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Research has consistently shown that the traditional menu bar is actually not very usable for most people. Office ran into this problem fairly quickly, even bac

Research has consistently shown that the traditional menu bar is actually not very usable for most people. Office ran into this problem fairly quickly, even back in 1997. The menu bars quickly became overwhelming. This series of blog posts from a decade ago is intresting: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2008/03/13/table-of-contents/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2008/03/13/table-of...

MagnumOpus 8y ago
> Research has consistently shown Research on non-professional users run by mediocre UI "visionaries" trying to justify change for the sake of change (I am looking at you Jensen Harris). The justification for ribbon UI is making it easy for people with tablets, with jittery hands unable to hit a menu item, and newbies -- and making it mandatory degraded the experiance of the 95% of regular users who are none of the above. There is a good reason why my private computers still get Office 2003 installed by default, despite of all of its limitations at age 15...
userbinator 8y ago
Maybe it wasn't "very usable for most people", but it certainly was becoming usable for an increasing number of them when MS decided to change the UI completely, making it not very usable for everyone. Learning takes time, and they just threw away countless man-hours of it.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Better discoverability was one of the primary intentions. Shame it led to less usability for everyone else (ie all non-beginners), with an arbitrary mix of text, text+icons and mystery find out only on rollover icons. There was much to be said for hierarchical menus, now it's partially guesswork to even decide which tab the required choice is on. Anecdotal for sure, but the old interface seemed to be missed most by the very users that the ribbon was intended for - those needing to discover, rather than already knowing, which feature to use. There was a lot more piracy of Office 2003 after 2007 came out.
kilper 8y ago
I will try to read those posts soon. I've only just started using the new Office (since I work for a Windows shop now, instead of Linux). It's extremely frustrating for me - for instance, I always have to search and scan for the "copy" button only to discover it's not on the current tab and then move to another tab which - if I'm lucky - will not suddenly close my document and replace it with a crazy menu but contain the tool I want to us. And it's crazy - if you want to save or print your document, you have to use the fake-tab that closes your document! (At the very least, they could just shrink the window and put it on the side so you know where you are.) At least the old system had my frequently used tools easily accessible, but my rarely used tools hard to find. The current setup might have rarely used tools easy to find and frequently used tools hard to find - it all depends on what I was doing three hours and two tasks ago. The menus buried so many features I never used or knew about. Its quite reasonable for them to replace it with a new system. But hiding the tools I use all the time annoys me me, and the silly fake-tab that hides my work when I'm trying to keep it upsets me. I would really be excited to know their logic. I hope it's explained in the blogs you linked to.

MagnumOpus 8y ago

> Research has consistently shown Research on non-professional users run by mediocre UI "visionaries" trying to justify change for the sake of change (I am looking at you Jensen Harris). The justification for ribbon UI is making it easy for people with tablets, with jittery hands unable to hit a menu item, and newbies -- and making it mandatory degraded the experiance of the 95% of regular users who are none of the above. There is a good reason why my private computers still get Office 2003 installed by default, despite of all of its limitations at age 15...

userbinator 8y ago

Maybe it wasn't "very usable for most people", but it certainly was becoming usable for an increasing number of them when MS decided to change the UI completely, making it not very usable for everyone. Learning takes time, and they just threw away countless man-hours of it.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

Better discoverability was one of the primary intentions. Shame it led to less usability for everyone else (ie all non-beginners), with an arbitrary mix of text, text+icons and mystery find out only on rollover icons. There was much to be said for hierarchical menus, now it's partially guesswork to even decide which tab the required choice is on. Anecdotal for sure, but the old interface seemed to be missed most by the very users that the ribbon was intended for - those needing to discover, rather than already knowing, which feature to use. There was a lot more piracy of Office 2003 after 2007 came out.

kilper 8y ago

I will try to read those posts soon. I've only just started using the new Office (since I work for a Windows shop now, instead of Linux). It's extremely frustrating for me - for instance, I always have to search and scan for the "copy" button only to discover it's not on the current tab and then move to another tab which - if I'm lucky - will not suddenly close my document and replace it with a crazy menu but contain the tool I want to us. And it's crazy - if you want to save or print your document, you have to use the fake-tab that closes your document! (At the very least, they could just shrink the window and put it on the side so you know where you are.) At least the old system had my frequently used tools easily accessible, but my rarely used tools hard to find. The current setup might have rarely used tools easy to find and frequently used tools hard to find - it all depends on what I was doing three hours and two tasks ago. The menus buried so many features I never used or knew about. Its quite reasonable for them to replace it with a new system. But hiding the tools I use all the time annoys me me, and the silly fake-tab that hides my work when I'm trying to keep it upsets me. I would really be excited to know their logic. I hope it's explained in the blogs you linked to.