Matt Stein is a senior product designer for the AutoCAD Team and was the key member of the AutoCAD 2009 User Interface “UI” redesign. Steve Johnson of Cadalyst Magazine (happy 25th anniversary by the way) is posting a two part interview with Matt on the what, where, and why of the new ribbon interface.
Although Steve is a wee bit set in his own past blogged opinions on the ribbon, he served up an unbiased line of questioning for Matt. Matt went in depth in the current part one of the article and it is a nice look inside the decision process and intentions of the ribbon.
Steve beat me to this as I had during the beta spoke with Matt about doing something along this line of under the hood of the ribbon and tips and tricks and making the leap. In the rush to take my sabbatical I left this on the back burner and luckily Steve had the same thought and has done a great job. Thanks Steve.
The cool thing about the ribbon is you can customize it more than the Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon and if you are not comfortable yet with the ribbon can change to the AutoCAD Classic Workspace to see a non ribbon AutoCAD 2009, but give the ribbon a chance as it will be a common Windows application UI for most applications and help unify Autodesk applications to look similar instead of dramatically different with each application. As with any Autodesk product if you want your input and be involved in helping to determine the future of Autodesk products, just sign up at http://myfeedback.autodesk.com and participate in projects, surveys, interviews, and betas.
Cheers,
Shaan
(today was my last day of sabbatical…)
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