recoiledsnake writes "OpenOffice.org has prototyped a new UI that radically changes the current OO.o interface into something very similar to the new ribbon style menus that Office 2007 introduced and which have been extensively used throughout Windows 7. The blog shows a screenshot of the prototype in Impress (the equivalent of PowerPoint), but this UI is proposed to be used across all OO.o applications. Some commenters on the Sun blog are not happy about OO.o blindly aping Office 2007, and feel that the ribbon UI may be out of place in non-Windows operating systems."
Good Lord, I agree wholeheartedly. The ribbon is nigh-incomprehensible to first time users. I just had to use a version of Office with the ribbon for the first time a few weeks ago, and I had a hard time with it.
Now, I don't know what it's like once you're used to it, but it didn't seem like a step forward in intuitiveness compared to the old Office menus. I don't think that I can chock that up just to me getting older and being used to the old ways.
"I just had to use a version of Office with the ribbon for the first time a few weeks ago, and I had a hard time with it."
That seems to imply that you're only a first time user/of that version of office/. And if that's true, then you had a hard time with it because you are probably used to the old interface, or the interfaces of similar programs. The ribbon is made to be easy to use for people who have *never used Office before*. And if you think no one is in that boat, take a look at your kids.
The fact is that the ribbon IS a much better interface than menus, and exposes options and settings that are easy to reach and understand. The ribbon is a GUI revelation, and anyone who says different is just afraid of change.
GUI usage is great for 'objects' like files where the variability between objects is relatively few.
*Actions* however are orders of magnitude more numerous. When you have to memorize an icon for every single action, it gets unwieldy. Icon graphics can only be so detailed before they are just blurs. *words* (little w) represent pretty specific ways to describe things and have done pretty well through the years me thinks.
Given Word's penchant for "everything including 5 kitchen sinks" in available functionality, it doesn't scale well to the icon/ribbon concept.
Most of this would be completely moot if MS has simply made the ribbon AN OPTION...but they force fed it to everybody. I don't want OO doing the same thing.
Absolutely bang on. You've hit the nail on the head with that.
The menu has a simple structure which can be understood instantly and extrapolates indefinitely. Go to the word that seems most relevant -> then to a more relevant word ->... -> reach the exact word you were looking for. Once a user flips through a menu or two, finding any option - no matter how deep - only depends on whether the authors have made sensible organizational and linguistic choices.
The ribbon, as a wide rectangular region of varyingly sized/shaped/functional widgets - rather than a consistent tree of words - is a UI nightmare.
You know, pull-down menus are pretty confusing to first-time users, too.
But they are not "in your face". People can work Word just fine without ever using the menu bar. Standard toolbars have everything for a common man. And those toolbars don't flicker on their own, so once you learn where the "Open File" button is, it's always there and the mouse movement is automatic. With ribbon you always need to look and comprehend why you see something else where another button was just a moment ago. That "feature" requires learning the whole palette of ribbons just to figure out where you are each time you need something.
Also, menus are structured far better. Everything insertable is generally under "Insert", everything about tables is in "Table" etc. In ribbons of MS Office some functions are duplicated, some are bound to the right-click event, and some are simply impossible to find. I remember looking for a footnote for 10 minutes; I did find it somewhere, but if I need to do that again I have no clue how that ribbon/button looks like.
Also, not everyone is image-oriented. There is a reason why most languages on Earth use limited character set, and why Chinese and Japanese and Korean scripts (CJK) [plus a couple more] are so hard to learn. Humans do better with fewer characters and longer words because our ability to distinguish shapes is not as good as our ability to form one complex object out of several simple ones.
The Ribbon is no good even in Windows. And isn't it patented? There's no reason Open Office needs to ape Microsoft's mistakes.
As a casual user with no time or interest to do a full OOo course (or even RTFM usually) I welcome the Ribbon UI. I understand that experienced and advanced users may not like it, but assuming that the original interface is not removed then the addition of the ribbon would certainly help weekend users like myself.
I resisted my organization's upgrade to Office 2007 tooth and nail... I complained several times...
The IT department installed Office 2007 anyway.
And I hated the ribbon, with passion... for about two weeks, until I grudgingly admitted that, once you get used to it, it is quite easy to use and it puts the similar functions together in a intelligent way.
The Ribbon is no good even in Windows. And isn't it patented? There's no reason Open Office needs to ape Microsoft's mistakes.
What mistakes?
