4 ms·

LibreOffice is ugly, but a fair amount of the ugliness comes from the effort to shoehorn more and more features into the same style of UI design that inspired M

by cwyers 11y ago

LibreOffice is ugly, but a fair amount of the ugliness comes from the effort to shoehorn more and more features into the same style of UI design that inspired Microsoft to develop the Ribbon UI to begin with. Yes, I suppose it's possible that LibreOffice could come up with their own, more modern UI. But I doubt it. UI design has never been a strength of theirs, and the Ribbon UI comes from an incredible amount of research at Microsoft that costs rather a lot of money to do. So the question of which style of Office UI to use is eternally a question - people who hate the Ribbon will insist on holding out, but it makes LibreOffice look more and more dated the longer they do.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
Some of the ugliness came from implementation decisions that LibreOffice have been busy fixing. For example the dialogues used to have to be laid out in such a way that all languages strings would fit in the space that was left. Which left them a bit sparse and odd looking. I think that conversion is all done now: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/WidgetLayout https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/WidgetLayout
- criddell 11y ago
  Wow - what a difference that makes. It's very encouraging to see visuals getting some attention.
krylon 11y ago
It would have been nice if Microsoft had at least made the ribbon bar optional and allowed people to revert to the old interface. The whole debate would disappear if you could choose the UI you prefer and be done with it. That being said, I was mildly surprised that most people I have spoken to about this seemed to like the ribbon bar, especially non-techies (who are, after all, the main audience for MS Office).
- scholia 11y ago
  There's a cost to maintaining old interfaces, and the old UI had only one advantage: some people already knew it well and weren't prepared to change. However, they could still use their old version of Office, simply by not upgrading. > most people I have spoken to about this seemed to like the ribbon bar, especially non-techies I'm a techie and I love it. The old UI now looks incredibly clunky. What really surprises me is that some people are still thinking about a change that occurred in 2007 ;-)
  - xixi77 11y ago
    admittedly, the new ribbon interface (well I guess it's no longer new, it's just that I went from using excel for about 6hrs/day to maybe 12hrs/year circa 2005) does look prettier -- but how do people actually go about finding anything in it? does everyone just use google & try to find some blog post with screenshots?
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > but how do people actually go about finding anything in it? The discoverability is pretty much the same as the old pull-downs and toolbar approach (and how you find things is pretty much the same -- click on the category whose label seems like what you might, and then look through whats revealed by that), but consolidated into what amounts to a set of toolbars organized into tabs, rather than a combination of toolbars and menus. (And what often gets ignores is that a lot of the improvements have been in the contextual right-click pop-up, which means what you usually need often doesn't require using the ribbon at all.) > does everyone just use google & try to find some blog post with screenshots? No more so than with the old interface.
      - scholia 11y ago
        > The discoverability is pretty much the same as the old pull-downs and toolbar approach One of the main points -- possibly the main point -- of the move to the ribbon was to increase discoverability, and it worked. Gates said Microsoft had lots of compliments about new features in office 2007 that had actually been in the old version, but people hadn't found them. Microsoft did an enormous amount of work (and research) when developing the ribbon. Jensen Harris covered this in great depth in an 8-part series at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_3f00_/default.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_... I'm pretty sure you can find videos of him giving presentations about it as well. (I saw him present.)
Spooky23 11y ago
All of the Openoffice/LibreOffice folks that I know are generally very.... passionate about the ribbon.
buovjaga 11y ago
My understanding is that ribbon was not considered for LibO due to the patent controversy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29#Patent_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29#Patent_... The design team is focusing on improving the sidebar. It does make sense as the typical displays now have much more screen estate in the x axis. Calligra is another office suite with a sidebar. Btw. the team is always looking for new contributors: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Team https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Team

by cwyers 11y ago

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

Some of the ugliness came from implementation decisions that LibreOffice have been busy fixing. For example the dialogues used to have to be laid out in such a way that all languages strings would fit in the space that was left. Which left them a bit sparse and odd looking. I think that conversion is all done now: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/WidgetLayout https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/WidgetLayout

criddell 11y ago
Wow - what a difference that makes. It's very encouraging to see visuals getting some attention.

krylon 11y ago

It would have been nice if Microsoft had at least made the ribbon bar optional and allowed people to revert to the old interface. The whole debate would disappear if you could choose the UI you prefer and be done with it. That being said, I was mildly surprised that most people I have spoken to about this seemed to like the ribbon bar, especially non-techies (who are, after all, the main audience for MS Office).

scholia 11y ago
There's a cost to maintaining old interfaces, and the old UI had only one advantage: some people already knew it well and weren't prepared to change. However, they could still use their old version of Office, simply by not upgrading. > most people I have spoken to about this seemed to like the ribbon bar, especially non-techies I'm a techie and I love it. The old UI now looks incredibly clunky. What really surprises me is that some people are still thinking about a change that occurred in 2007 ;-)
- xixi77 11y ago
  admittedly, the new ribbon interface (well I guess it's no longer new, it's just that I went from using excel for about 6hrs/day to maybe 12hrs/year circa 2005) does look prettier -- but how do people actually go about finding anything in it? does everyone just use google & try to find some blog post with screenshots?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > but how do people actually go about finding anything in it? The discoverability is pretty much the same as the old pull-downs and toolbar approach (and how you find things is pretty much the same -- click on the category whose label seems like what you might, and then look through whats revealed by that), but consolidated into what amounts to a set of toolbars organized into tabs, rather than a combination of toolbars and menus. (And what often gets ignores is that a lot of the improvements have been in the contextual right-click pop-up, which means what you usually need often doesn't require using the ribbon at all.) > does everyone just use google & try to find some blog post with screenshots? No more so than with the old interface.
    - scholia 11y ago
      > The discoverability is pretty much the same as the old pull-downs and toolbar approach One of the main points -- possibly the main point -- of the move to the ribbon was to increase discoverability, and it worked. Gates said Microsoft had lots of compliments about new features in office 2007 that had actually been in the old version, but people hadn't found them. Microsoft did an enormous amount of work (and research) when developing the ribbon. Jensen Harris covered this in great depth in an 8-part series at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_3f00_/default.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/tags/why+the+new+ui_... I'm pretty sure you can find videos of him giving presentations about it as well. (I saw him present.)

Spooky23 11y ago

All of the Openoffice/LibreOffice folks that I know are generally very.... passionate about the ribbon.

buovjaga 11y ago

My understanding is that ribbon was not considered for LibO due to the patent controversy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29#Patent_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29#Patent_... The design team is focusing on improving the sidebar. It does make sense as the typical displays now have much more screen estate in the x axis. Calligra is another office suite with a sidebar. Btw. the team is always looking for new contributors: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Team https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Team