The Revit 2010 user interface changes provoked some pretty strong reaction and, in turn, reactions to the reaction.
Although not alone in his opinion Phil Read, on his Arch | Tech blog, was one of the leaders in the anti-ribbon campaign. He even created a T Shirt featuring the “secret” command to revert to the old “classic” UI The (over)reaction came in the form of his classes at AU being dropped which was something I opposed on my blog and more directly. I wasn’t alone in that and eventually sanity prevailed. Phil appeared at AU2009 with a session on “Insanely Great Stairs”, another on Film & Stage design using Revit.
I actually like the ribbon UX and would rather tolerate the flaws in the new Revit UI over the old one. It’s not perfect but I think the contextual ribbon has far more potential to cope with future development than the old UI. Maybe it’s also because I don’t spend my life in Revit with a typical day involving half a dozen applications (inc Revit Arch & MEP), nearly all with Fluent UI interfaces.
For me the Revit change was more about failing into line rather than a new world to be conquered. Yes it needs work, the last update helped a bit, and perhaps some form of personalisation but I’m firmly in the “improve it and don’t go back” camp.
While watching Jason Howden presenting Revit MEP at Revit User Group Auckland I has an idea for an anti use2009UI=1 shirt and scribbled this (right) on Sketchbook Mobile. I knew I would see Phil at AU so a SnagIt of the real ribbon and bit of CorelDraw’ing later resulted in:
I presented a shirt to Phil to wear with pride, or otherwise as he likes, but didn’t get a photo. Fortunately I corrected omission that last week a bit closer to home. Maybe I should follow Phil into the T Shirt business but for now there are only a few of these. I know one made it “Inside The Factory”!