Microsoft invested an incredible amount of time (and money) into usability research for the Ribbon, conducted with vast thousands of people (close to 10k, I believe) with various levels of computer literacy. The Ribbon is a result of that, and it's - objectively speaking - a massive improvement over standard Office menu hell.
Calling that a mistake is, well, a mistake.
If you have a problem with the Ribbon, it's YOUR problem, and it's statistically insignificant.
It took me five minutes to realize that a UI that either shows or hides its elements based solely on window size is not one I would like to use. Frankly, to get used to something like that would take me certainly more than just five minutes. And then, I would have to find out where's ended up the nice sidebar style list from W2003. And then... Well, you get my point.
Umm traditional toolbars show or hide elements based on window size...
The ribbon just tries to do it intelligently by hiding stuff you might not use as often, while a toolbar just uses icon placement to determine which to hide.
Any toolbar that needs a SEARCH to find SEARCH is broken.
That flippin' Find and Replace moves all over the place, from application to application. And if the Ribbon moves items based on usage (which it seems to), then it's a nightmare for support personnel:
"See the little icon next to Sort & Filter? You don't have Sort and Filter? OK what Icons do you have?"
Not to mention that Microsoft's categorization is just plain bad. Want to Insert a Powerpoint Slide? Don't press the Insert tab. Want to insert a row in Excel? Surely that's on the insert tab (nope).
Want to find out the Properties of a document in Word? Let's see, would Properties be under Home, Insert, Page Layout, Mailings, Review, View, or Add-Ins. I could make a case for several of those, but View seems to make the most sense... as in View Properties. But noooooooooooo.... it's under the "Click the unnamed icon with multi-colored squares on it, and press Prepare". WTF???
I've griped about this before... I'm sure the Ribbon has potential, IF IMPLEMENTED WELL, but it wasn't. Maybe Open Office will get it right.
Word and Excel have SOME consistency (except that they sometimes call it Find, sometimes Find and Replace. Sometimes it's an icon, sometimes it's not.) Sometimes it's a big icon, sometimes it's small. Now, let's go to Outlook:
Let's try to follow your instructions, when creating a new message in Outlook. Home tab? there isn't one. Maybe you mean the Message Tab which is located where the Home tab is in Word: Far Right? That's Spelling. No, Find is under "Format Text". How intuitive.
Next try to find "Find" when you are reading someone's message to you. Where's Find?
Now let's say you want to find a message in your Inbox. Where's find? OK let's try to find a message in a file folder. Where's find.
OK, let's go to Internet Explorer. Where's Find?
See? So much for consistency.
And using Ctrl-F proves my point. OK, so we're supposed to tell our users what? "I know the Ribbon sucks - just memorize this control sequence."
The worst thing you can possibly do in a UI is hide stuff inconsistently (ie, outside of user control) or move stuff around.
For example, hiding menu options based on use patterns. What purpose does this serve? To save screen space? The user remembers the option they want (if they donot use the hotkey) by placement (almost at the top, just below the middle, etc). Hiding options screws this up. These experts seem to believe users actually READ all the options (or look at icons or something). They don't. They just remember that the recycler was somewhere bottom right, the file menu with open option is top left, tools is somewhere on the right side next to help, etc..
The same thing goes for moving options around, it doesn't matter for what reason. Moving them around means that the option that was in the right corner last week is suddenly somewhere in the middle this week -- mega fail.
Microsoft's goal with the ribbon was to make an interface that better encompassed the large amount of bloat (*cough*) features that have been added to MS Office over the years. I've never used the ribbon, as I'm on Office 2003 at work and OOo at home, but I have to admit to admiring its appearance. It definitely looks like it was designed by someone who cares about user interfaces, rather than by someone from Microsoft.
Still, I really don't see the point of duplicating it in OOo. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that in the wake of the ribbon, having a classic Office interface might be a feature of OOo, rather than a flaw. As in, OOo might pick up users specifically because it doesn't have the ribbon. And I haven't even brought up the fact that it gobbles up screen real estate that would be better used on your sci-fi novel. (Oh look, I mentioned it.) I hope this gets scuttled, and fast.
It wasn't that hard to get used to. More than five minutes, but now I can get to a ton of features a lot faster than I used to. The first week was a pain in the butt for sure. After that, I have a hard time going back to Office 03 menus.
They want to take what's probably the single most reviled "feature" of MS Office 2007 and put it into OpenOffice? When one of the big selling points of OpenOffice, among people I've talked to, is that it looks and feels more like the Office they're used to?
Please tell me they're only thinking of putting it in as an opt-in option, not as the default or only option...
