Through the Interface

6 responses to “Colours to use for contextual ribbon tabs in AutoCAD”

1. 

   James M

   January 5, 2012 at 9:41 pm

   Kean, can you say you like the ribbon interface?
   I still have not found it the right balance for any program in any situation.
   I thought it would be good for learning, but I think pulldowns make better mechanisms to look for commands. I thought it might be good for everyday use, but it wastes space compared to other things, and is visually awkward when you look up and do not see the command you want, then have to pick through the tabs to pick out the right command picture with your eyes. Its two searching operations instead of one compared to pulldowns. I still use acad toolbars when i do want a visual set of buttons, and I limit them to three rows. I type regular editing commands so my wrist tendons do not fall to pieces like button picking with the mouse will do. I'm just seeing more effort plugged into the ribbon when it seems like the old toolbar and pulldown items should be incorporated somehow. It might look cool for a bit when doing demos, but anyone I know that over-uses toolbar type drawing habits, comes to work with those black wrist thingy's on their right hand wrist. they get little sympathy from me and I fell like Autodesk is encouraging such habits.

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2. 

   Kean Walmsley

   January 5, 2012 at 9:57 pm

   I actually can say I like the ribbon, but then I'm not a power-user of our software: for my purposes it's great - it makes our various products much more discoverable when I have to dip into them and use the odd command.

   And contextual ribbon tabs are pretty powerful when you want in-command input, I also find.

   I've seen other people sharing your opinion, though: thankfully the classic UI is available for those who prefer it.

   Kean

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3. 

   James M

   January 6, 2012 at 12:24 am

   yah, I will keep looking at it for advantages, it does seem like a good idea on paper at least.
   On this same subject, you are playing with the kinect as an input device, I wonder what other kinds of input devices would be realistic to look at.
   Now that there is the netduino device, I bet we could come up with various sensors and switches to help minimize hand input. In particular, I use the middle mouse button click to pull up the osnap menu, then type E for endpoint mnmonic. You can do all that without moving the mouse from where you will click, so its super fast. Running osnaps are worthless on civil drawings with any amount of xrefs...anyway, just finding an alternate way to issue the middle mouse button click would be major. Maybe a foot pedal, since I tap my foot to music a lot. Any ideas since you see lots of other software?

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4. 

   Kean Walmsley

   January 6, 2012 at 10:35 pm

   I haven't personally seen anything that beats the middle mouse button, but then lots of heads-down drafters/designers swear by devices such as the SpaceMouse.

   It has to be said that the Human-Computer Interaction space is one that appears to be on the brink of rapid evolution, though.

   Kean

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5. 

   James

   January 8, 2012 at 8:57 am

   I thought about this a bit, and think foot pedal input is not so great. It would fatigue your legs. The far better solution is voice input. I wonder how .net could help there.

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6. 

   Kean Walmsley

   January 8, 2012 at 1:15 pm

   I used speech via Kinect (but only really because it has microphones, though) for these posts:

   keanw.com/2011/11/adding-speech-recognition-to-autocad-via-kinect.html
   keanw.com/2011/11/adding-speech-recognition-to-autocad-via-kinect-continued.html

   Kean

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