What do the rest of you think?

To keep in the theme of Messenger, perhaps a Metro-like interface with Segoe UI Light.

The ribbon style interface would be cool, but I think the current 'tabs' style is more in keeping with Messenger's own options panel

quote:

---

Originally posted by matty
What do you think it will look like? I am wondering if it will incorporate a ribbon style type interface. What do the rest of you think?

---

For the love of God (or Yahweh or whatever): NO RIBBON

Ribbon style is SO overrated.
Even MS has problems with the ribbon now in their new versions of software to accomodate everything. Their solution: strip out functions so they can keep the ribbon 'simple'.... DOH!

Please, please, PLEASE, do not fall for the ribbon trap and its 'slick' look. There is nothing 'slick' about a few way-oversized 'smart' buttons trying to guess what you want to do and getting it wrong or even frankly not providing the advanced feature you want, and while at it taking a quarter screen real estate with it because it needs to look 'slick'.

(and no this doesn't have anything to do with "getting used to it", not anymore)

----

This said, I don't quite see how a ribbon would work in Plus!. Plus! consists of a bunch of options. A ribbon is not designed for something like that. A ribbon is more designed for stuff like layouting and text markup, etc. It doesn't do well for providing just settings.

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised
This said, I don't quite see how a ribbon would work in Plus!. Plus! consists of a bunch of options.

---

I do like the ribbon, but I can't see Plus! using it either.
The current layout fits it perfectly, maybe just a graphic update.

I think the current design is perfectly fine, but if you really want to change it: don't go for the Ribbon interface. Even Microsoft knows that the Ribbon is not applicable to any type of program. They clearly explain it in their Ribbon UX Guide:

quote:

---

Ribbons work well for document creation and authoring programs, as well as document viewers and browsers.

---

That's why they use it for Paint, WordPad and the Office suite but not for Internet Explorer or Windows Media Player for example. It's also why it wouldn't work for the Plus! Preferences window.

Perhaps a Control Panel style interface would work better?