Let's face it, most companies out there use MS Office. And most users of MS Office got used to the setup that hadn't changed in quite a while. When Office 2k7 came out, my CEO wanted it on his computer so he could test it out. As CEO, he reads/edits/writes a lot of documents.
Because of the god-awful changes, it took him quite a while to get up-to-speed. So much time, in fact, that he requested we A) not upgrade anyone else and B) remove it from his machine and put Office 2k3 back on it.
Now, he's not the most technically proficient person out there, but he's better than most (compared to average users I mean) and for him to say it was pretty eye-opening.
I can't comprehend why OOo did this. Not a good idea.
If it as an opt-in, I say why not. It might convince the, I don't know, 5 or 6 people that like the ribbon to switch over to OO.o. If this is going to be the default... well...
This is why the interface should be distinct from the core. They should just focus on writing a good word processing engine, and let others design user interfaces for it.
They want to take what's probably the single most reviled "feature" of MS Office 2007 and put it into OpenOffice?
Do you have any evidence that the ribbon is actually reviled in mass among the majority of users or are you just wrongly extrapolating to all users based on what people on sites like Slashdot say? Plenty of people where I work absolutely love the new ribbon interface and mention how they don't want to have to go back to any previous version once they get really used to it.
I'm extrapolating from what I hear on Slashdot, what I hear on other online sites, and what I see and hear in my own workplace and personal life.
So basically you have little to no basis to make such a sweeping claim.
I don't know of any scientific studies that have investigated the matter, but if you know of some proving that the ribbon is the best thing since sliced bread, please feel free to share them with us.
No one said that the ribbon is the best thing since sliced bread, but to claim make a claim that the ribbon is "the single most reviled "feature"" requires some actual evidence beyond what a few tech sites say. If one were to listen to what Slashdot users and other tech sites say, people were supposed to have dropped Microsoft and anything closed-source years ago and we're all supposed to be running Linux on our desktops.
Let me be the first to assure that the interface is also out of place in Windows OS'es. I'm still at a loss to figure out exactly what functionality that new interface added to Office. It did require us to purchase all new manuals and devote a considerable amount of time to retraining our users. Perhaps that was the "goal"?
Its a nice idea, I guess, and I understand that if you keep it closer to that one big name competitor, then you can make it easier for people to transition, but I prefer to dedicate my limited real estate on my screen to what I'm actually trying to work on, not the tools that I can use to get the job done. I can't imagine this interface on my eeePc. I think the only thing I'll be trying out on this interface is the option to set it back to the old one.
I have a eeePC myself and I love the ribbon after I've minimized it, after that it works like a horizontal dropdown menu which is a plus because of the limited screen size. A minimized ribbon is actually smaller than menubars and toolbars. YMMV
I use Linux, Windows, and OS X. I have always found OS X to be the easiest of the three to use GUI-wise. Why is there such a following to a windows like interface? Go for better! 3-D, or maybe a new scheme all together. MS interfaces are just the most horrible things - stuff hidden in illogical places, five or six mouse clicks to do things... I can go on but perhaps others following will. There are other ways.
If the new UI is a user-selectable option, I can't see anyone having an issue with it. It may even help the adoption rate of Open Office, since it would be an easier transition for people used to MS Office.
If the new UI is the only UI, I predict a lot of yelling and screaming. Changing an existing UI is never a pleasant thing.
I think the program was called GeoWorks. It used a layout of icons very similar to what I saw in the screenshots. We've come full circle. The old is new again.
I like the Office 2007 ribbon now that I'm used to it, and the simplicity from tabbed toolbars over deep hierarchies in tall menus.
BUT... That "ribbon" in the article looks horrible! They've lost like ALL functionality but the buttons in them, and the design looks like a big step backwards. Note how Office 2007 ribbons add/remove rarely used commands as you resize the window, and crams in much more features in the space than OO.o there. I hope the end result will look nothing like in the preview. There are ribbons, and there are ribbons.:-(
When I started rolling out Office 2007 at a company I used to work for I was asked, often, if the ribbon could be disabled. I went to the office support site (which is something Microsoft actually has right) and started watching training videos to see which ones I should suggest to users. The first thing the video said when addressing the ribbon was you were stuck with it, can't turn it off.
I personally prefer OpenOffice.org. I have a copy of Office 2008 for my Mac that I was given, I don't even have it installed now that I don't have that job anymore, I prefer using Neo Office on my Mac, and OpenOffice.org on my Linux machines.
That being said - the interface is fine, as long as it's optional, I'm all about customization and user preference.
