> Just one thing, I miss the button to go to the parent directory!
I kinda miss that too. But since they at least mimicked GNOME's beautiful button-based address bar, I won't complain about that.
> First of all, I'm quite sure that you can disable that functionality in Windows 7.
I'd hope so. Fortunately, it's my mother's computer, so I don't have to worry about that.
> Second of all, what you claim is an "ambiguity" is actually not ambiguous at all. Mac's windowing system...
Yes, yes. But on XP and Vista, I knew what I was getting intuitively when I clicked a button. On Mac and 7, I'm still not sure what I'll get when I click things. I despise having to go to File->New Window in things, though it is nice that Mac does simulate an MDI and bring -all- the Windows to front when you click the icon, instead of making you select one like 7. Also, alt-tab has been pain-in-the-assified on 7.
> So it doesn't inherit ambiguity. It inherited a feature from Mac that was part of a coherent whole and shoved it onto a different paradigm, introducing that ambiguity. (Kind of like what you do when you try to combine GM and C++.)
> I can't quite understand what you're saying with the extremely poorly written ... I would say that the ribbon interface makes things more consistent and easy to find than the old drop-down menu + toolbars paradigm, and trying to switch back to it is a silly idea.
You just didn't stare at it long enough. Furthermore, if they actually had enough software that I was still forced to use in that shitty selection of theirs, it would seem more fitting for them all to have ribbons. My first thought when I saw Paint was that they were finally catching other programs up with Word. Problem is, 95% of the programs I use stick with the "File | Edit..." style menus. Not to mention that catching others up with Word isn't necessarily a good thing; Word often makes it fuck-impossible to find anything; I never had that problem before. At least Paint doesn't have enough features to really get lost in it. One nice thing about the ribbons was being easily extended as you work, so it doesn't have to show all that shit at once. Of course, try finding that shit if you need it when the program doesn't know you do...