When I grew up, we were “free range kids”.

Reminds me of the 2001 movie “Conspiracy”…

“The day is ok and the sun can be fun, but I live to see those rays slip away”

From “I Love the Night” - Blue Oyster Cult

Well dang. It started out mistyped as “tom snips”, I spotted that and thought I had it corrected.

Tim snips

To me, buttons and icons provide the visual cue that “clicking here does something”, without having to mouse over them to discover that they’re clickable.

It’s the unadorned text strings that aren’t as obvious.

Yea, I agree that Office 2003 was the pinnacle of Office UI design. And I’d go so far as to say that about Windows 2000.

Having controls in predictable shapes and locations really contributed to “ease of use”. One of my pet peeves is the more recent trend where clickable elements aren’t obviously so. Such as a string of text that one has to hover across and see the cursor change shape to know that it’s clickable.

As others have said, I think a significant part of why the UIs have changed since then is to accommodate touch screens and “webification”.

'Glad to see your posting. I thought I was just being curmudgeonly :)

Congratulations! Bask in the glow of accomplishment, and get some well deserved rest!

“Earschplittenloudenboomer”

Yea! I was getting a headache trying to visualize the shape of the plane.