I know there will be a lot of "haters" regarding this. However, if the hopes of smoothly transitioning users from MS Office to OpenOffice it will need to give an option to have a similar look and feel.
Besides, I wonder how much money was spent by Microsoft on usability studies to come up with this interface. How much money has been spent on usability studies for OpenOffice? Might turn out to be a better way to work in the long run. Just because it is MS does not necessarily mean it is sh*t. That just seems to be the default.
Blasphemy you say!! Well I'm an Office 2007 user so I know what the damn ribbon looks like. From what I can see is that they took the idea behind the ribbon of grouping commonly used features into clusters and unlike MS they went with large enough Icons with decent contrast to be easily visable on a high rez monitor (1280x1024+) like what I use.
So before everyone goes apeshit about this proposed change, take the damn time and actually compare the stinking ribbon with this and you'll see that the change doesn't resemble the ribbon. What I'd like to see is this being offered as an optional customization for those who appreciate its usefulness.
One of the most frequent criticisms I often hear regarding FOSS is that the applications don't "look and feel" like the OS or other software in the ecosystem. They don't always use the system-default Save/Open dialogs, menu style and common controls and for a lot of users, like it or not, gives the perception of out-of-placeness or inferior. Firefox is a prime example where going out of the way to fit into the UI based on the OS has helped user-comfort and therefore adoption.
If Windows 7 is going to implement the ribbon system-wide, it makes sense that OO.org would minimally make this an option, if not the default on the Windows release, even though I am amongst those who are not fans of the ribbon.
When I finally upgraded my work computer to have Office 2007, I was having a hard time at first, but soon I came to like the new PowerPoint a lot. At this time I was doing a lot of work in PowerPoint, so it's where I got the most exposure. The main reasons I liked it were the improvements in functionality of the tools themselves and some of the new tools. Smart Art is convenient, positioning objects is much smoother, auto-formatting of slides is smarter. I can whip up a very nice looking presentation without a lot of thought about formatting. Things are pleasing to the eye without having to study color theory first, because MS did the color theory part for you with their pre-defined color schemes that have consistent values, densities and complimentary colors. Word and Excel improved on their "intelligence" too. For instance, bullets and numbering just happens instead of it being an explicit instruction. However, when it comes to ribbon, I am torn.
In PowerPoint, the ribbon works. The reason for this is that the tools you use are very task specific. If I am inserting a picture, there is a certain set of tools that I always will use with a picture, but will rarely ever use with any other task. That way, the tools I need are right in front of me, and the tools I don't are hidden. However, in Word and Excel, the tools are not as task specific and the definition of what task I'm working on is very unclear. Furthermore, the tools used are not always perfectly described by an icon, which means it becomes very hard to find what you're looking for. This is especially the case in Excel, where ther are just so many tools available to you that turning everything into an icon on a ribbon just makes it impossible to find what you're looking for.
But the more I think about it, every time I switch back to older versions of Office, I don't miss the ribbon, I miss the other improvements. I can find may way around just as fast, if not faster in the old style than with the ribbon, and I've gotten pretty used to the ribbon now. While the new UI is completely bad, it really does not improve things overall the way it claims. Like I said, PowerPoint seems to be a good fit, but even still, I get by just fine with the old style.
They aren't even slightly alike. For one thing, it's attached to the window (floating toolbars *gasp* FLOAT). Floating toolbars generally didn't have multiple tabs of obtions in them-- I suppose there's no technical reason they couldn't have, but in my entire time using Classic Mac I never saw one. There's only one ribbon, where the typical Classic Mac app would have more than one floating toolbar. The ribbon has groups and a somewhat fluid grid layout, Classic Mac floating toolbars were just a simple grid.
Who modded this "Informative?" The ribbon is *nothing like* Classic Macintosh floating toolbars. The only similarity I can even think of it "they both have buttons."
If you minimize the Office 2007 ribbon, it takes the exact same amount of space as a menubar. Even when not minimized, the ribbon is smaller than the default Office 2003 toolbars. I don't know who keeps spreading this misconception, but please stop-- the ribbon uses no more pixels than the menu/toolbars it replaced.
In short, Microsoft *did* think of the small displays. You're just assuming they didn't because your head is full of misinformation from reading Slashdot.
You clearly don't use Office 2007, or are a moron. Outlook 2007 is the single Office 2007 application that DOESN'T use the ribbon interface. That apparently won't happen until Office 2010.
How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Ribbon is no good even in Windows. And isn't it patented? There's no reason Open Office needs to ape Microsoft's mistakes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Good Lord, I agree wholeheartedly. The ribbon is nigh-incomprehensible to first time users. I just had to use a version of Office with the ribbon for the first time a few weeks ago, and I had a hard time with it.
