It appears nobody is taking ownership of application menus within Windows 7

I’ve been a Windows user and fan since 3.1 and each new release gets me excited as the operating system is where I spend the majority of my life, being as a am a full time web developer.

So with each new release I look forward to seeing how my life will become more interesting, more fun and, crucially, easier. Even outside of my job I use my PC to organise most aspects of my life. It is vital I am able to breeze through the various workflows that form my daily and weekly routines.

Of vital importance is how I interact with programs within Windows, specifically how I issue commands, call up functions and configuration. This is the lifeblood of a program and I shall refer to it as “menuing”.

For me, menus need to be readily accessible. They need to be navigatable and allow me to issue commands with minimum fuss and few clicks. I have always been a fan of the traditional menubar to this end. Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent a concept because it just works. The introduction of small icons next to menu item labels was a feature that enhanced the already proven menubar, giving visual cues to the menu item command.

However, somewhere in the last 2 or 3 years Microsoft seems to have decided the traditional menubar is no good and appears to be reinventing it not just in its new operating systems but per application and this trend has continued into the Windows 7 beta build.

Just look at all these menu systems

Take a look at just a sampling of the core Windows 7 beta programs below.

Calculator. Here is a traditional menubar. This is how menus used to be for a long time. They worked and still prevail on the whole.

Here is an example of Microsoft’s new style menubar applied to Paint and above, Wordpad. It first featured in Office 10 if memory serves, or in any case the most recent Office version. The idea is not dissimilar to the traditional menubar. The tab labels represent the menu context and this then breaks down into a more pictorial representation of commands and functions available. I really like this new menubar approach but it has only been applied to Paint and Wordpad.

It does have its issues though. See how the title bar has been cluttered with icons? That’s yet another menu called the quick launch menu. It’s really quite useless and just clutters and confuses. Notice the other issue here? There is no File tab. Actually it is there but its the first tab withthe icon and no label (see below)

Why can’t this just be more simple. Here, I’ll do it for you. Get rid of the quick launch menu and return the title bar to being just that, a title bar.

Next, get rid of the File tab icon and replace it with a tab called File. Next, rename the ‘Home’ tab (what does that even mean?) to Toolbox or similar - just name it more inline with what it actually is. You will be left with a nice decluttered interface with 3 tabs, File, Toolbox and View, perhaps also you need a Help tab. Job done.

Next up it’s Internet Explorer 8. First introduced in IE 7, which promptly made me defect to Firefox forever, Microsoft introduced this little gem of a menu system. Flushed over to the right it again mixes icons and labels in illustrating what the menu does. It operates much in the same way as the traditional menubar but has its own style.

Moving onto Windows Media Player, one of my favourite applications apart from the horrific travesty of a menu system. In WMP you don’t even see anything resembling a menubar. There is a lone solitary icon that depicts nothing useful that reveals the above menu system; a floating vertically stacked hierarchial menu system. If you don’t spot that tiny icon that means nothing you are in trouble, unless you accidentally right click the blank space in the top bar which also reveals it. This is a shambles. WMP could easily benefit from the new strip style menubar.

And now onto Windows Photo Viewer. Decent enough application I suppose but check out the menubar. This one is black now, and centered. All the menus have icons and downward arrows. Another app that could benefit from the new menubar strip.

One of the worst culprits, changing with each version is Messenger. Messenger shares the same useless mechanism for finding the menu as Media Player. Just an icon which reveals a floating menu system.

And then when you have a conversation the menu changes yet again to a more traditional menubar - kind of. You still have that other menu icon to the right for all your configuration and so fourth.

This is not good enough

I understand the need to innovate, but menu systems are crucially important to the user. They form the lynchpin of interaction with our programs. An operating system must present a unified approach to menu systems so that the user is able to work efficiently.

What appears to be happening here is that nobody at Microsoft owns the concept of user interaction with programs, specifically menus.

I appreciate that programs can have many many options. I appreciate that this is not easy. I appreciate that interactions cannot all be the same for all programs. But in my view menu systems can be. There should always be a consistent menu bar fall back. If a program wishes to innovate in how the user interacts with its features within the program canvas itself, then go ahead. But stop messing with the menubar.

The new Paint and Wordpad menubars I believe are a very good evolution of the traditional menubar. In essence its the same but richer in its controls and quicker to see which commands to execute. Microsoft would do well to just choose that scheme and stick to it.

If Microsoft are scratching their heads as to how to provide a first class out of box experience to rival Macintosh, then at the very least they need to unify their own properties. Sure you can’t control 3rd party programs but you must lead by example. Right now and regrettably also in the Windows 7 beta, there is no leadership on this issue.

I sincerely hope something can be done about this before Windows 7 launches if Microsoft want Windows 7 to be an experience to really rival its competitors.