Microsoft Windows president Steven Sinofsky on Friday defended controversial changes to the Windows Explorer 8 interface recently revealed on the company’s Windows 8 blog.
The bulk of the criticism focused on Microsoft’s decision to install the ribbon interface – the big button shortcuts for common commands implemented in the latest versions of Office’s menu bar – into the operating system’s folder and file navigation interface. The announcement spawned over 1,100 comments on the blog post (no previous post had more than 600), in addition to countless articles and tweets around the web.
“We chose the ribbon mechanism, and to those that find that a flawed choice, there isn’t much we can do other than disagree” Sinofsky wrote on the Windows 8 blog.
Though he didn’t cite statistics, Sinofsky acknowledged that Microsoft knows that “a very small set of people remain unhappy.”
At that outset of the blog post, Sinofsky promised that Microsoft would have constructive conversations with the community of Windows users and make “thoughtful changes” if his team deemed them necessary. But some are skeptical.
"The rumors are that [Windows 8] will be released in early 2012," said Mike Silver an analyst at Gartner. "By this time, and with the Build Conference coming up, most of these features are likely already baked. They simply can't change them now."
It’s worth noting that the initial goal of the site was to engage developers receiving pre-release copies of the operating system. In addition, those that follow a Windows developer’s blog or have strong opinions on the finer points of user interface are likely “power users” and would want something different than the casual Windows user. The power users’ voice may be loud now, but many not want what the average user needs.
According to Sinofsky, the usage patterns of each group are changing. Power users primarily used shortcut keyboard commands in the past, while casual users relied on buttons to navigate Explorer. But Microsoft now sees a reversal of these two trends.