Now, I don't know what it's like once you're used to it, but it didn't seem like a step forward in intuitiveness compared to the old Office menus. I don't think that I can chock that up just to me getting older and being used to the old ways.
Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:4, Informative)
"I just had to use a version of Office with the ribbon for the first time a few weeks ago, and I had a hard time with it."
That seems to imply that you're only a first time user /of that version of office/. And if that's true, then you had a hard time with it because you are probably used to the old interface, or the interfaces of similar programs. The ribbon is made to be easy to use for people who have *never used Office before*. And if you think no one is in that boat, take a look at your kids.
The fact is that the ribbon IS a much better interface than menus, and exposes options and settings that are easy to reach and understand. The ribbon is a GUI revelation, and anyone who says different is just afraid of change.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
*Actions* however are orders of magnitude more numerous. When you have to memorize an icon for every single action, it gets unwieldy. Icon graphics can only be so detailed before they are just blurs. *words* (little w) represent pretty specific ways to describe things and have done pretty well through the years me thinks.
Given Word's penchant for "everything including 5 kitchen sinks" in available functionality, it doesn't scale well to the icon/ribbon concept.
Most of this would be completely moot if MS has simply made the ribbon AN OPTION...but they force fed it to everybody. I don't want OO doing the same thing.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
with no obvious reading order
Absolutely bang on. You've hit the nail on the head with that.
The menu has a simple structure which can be understood instantly and extrapolates indefinitely. Go to the word that seems most relevant -> then to a more relevant word -> ... -> reach the exact word you were looking for. Once a user flips through a menu or two, finding any option - no matter how deep - only depends on whether the authors have made sensible organizational and linguistic choices.
The ribbon, as a wide rectangular region of varyingly sized/shaped/functional widgets - rather than a consistent tree of words - is a UI nightmare.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, pull-down menus are pretty confusing to first-time users, too.
But they are not "in your face". People can work Word just fine without ever using the menu bar. Standard toolbars have everything for a common man. And those toolbars don't flicker on their own, so once you learn where the "Open File" button is, it's always there and the mouse movement is automatic. With ribbon you always need to look and comprehend why you see something else where another button was just a moment ago. That "feature" requires learning the whole palette of ribbons just to figure out where you are each time you need something.
Also, menus are structured far better. Everything insertable is generally under "Insert", everything about tables is in "Table" etc. In ribbons of MS Office some functions are duplicated, some are bound to the right-click event, and some are simply impossible to find. I remember looking for a footnote for 10 minutes; I did find it somewhere, but if I need to do that again I have no clue how that ribbon/button looks like.
Also, not everyone is image-oriented. There is a reason why most languages on Earth use limited character set, and why Chinese and Japanese and Korean scripts (CJK) [plus a couple more] are so hard to learn. Humans do better with fewer characters and longer words because our ability to distinguish shapes is not as good as our ability to form one complex object out of several simple ones.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Informative)
It's disallowed by MS specifically for Office-like applications. (nothing else)
I have always assumed that clause was added to gain a usability edge over OpenOffice.
So this could be interesting. *grabs popcorn*
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:4, Informative)
Still, MS doesn't have any patents on the concepts of a ribbon.
Not yet, but that could change anytime [wikipedia.org].
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Ribbon is no good even in Windows. And isn't it patented? There's no reason Open Office needs to ape Microsoft's mistakes.
As a casual user with no time or interest to do a full OOo course (or even RTFM usually) I welcome the Ribbon UI. I understand that experienced and advanced users may not like it, but assuming that the original interface is not removed then the addition of the ribbon would certainly help weekend users like myself.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
I resisted my organization's upgrade to Office 2007 tooth and nail... I complained several times...
The IT department installed Office 2007 anyway.
And I hated the ribbon, with passion... for about two weeks, until I grudgingly admitted that, once you get used to it, it is quite easy to use and it puts the similar functions together in a intelligent way.
So yeah, I like it now
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:4, Funny)
It's like the ending of 1984 (I kind of like ribbon, too).
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Ribbon is no good even in Windows. And isn't it patented? There's no reason Open Office needs to ape Microsoft's mistakes.
What mistakes?
Microsoft invested an incredible amount of time (and money) into usability research for the Ribbon, conducted with vast thousands of people (close to 10k, I believe) with various levels of computer literacy. The Ribbon is a result of that, and it's - objectively speaking - a massive improvement over standard Office menu hell.
