Windows keeps the Start button, taskbar and system tray at the bottom of the display and a menubar in every window. Mac OS X keeps one main menubar at the top of the display, with a 'dock' of larger icons that take the place of the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the display. Linux, for the most part, seems to prefer the Windows UI, typically using a taskbar-like system with menubars again in every window, but through the power of Open Source, you can do just about anything you want to the Linux UI to make it feel more like home. Some people find one approach more useful, while others prefer a different side of the fence. While the debate surrounding one's OS preference isn't showing any signs of subsiding, we thought it might be useful to offer at least a little insight and theory into why some fundamentals of Mac OS X are designed so differently.

One of the basic principles that informs the Mac OS X menubar is something called Fitts' Law, which I first learned about from John Gruber of Daring Fireball in a post here. To keep things brief, however, I'll just quote a short introduction from the Wikipedia:

In ergonomics, Fitts' law is a model of human movement, predicting the time required to rapidly move from a starting position to a final target area, as a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. Fitts' law is used to model the act of pointing, both in the real world, for example, with a hand or finger and on computers, for example, with a mouse.

To summarize: Fitts' Law is about how far you have to travel to hit a target, and how easy that target is to hit. Apple implemented these concepts (and I'm sure plenty of others) when designing their menubar by pinning it to the very top of the display, not only from a hierarchal standpoint (you can always look to the very top left of your display to find out exactly which app you're in), but also from a 'make it easy as possible to hit this' perspective. You can simply fling your mouse 'up' and you're at the menubar; even if you click on the very top-most pixel above File, Edit or Help, you'll still hit that menu item and activate it. It's a seemingly minor detail, but one that can help quite a bit during one's daily computing.

This concept is also present in other major OS interfaces, such as the Windows Start button; fling your mouse 'down and left', click and you'll hit the One Button to Rule Them All. Mac OS X's Apple and Spotlight menus also function the same way: fling your mouse 'up and to the left', click in the furthest pixel up there and you'll activate the Apple menu; 'up and to the right', and you're in Spotlight.

If anything, the main point we want to get across is that there is typically a lot of theory that goes into the design of an OS and how users interact with it. We might not always agree with the approach taken by one camp or another, but at least people are thinking about this stuff, because even in 2007, computers still aren't that intuitive to some users who have yet to hop on board the digital train. The more thought, consistency and intuitiveness OS engineers design into our software, the easier it will be for everyone to come along for the ride, no matter what side of the car they're sitting on.

Has anyone noticed that the Ribbon in Office 2007 does not extend to all Office programs? Publisher doesn't have it, as well as some other programs. It seems that Microsoft only saw fit to include in the most loved and used applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. I can't help but brace for the fallout from users. First Microsoft tries to build a "zero-learning-curve" model into their new office suite, hoping that users will find it easier to use and eliminate much of the complexity of the system, which is quite noble, then they don't include it in all the suite's applications? I don't see such a unified front and integrated user experience this time around that Microsoft is always so long-winded about. So this was motivated not by customers' needs or the need for one interface, but by rising costs, looming deadlines, and putting out fires during development? In my x-ray vision, I see far into the future and can't help but wonder if this will help Google (and others) spell doom for at least a good sized portion of Microsoft's cash-cow business? There is already a ton of speculation that Vista will be the last operating system to be released by Microsoft (as far as we know the traditional OS) because the web is now becoming more important than ever. I am hearing that Google's online apps will also spell disaster for Microsoft, perhaps in the next decade or so. Do I agree? Well, the jury is still cherry-picking their favorites, so to speak. I have used Google's apps extensively, including docs and spreadsheets, and I must say that I would rather use Google to get the job done and never have to mess with Office, and I am a long time Office lover. If Microsoft wasn't the standard for everything it wouldn't be hard to find other avenues that suit me just fine (as I have found already). Is the selectively programmed ribbon this important, and will it start the downward climb for our dearly beloved Microsoft? It isn't that deep and probably won't matter to most people. We will either adapt to the multi-mode confusion, use something else, or get over it, but my point is that Microsoft increasingly lets quality and the integrity of their offerings go by the wayside. In addition, I think Microsoft must get on the web-based band-wagon before they are run over by online suites of prey. Desktop office software is a dying breed, as you can tell by looking at the marketplace and the fast-moving mass adoption of many online suites now used in addition to or in place of Office. Microsoft needs to crack the whip and get into the game while there is still time. It has been quite shocking to watch them slowly lose their stranglehold. It is a whole new world today.

So you're a software developer and want your program to have a shiny "ribbon" interface just like Office 2007? Well, guess what--Microsoft patented the hell out of it! This should not surprise anybody. However, there is good news for developers, or some of them, at least. Microsoft has announced that it has "created a royalty-free licensing program that will enable developers to build applications that have the look and feel of the new 2007 Office system applications." The license is perpetual, meaning once Microsoft grants you the license it can't turn around and revoke or change it later on. However there are, as you might imagine, some "guidelines" Microsoft wants you to follow when building your own ribbony apps, and they take the form of a 120-page document. Though the deal sounds largely positive for software developers, there is one significant catch: Microsoft won't license their ribbon UI patents for products that compete directly with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access. This is a sensible move for Microsoft, but a bummer for the makers of competing products who stand a lot to gain from making products that look and act just like the dominant office suite in the marketplace.

You can check out the press release and a canned interview about the new licensing program at the link above, but I heartily recommend you skip it and instead head over to Jensen Harris' blog. Harris is Microsoft's Group Program Manager for the Office UI and lays everything out in plain English. He also links to a preview of the guidelines (you have to sign an NDA to get at the full 120-page document) and a Channel 9 video in which he talks to Microsoft laywer Judy Jennison about the program.

Yahoo! has released "a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, HTML and AJAX" and they're calling it the Yahoo! User Interface Library. Included in the library are components for animation, DOM manipulation, event handling, animation, and AJAX, as well as a a few widgets like Calendar and TreeView. It's distributed under the open source BSD license, and there's also a new blog to accompany it: The Yahoo! User Interface Blog.

[Via Simon Willison]