I'm very glad to see that you have made Task Navigation (TN) easier to bring up. Having refined my hot-key use for the better part of a decade the thought of having to solely use the ribbon bar for all my commands gave me a nervous twitch. Hence setting MS_TASKNAVIGATION_CONFIGURATION = 1 then following the 3/4 other steps to activate it was the very first thing I looked up and ran when I installed CE. It was terrific. I was able to start playing around with the ribbon bar while still being efficiently by using TN. Happy days.
However, it now appears that you have made Task Navigation its own setting along with drawing, modelling etc. ie I can either have TN, or the ribbon, but not both. Have I overlooked something in its installation? I'm not sure why you changed it in this way but can you please let us use both at the same time? Having both is easily the best option for me because I still have my hot-keys the but the ribbon bar is much better than the V8i drop-down 'File - Edit - etc.' menus.
Thanks
ilija
So, the good news: I believe I have found a way which could keep us all happy :) My overarching issue is not against the ribbon bar as such but against the inability to be efficient with the hotkeys. The V8i taskbar had Main or manipulation tools being accessed with numbers, and QWERTY/letters being used for creating new items. The ribbon allows for QWERTY shortcuts to be maintained and even improved since ASQWERT brings up each of the current ribbon items while ALT+hotkey cycles through the tabs. (See below) which is good.
I had a bit of an issue because once you brought up these menus the hotkeys didn't follow the QWERTY process: I have those keys bound to a programmable keypad (Razer Nostromo) so if I needed to press 'P' I would have to reach across to the keyboard like some sort of savage. However I appreciate that the overwhelming majority of users wouldn't have this issue (I have never see anyone else use one) and it is a step towards the intuitive Autocad way of doing it which I have heard some people raise as an issue in the past so I'm happy to change my way of doing things to accommodate.
Another factor is that the ribbon bar is slower than V8i but that has been raised many times and I'm hoping that you are working on resolving it.
What is lacking, however, is the numbers being used for the Main/manipulation commands. 3,2-Move 2,1-Fence, 5-1, change element attributes etc. These are fundamental across all workflows so unless you can show me a better/more efficient use for accessing these commands then my request is that you reinstate this part of the process. Does this sound like a reasonable compromise?
To me it's not a compromise at all. With today's widescreen monitors it's a cardinal sin to waste screen space with a ribbon bar at the top of the screen. I'd rather work in a sort of 4:3 drawing window than in a 16:8 one if you get what I mean.
Forcing us to use sluggish tools with no real alternative sooner or later leads to losing users. We'll stay with maximum CE12 until there's either a proper task navigation back or the computer systems won't support it any longer and then see where we go from there. I want to work productively without constantly cursing the software... that's what my boss expects from me, too, by the way.
That's a fair point and I absolutely get what you mean. Widescreens have been a pain exactly for that reason. Perhaps if there was an option to side-mount the ribbon? But the slowness of it is certainly a big-ticket item which should have been properly resolved before it was even brought out. One thing to remember is that the only way we'll get our message across is by raising tickets with Bentley and getting as many people as we can to do so. I appreciate that it isn't easy from the Bentley side of it either but there does seem to be a lot of 'Bentley World' decisions which impact real-world users and the response has left a fair bit to be desired.
What I like about the task thing is that you can see most of those tools at a glance you use on a daily basis. What I don't like about ribbons is that you have to switch between the different sections. That means an extra mouse movement and an extra click just to go find the tool you need (or extra key strokes ALT + key until you get to the desired ribbon section). Well I could also just arrange all tool boxes I want but still e. g. E,3 or A,1 won't work then.
I'm not completely against Ribbons. In MS Office I find my way around but what do you do there? You normally write and you can open a context menu containing most of what you need in normal tasks. A CAD application, however, is something completely different and is tool driven. You don't just draw lines all day long. I just don't get why oh why we need a ribbon bar in Microstation at all... just because everyone else is doing it? In other specialist software I am using there's no ribbons.
I'm looking at it as a beefed up version of the tasks. A couple of steps backwards (taking some time to customise it and iron out some flaws) will result in not having to use the 'file - edit - element' menus again which will be a win overall. Also, I would want to set it up so that letters are assigned by the tools location in the menu. eg. if you're looking at the second picture above with the lines, the Placement (W) brings up the menu, 'Q' would be 'Place Smart Line' and 'Place line' would be 'W' not 'P'. That way you wouldn't have to remember the letter for every tool, you would just need to know its location in the menu.