Calling that a mistake is, well, a mistake.
If you have a problem with the Ribbon, it's YOUR problem, and it's statistically insignificant.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft probably did quite a bit of usability testing before launching Clippy...
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Informative)
Umm traditional toolbars show or hide elements based on window size...
The ribbon just tries to do it intelligently by hiding stuff you might not use as often, while a toolbar just uses icon placement to determine which to hide.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any toolbar that needs a SEARCH to find SEARCH is broken.
That flippin' Find and Replace moves all over the place, from application to application. And if the Ribbon moves items based on usage (which it seems to), then it's a nightmare for support personnel:
"See the little icon next to Sort & Filter? You don't have Sort and Filter? OK what Icons do you have?"
Not to mention that Microsoft's categorization is just plain bad. Want to Insert a Powerpoint Slide? Don't press the Insert tab. Want to insert a row in Excel? Surely that's on the insert tab (nope).
Want to find out the Properties of a document in Word? Let's see, would Properties be under Home, Insert, Page Layout, Mailings, Review, View, or Add-Ins. I could make a case for several of those, but View seems to make the most sense... as in View Properties. But noooooooooooo .... it's under the "Click the unnamed icon with multi-colored squares on it, and press Prepare". WTF???
I've griped about this before... I'm sure the Ribbon has potential, IF IMPLEMENTED WELL, but it wasn't. Maybe Open Office will get it right.
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Re:Sigh. Someone else who complains without using (Score:5, Insightful)
Word and Excel have SOME consistency (except that they sometimes call it Find, sometimes Find and Replace. Sometimes it's an icon, sometimes it's not.) Sometimes it's a big icon, sometimes it's small. Now, let's go to Outlook:
Let's try to follow your instructions, when creating a new message in Outlook. Home tab? there isn't one. Maybe you mean the Message Tab which is located where the Home tab is in Word: Far Right? That's Spelling. No, Find is under "Format Text". How intuitive.
Next try to find "Find" when you are reading someone's message to you. Where's Find?
Now let's say you want to find a message in your Inbox. Where's find? OK let's try to find a message in a file folder. Where's find.
OK, let's go to Internet Explorer. Where's Find?
See? So much for consistency.
And using Ctrl-F proves my point. OK, so we're supposed to tell our users what? "I know the Ribbon sucks - just memorize this control sequence."
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst thing you can possibly do in a UI is hide stuff inconsistently (ie, outside of user control) or move stuff around.
For example, hiding menu options based on use patterns. What purpose does this serve? To save screen space? The user remembers the option they want (if they donot use the hotkey) by placement (almost at the top, just below the middle, etc). Hiding options screws this up. These experts seem to believe users actually READ all the options (or look at icons or something). They don't. They just remember that the recycler was somewhere bottom right, the file menu with open option is top left, tools is somewhere on the right side next to help, etc..
The same thing goes for moving options around, it doesn't matter for what reason. Moving them around means that the option that was in the right corner last week is suddenly somewhere in the middle this week -- mega fail.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
Insightful??
Do you prefer a UI that hides the actual contentbased on window size? If a windows getting smaller, something's getting hidden, y'know..
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft's goal with the ribbon was to make an interface that better encompassed the large amount of bloat (*cough*) features that have been added to MS Office over the years. I've never used the ribbon, as I'm on Office 2003 at work and OOo at home, but I have to admit to admiring its appearance. It definitely looks like it was designed by someone who cares about user interfaces, rather than by someone from Microsoft.
Still, I really don't see the point of duplicating it in OOo. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that in the wake of the ribbon, having a classic Office interface might be a feature of OOo, rather than a flaw. As in, OOo might pick up users specifically because it doesn't have the ribbon. And I haven't even brought up the fact that it gobbles up screen real estate that would be better used on your sci-fi novel. (Oh look, I mentioned it.) I hope this gets scuttled, and fast.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:4, Interesting)
Damn, you are old.
It wasn't that hard to get used to. More than five minutes, but now I can get to a ton of features a lot faster than I used to. The first week was a pain in the butt for sure. After that, I have a hard time going back to Office 03 menus.
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Re:How about some nice menus instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
Erm... What about disliking unfair practices and monopolistic tendencies makes you "braindead" exactly.
You mean besides parroting a meme, operating from a simplistic generalization, and showing resistance to important details relating to the context?
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Knew this was going to happen. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Knew this was going to happen. (Score:5, Informative)
It only sucks in office until OO.o can implement it.
Correct. After that, it sucks in both of them.
