6 ms·

Hello, Office's Ribbon. # Runs horizontally. - Result: wastes precious vertical space on low-resolution widescreen displays (i.e. business displays and most n

Hello, Office's Ribbon. # Runs horizontally. - Result: wastes precious vertical space on low-resolution widescreen displays (i.e. business displays and most notebooks) that should be dedicated to showing the document body. # Due to being horizontal, GUI items appear/disappear depending on window width. - Result 1: having two documents on screen can be disadvantageous compared to having one on screen because a lot of the GUI items aren't showing or are hidden in submenus, encouraging wasting screen real estate by only having one document on the entire screen. - Result 2: due to the Ribbon's horizontality, instead of having the elements stay on screen in a consistent manner and be easily scrollable, the interface constantly surprises the user by unexpectedly hiding even key GUI items. # No option to disable. - Result: if you wanted to have certain GUI items visible at the same time… well, tough. If the floating palette that inconsistently appears when the user places the mouse cursor over certain elements doesn't have your favourite item, then you're out of luck if the items you want to use exist under different tab groupings. iWork '09 and prior had the best design: a main toolbar with general items, a smaller context-sensitive toolbar underneath, and context-sensitive inspector windows. If the revamped iWork had simply docked those context-sensitive inspectors, rather than get rid of the context-sensitive toolbar, it mightn't have received such a poor response. The irony is that Office 2003 (and a few releases prior) already had inspectors on the side, and those would have been perfect given the prevalence of widescreen displays, leaving as much vertical space for the display of the document body as possible. LibreOffice seems to have three GUI modes; one like iWork, one like the old Office, and one like the Ribbon.

