And it’s bad. Kind of.

Even though a few weeks ago I was praising Microsoft for reworking Windows’ copy/paste UI and adding new functionality to it, they went overboard with reworks and added a “streamlined” command bar (ribbon style) that looks like this.

Yes, it’s that large, and yes, those percentages show how often people use the commands.

Of course, I’m not a user interface expert by any means, but some of that stuff seems awfully big for the usage it gets. I’m looking at you, “new folder” button. Was it really necessary to put a huge button for a function hardly anyone uses?

What saves the new menu bar, though, is the fact that Microsoft was smart enough to add an option allowing users to minimize its footprint.

Doesn’t look that horrible minimized, right? In fact, it looks a lot like the old bar Windows XP had, which wasn’t too bad. Even so, the command bar doesn’t have a reason to be there in the first place. Not because I would never use it myself, but because according to Microsoft’s own research this is how people invoke commands in Windows Explorer.

The telemetry data here shows that 54.5% of commands are invoked using a right-click context menu, and another 32.2% are invoked using keyboard shortcuts (“Hotkey” above) while only 10.9% come from the Command bar, the most visible UI element in Explorer in Windows 7 and Vista. With greater than 85% of command usage being invoked using a method other than the primary UI, there was clearly an opportunity to improve the Explorer user experience to make it more effective—more visible and uniformly accessible.  While context menus are convenient, the features in them can be overlooked if you don’t condition yourself to “search” via a context menu for the feature (a well-known challenge with the mechanism).

Combined, the menu bar and the command bar represent less than 15% of the total command usage, and yet they’re receiving the greatest deal of attention. Does that make sense from a usability standpoint? It doesn’t.

Hotkeys and context menus are infinitely more efficient than a large command bar sitting at the top of your screen. Hotkeys require no additional mouse movement, allowing users to complete tasks in the quickest possible way, and the context menu requires only minimal mouse movement. And if the clunky UI gets less than half the use of hotkeys, that doesn’t mean it’s because nobody sees it. It means hotkeys are a superior command entry point and the command bar is bloat.

Maybe it’s just me, but I hate how they messed up the clean UI of 7 and planted all sorts of small buttons all over. Even if I was a beginner, I would be probably be intimidated by that overwhelming monstrosity. Plus, I have nothing but hate for the ribbon bar. If I wanted to look at Office, I’d run Office.

via blogs.msdn

Having YouTube’s one hundred billion monthly pageviews isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Facebook’s estimated 1 trillion pageviews.

Despite Google’s attempt to introduce a new service on the social media market and grab their own piece of the social pie, Facebook continues to grow. Google’s latest rough estimates say the social site is now getting around one trillion hits per month, with YouTube and Yahoo following shyly in the distance.

Obviously, Google’s Plus can’t hope to compete with Facebook’s pageviews at this point since it’s still a relatively small, invite-only beta service, but that’s not the issue here. The problem is Google Plus has lost its shininess and people are already losing interest in it (myself included). Figures released by this guy say traffic to Google Plus has dropped 37% in the past 18 days. Now, I don’t know how accurate that traffic analysis is, but even if the drop is only 15% instead of 37, that’s still a drop, and quite a significant one at that.

Personally, I’d love to use Google Plus instead of Facebook, because I trust Google more than I trust Facebook, but at this point Plus doesn’t bring enough new stuff to the table to warrant a switch. The simple circle design is cool, but not cool enough to be essential. So unless the final version of Google Plus will have features that will make me and others wonder how we lived without them for so long, its downward trend will probably continue – while Facebook will get even more users and pageviews.

It would be a shame if Plus tanked, though, because it has so much potential.

As you all probably know by now, the US East Coast was hit by Hurricane Irene over the weekend. This is only a fraction of the blessing devastation it left behind.

Anonymous, the infamous internet group responsible for 97% of all internet truth and justice, has recently realized that in addition to those things they’ve also been Time Warner’s bitches and helped consolidate the company’s bottom line.

You see, when Warner Brothers released V for Vendetta in 2006, they acquired the rights to the image of the Guy Fawkes mask. That means they receive a licensing fee every time someone purchases a Guy Fawkes mask.

Initially that wasn’t a very profitable revenue stream for them because there aren’t many mask buffs around, but that changed in 2008 when Anonymous adopted the mask as its symbol and made it one of the most popular masks in the world.

Now, sure, it’s just a shitty $6 mask, it can’t possibly be earning Time Warner too much money. Well, “We sell over 100,000 of these masks a year, and it’s by far the best-selling mask that we sell,” said Howard Beige, executive vice president of Rubie’s Costume, a New York costume company that produces the mask.

Even if Time Warner receives only $.50 for every mask that is sold, that’s $50,000 just from one NY company. It may not be a significant part of their $28 billion revenue, but it’s still something. And it’s all thanks to Anonymous’ evil-fighting efforts. lal