Parent
Sounds like a bad idea to me (Score:5, Insightful)
They want to take what's probably the single most reviled "feature" of MS Office 2007 and put it into OpenOffice? When one of the big selling points of OpenOffice, among people I've talked to, is that it looks and feels more like the Office they're used to?
Please tell me they're only thinking of putting it in as an opt-in option, not as the default or only option...
Dan Aris
Re:Sounds like a bad idea to me (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, you beat me to it.
Let's face it, most companies out there use MS Office. And most users of MS Office got used to the setup that hadn't changed in quite a while. When Office 2k7 came out, my CEO wanted it on his computer so he could test it out. As CEO, he reads/edits/writes a lot of documents.
Because of the god-awful changes, it took him quite a while to get up-to-speed. So much time, in fact, that he requested we A) not upgrade anyone else and B) remove it from his machine and put Office 2k3 back on it.
Now, he's not the most technically proficient person out there, but he's better than most (compared to average users I mean) and for him to say it was pretty eye-opening.
I can't comprehend why OOo did this. Not a good idea.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like a bad idea to me (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why the interface should be distinct from the core. They should just focus on writing a good word processing engine, and let others design user interfaces for it.
Parent
Re:Sounds like a bad idea to me (Score:4, Interesting)
They want to take what's probably the single most reviled "feature" of MS Office 2007 and put it into OpenOffice?
Do you have any evidence that the ribbon is actually reviled in mass among the majority of users or are you just wrongly extrapolating to all users based on what people on sites like Slashdot say? Plenty of people where I work absolutely love the new ribbon interface and mention how they don't want to have to go back to any previous version once they get really used to it.
Parent
Re:Sounds like a bad idea to me (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm extrapolating from what I hear on Slashdot, what I hear on other online sites, and what I see and hear in my own workplace and personal life.
So basically you have little to no basis to make such a sweeping claim.
I don't know of any scientific studies that have investigated the matter, but if you know of some proving that the ribbon is the best thing since sliced bread, please feel free to share them with us.
No one said that the ribbon is the best thing since sliced bread, but to claim make a claim that the ribbon is "the single most reviled "feature"" requires some actual evidence beyond what a few tech sites say. If one were to listen to what Slashdot users and other tech sites say, people were supposed to have dropped Microsoft and anything closed-source years ago and we're all supposed to be running Linux on our desktops.
Parent
May I be the first to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Aww, *hell* no!
makes my eyeball fall out of my eyesocket (Score:5, Funny)
OO.o
Parent
out of place in non-windows OS'es? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me be the first to assure that the interface is also out of place in Windows OS'es. I'm still at a loss to figure out exactly what functionality that new interface added to Office. It did require us to purchase all new manuals and devote a considerable amount of time to retraining our users. Perhaps that was the "goal"?
Underwhelming (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Underwhelming (Score:5, Informative)
I have a eeePC myself and I love the ribbon after I've minimized it, after that it works like a horizontal dropdown menu which is a plus because of the limited screen size. A minimized ribbon is actually smaller than menubars and toolbars. YMMV
Parent
Why is MS always aped and not OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
Optional or not? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the new UI is the only UI, I predict a lot of yelling and screaming. Changing an existing UI is never a pleasant thing.
I remember that UI style (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, dear god! (Score:4, Insightful)
I like the Office 2007 ribbon now that I'm used to it, and the simplicity from tabbed toolbars over deep hierarchies in tall menus.
BUT... That "ribbon" in the article looks horrible! They've lost like ALL functionality but the buttons in them, and the design looks like a big step backwards. Note how Office 2007 ribbons add/remove rarely used commands as you resize the window, and crams in much more features in the space than OO.o there. I hope the end result will look nothing like in the preview. There are ribbons, and there are ribbons. :-(
Oh, cool... (Score:5, Funny)
I like the ribbon, it's helped me convince people to use Open Office.
Wait, what? Ah, shit...
As long as they make it optional I'm ok with it. (Score:5, Insightful)
When I started rolling out Office 2007 at a company I used to work for I was asked, often, if the ribbon could be disabled. I went to the office support site (which is something Microsoft actually has right) and started watching training videos to see which ones I should suggest to users. The first thing the video said when addressing the ribbon was you were stuck with it, can't turn it off.
I personally prefer OpenOffice.org. I have a copy of Office 2008 for my Mac that I was given, I don't even have it installed now that I don't have that job anymore, I prefer using Neo Office on my Mac, and OpenOffice.org on my Linux machines.
