March 03, 2005

UI rants..

Ok, so I'm working with MS Excel and I find myself doing the same operation several times in a row (as one is wont to do when creating spreadsheets).

Namely, merging a couple of cells. This particular operation entails:


  • selecting the cells to be merged
  • right-clicking to bring up a menu
  • selecting format cells
  • clicking the Merge Cells check box
  • click OK

Way annoying. Why cannot I the window system notice that this is a repetitive action and add it to my "right mouse" button menu? Say, based on the fact that I had done the entire sequence twice.

Wouldn't that be a nice advance in UI? No more dialog boxes, no more "are you sure?", or "would you like to create a macro"?

Just do it.

I would love an OS that picks up on this sort of thing. Was there ever one?

Posted by artandscience at March 3, 2005 07:04 AM
Comments

*shiver* ugh been there too many times before.

Wouldn't this be an Excel hook rather than the OS? I always had the impression that the Office range are a hotch-potch of years and years of development teams coming and going. Nobody knows the ins-and-outs of the whole package anymore and changes take so long because new functionality normally breaks some arcane procedure left over from the good old days that nobody knew about :)

Or maybe I'm just on a caffiene rush :)

Posted by: gpshewan at March 7, 2005 12:07 PM
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