Forum Discussion
Outlook 365 Ribbon, etc
The ribbon on Outlook 365 looks different after a restart this morning. For example rather than a X (cross) for Delete it now a symbol of a rubbish bin. Also other symbols have changed on the ribbon ...
Come on. It’s not THAT bad or different. You guys are over reacting a little bit. But same thing happened with the ribbon design. People will get used to it and move on. Everyone had their own opinion. I personally like the changes.
What bothers me is that all icons feel the same, they all are black and white on top of a very bright / pale grey background. Thin lines and a very very simplistic design, almost sterile. You know what came to my mind when I fist saw it??
- Spot on. Office 365 ribbon icons are retrograde in both visual appeal and recognisability.
Take the 'Archive' button for instance - how would anyone who doesn't remember what the old icon looks like know that it's supposed to look like an Archive box? It looks like a USB plug. It would make most young people think it means "Archive to a USB".
The Meeting icon looks just like the Archive icon except it has an arrow on it. But what does that arrow mean?
Is anyone who doesn't remember the old 'anything do with people or personal profile' icons going to know that the various icons with a circle and a curve on it is meant to be a depiction of a person?
The better display and graphics processing and display technology gets, the more they want to force Mac Plus style icons on us, which in those days were only used because of system limitations.
Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that all tech manufacturers are enacting a project along with others to induce more will for people to just "get used to things and move on" in order to feel less inclined to try and express their views, and to make it clear their views won't be listened to - whilst as the younger generation comes in, reducing their visual imagination by giving them hardly any decent visual cues to ignite it, and to temper and fetter any imagination or appreciation of visual appeal that they may have (and also to hamper visual comprehension) but reducing the semantic content of screen elements like icons to the barest minimum possible.
Remember, MS have spent a LOT of time and effort taking all visual appeal and comprehensiveness out of their interfaces, it's nothing to do with being more efficient. Plus they make sweeping changes with no promotion or warning - they unleash it by stealth, only letting the developer and tech communities in on it with their never-ending stream of Roadmap updates, which the average user neither wants nor should care about, because their most-used products shouldn't need to be changing 3 times a week. If it does need to be changed that often, something is obviously very wrong. When I saw the primitive icons, I thought it was a technical fault, as if it had reverted to some archaic form of Office. As they say, "s**t happens", and in this case, it's happened.