That being said - the interface is fine, as long as it's optional, I'm all about customization and user preference.
Here come the haters (Score:5, Interesting)
I know there will be a lot of "haters" regarding this. However, if the hopes of smoothly transitioning users from MS Office to OpenOffice it will need to give an option to have a similar look and feel.
To transition non-tech employees to Linux, I used an XP theme on Ubuntu. http://ubuntu.online02.com/node/14 [online02.com]
The transition was flawless.
Besides, I wonder how much money was spent by Microsoft on usability studies to come up with this interface. How much money has been spent on usability studies for OpenOffice? Might turn out to be a better way to work in the long run. Just because it is MS does not necessarily mean it is sh*t. That just seems to be the default.
Looks Useful (Score:5, Interesting)
Blasphemy you say!! Well I'm an Office 2007 user so I know what the damn ribbon looks like. From what I can see is that they took the idea behind the ribbon of grouping commonly used features into clusters and unlike MS they went with large enough Icons with decent contrast to be easily visable on a high rez monitor (1280x1024+) like what I use.
So before everyone goes apeshit about this proposed change, take the damn time and actually compare the stinking ribbon with this and you'll see that the change doesn't resemble the ribbon. What I'd like to see is this being offered as an optional customization for those who appreciate its usefulness.
OSS Criticism (Score:4, Insightful)
If Windows 7 is going to implement the ribbon system-wide, it makes sense that OO.org would minimally make this an option, if not the default on the Windows release, even though I am amongst those who are not fans of the ribbon.
Good for PPT, Horrible for the rest (Score:5, Interesting)
When I finally upgraded my work computer to have Office 2007, I was having a hard time at first, but soon I came to like the new PowerPoint a lot. At this time I was doing a lot of work in PowerPoint, so it's where I got the most exposure. The main reasons I liked it were the improvements in functionality of the tools themselves and some of the new tools. Smart Art is convenient, positioning objects is much smoother, auto-formatting of slides is smarter. I can whip up a very nice looking presentation without a lot of thought about formatting. Things are pleasing to the eye without having to study color theory first, because MS did the color theory part for you with their pre-defined color schemes that have consistent values, densities and complimentary colors. Word and Excel improved on their "intelligence" too. For instance, bullets and numbering just happens instead of it being an explicit instruction. However, when it comes to ribbon, I am torn.
In PowerPoint, the ribbon works. The reason for this is that the tools you use are very task specific. If I am inserting a picture, there is a certain set of tools that I always will use with a picture, but will rarely ever use with any other task. That way, the tools I need are right in front of me, and the tools I don't are hidden. However, in Word and Excel, the tools are not as task specific and the definition of what task I'm working on is very unclear. Furthermore, the tools used are not always perfectly described by an icon, which means it becomes very hard to find what you're looking for. This is especially the case in Excel, where ther are just so many tools available to you that turning everything into an icon on a ribbon just makes it impossible to find what you're looking for.
But the more I think about it, every time I switch back to older versions of Office, I don't miss the ribbon, I miss the other improvements. I can find may way around just as fast, if not faster in the old style than with the ribbon, and I've gotten pretty used to the ribbon now. While the new UI is completely bad, it really does not improve things overall the way it claims. Like I said, PowerPoint seems to be a good fit, but even still, I get by just fine with the old style.
Re:Nothing More Than Mac OS Floating Toolbars (Score:5, Informative)
What. The. Fuck.
They aren't even slightly alike. For one thing, it's attached to the window (floating toolbars *gasp* FLOAT). Floating toolbars generally didn't have multiple tabs of obtions in them-- I suppose there's no technical reason they couldn't have, but in my entire time using Classic Mac I never saw one. There's only one ribbon, where the typical Classic Mac app would have more than one floating toolbar. The ribbon has groups and a somewhat fluid grid layout, Classic Mac floating toolbars were just a simple grid.
Who modded this "Informative?" The ribbon is *nothing like* Classic Macintosh floating toolbars. The only similarity I can even think of it "they both have buttons."
Parent
Re:Keep this thing off my netbook (Score:5, Informative)
If you minimize the Office 2007 ribbon, it takes the exact same amount of space as a menubar. Even when not minimized, the ribbon is smaller than the default Office 2003 toolbars. I don't know who keeps spreading this misconception, but please stop-- the ribbon uses no more pixels than the menu/toolbars it replaced.
In short, Microsoft *did* think of the small displays. You're just assuming they didn't because your head is full of misinformation from reading Slashdot.
Parent
Re:I'll say.. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:I'll say.. (Score:4, Informative)
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