This is my first post regarding the current development work being done on CTX, hopefully you will find it a useful insight into where the software is going and use the opportunity to add your thoughts and comments.
If you are using Microsoft Office 2007 you will probably already know all out the Ribbon, however for those of you who are not familier with it already its worth a bit of explanation.
The Ribbon is a replacement for Toolbars and Menus in windows applications. The main motivation behind Microsoft coming up with the design was that they realised that despite them putting large amounts of amazing functionality into their applications hardly anyone used it ! They realised that the reason that people weren’t using this functionality was that it was buried deep inside the complex menu system and people simply couldn’t find it.
This is basically the same reason we have decided to adopt the Ribbon ! It also provides us with an opportunity to improve consistency of the over all CTX interface, as inevitably as time has gone along things have become a little fragmented. Unfortunately due to the complexities of implementing the Ribbon interface it will take a few updates before the entire application gets the ‘Ribboned’.
The first CTX window to get the ‘Ribbon Treatment’ is the new ‘Request Form’ pictured below , you will notice a number of changes to the main body of the form but these will be discussed in another post.
The new request form
The ribbon is context sensitive, removing the need for ‘Context Menus’ (right clicking) as the options become available directly on the Ribbon. In the picture below I have clicked in the ‘To box’.
Ribbon Context
We hope that using the Ribbon people will find it easier to find the functionality they need when they need it ! Looking forward to reading your comments.
Shaun