leoedin 8y ago
I've been using my taskbar on the side of the screen for the past decade, because every screen I use has an excess of width and limited height. I seem to be very much in a minority here - I guess people don't change things from default?
- snazz 8y ago
  > I guess people don’t change things from default? Precisely. The average user assumes (often correctly) that the way things are is the way things are. When it comes to what technical people think are basic features (pairing a wireless keyboard to an iPad, or changing default text size on iPhones, or any number of similar tasks on any system), the modern “ease of use” guidelines suggest hiding everything away as much as possible, severely limiting setting discoverability.
  - bdamm 8y ago
    Well, I consider myself an expert user, but I rarely change the default because I switch between environments so often that it would represent a major time overhead to extensively customize application to the way I really want them. And besides, the way I really want them is so far away from the way they are shipped that it's normally unrealistic to maintain that level of customization. So I get used to the defaults. It makes it easier to throw out, reinstall, or switch environments if I need to. In any given day I use 5 or 6 different primary environments.
    - xte 8y ago
      Probably i switch so often because of actual limited and limiting system design: in a Plan9-like world user's desktop is the center of the world and anything start from it and being done and used from it. In a commercial world it's common to have tons of crappy devices (so you pay more things more often) and no real integration. Time ago I have a discussion with a "commercial" guy who say that the sole really integrated platforms are cloud&mobile so they are obviously the future because we are a society and we need to interoperate. I respond plugging my laptop HDMI into the room projector and show a quick Emacs/EXWM(-X) demo: email? Hit a single key (F6 in my case) and my MUA (notmuch-emacs) popup instantly. On top of it's big search bar I have few single-key accessible saved searches and bottom the big series of tags, a far superior "dashboard" than bloated GMail UI. Of course compose a new message can happen with a single key at any time with any open application I have focused. Oh I imaging someone demand me a demo, a quick M-x skeletor (ivy-completed) popup, a single key to choose beamer slide, quick typing and slides are made, tested locally and uploaded. Another imaginary interruption and another task (skeletor again + org-mode), an imaginary patch sent via mail and voilà: magit integration. All datas are really integrated and usable in a consistent environment, anything can be done in a snap and NO other monster modern GUI or '90-style can do the same. That's the past (starting from LispM/MIT AI lab glory time) and the future like we have had "golden age" of ancient Greek polis and more modern "middle (dark) age" and again a modern age. That's integration and customization. No need to switch between systems (while can be done easily with NixOS/GuixSD + homeManager/GNU stow + unison). My system is main and I can replicate/extend it on any decent hw as nedeed. That's "switching systems" IMO :-)
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  I put the macOS Dock on the side, but I still keep the Windows taskbar at the bottom; I just prefer how that looks, aesthetically. That said, I change its size to small, I don't need huge icons.
- int_19h 8y ago
  I dock the taskbar on the left ever since it got an icon-only mode in Win7.
- baddox 8y ago
  Most screens are wider than they are tall, but I wouldn’t say there’s an excess of width. I use the width for multiple windows side by side, and I’m fine with having a “global” taskbar running horizontally and using a small portion of the height. MacOS and other operating systems cleverly have a global top bar that changes depending on the focused application, which I like.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    There's an excess of width if you aren't a pro user, who knows how to take advantage of it. Linux has tiling WMs, Windows has basic tiling functionality + someone out there made a hackish tiling WM in AutoHotkey of all things[0]. But you're unlikely to discover this as a regular user, unless someone shows it to you. -- [0] - https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n
- Pxtl 8y ago
  No, I do the same thing. It also allows me to put text labels on my running applications, because I read English and not heiroglyphics... Especially when MS loves to change their icons for VS and Office with every major release.
- Foobar8568 8y ago
  I have always put the Taskbar on the left as long as I remember I could. At work, it seems I am always the only one with such habits for more than a decade in different client environment.
- amalcon 8y ago
  I've been doing that since the 1990s (or, at least, when I use a system with a taskbar). I've never seen anyone else who does it either.
- Wildgoose 8y ago
  Me too. I want as much vertical space available as possible.
- tracker1 8y ago
  I've done that... but some of the orientation experience should actually be flipped... example, in horizontal/left, the windows start menu should probably still be in the bottom left, with taskbar climbing upward. Notifications flipped to top-left. In the end, I find that left-side orientation is rarely done well, or well imho. I did really like the Unity UI in Ubuntu, but I think I'm the only one on this. I used to position my launchpad in macos on the left as well, but this is awkward, and easier to just have it auto-hide.
Tagbert 8y ago
You do know that there is a "collapse ribbon" icon (v) on the right side of the header. double-clicking the header will do it too.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Collapsing the Ribbon is lipstick on a pig. In the end, using the basic functions of the software becomes a game of "is my mouse pointer in the right place to trigger the Ribbon to temporarily show without getting fed up and just making it stay shown all the time?". Ever seen a non-technical user move the mouse with the same dexterity as you or I? I haven't. The mouse always roams around for a month of Sundays before it eventually arrives in the right place. This is not a stable interface; it is an ugly hack to make up for wasteful the Ribbon was designed to be At best, it could be a sort of distraction-free writing mode except that you can still see the rest of the interface, some parts equally as eye-catching as parts of the Ribbon.
  - dbcurtis 8y ago
    > Ever seen a non-technical user move the mouse with the same dexterity as you or I? I haven't. The mouse always roams around for a month of Sundays before it eventually arrives in the right place. Not just non-technical. I hate having to hunt for the tiny target. A very highly technical friend of mine invented a term for that: “pixel spearing”. I am truly insensed at how much time I waste trying to spear the exact right pixel.
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      It wouldn't be so bad if the correct zone for bringing up the hidden area obeyed Fitt's Law, but (A) the zone isn't directly at the top of the window, and (B) that wouldn't work with non-maximised windows anyway. It's why hiding toolbars dynamically works well in macOS' fullscreen mode; flinging your mouse to the top of the screen always shows the menubar and toolbar without fail (unless the mouse is captured by the app, of course, like in a game).
anime_forever 8y ago
Weird, I like the ribbon a lot
gsich 8y ago
Double-click the ribbon to hide them.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Missing the point. I shouldn't have to hide the primary means of accessing even the most basic functions of the software just to save unnecessarily-wasted vertical space. At the very least, Office should then show a small context-sensitive toolbar (mini-ribbon?) or a sidebar; instead, the only recourses are either the inconsistent appearance of the floating palette that only appears when the stars are aligned with the user's mouse pointer or temporarily showing the Ribbon again. Like I said to another reply to my comment, lipstick on a pig. Maybe another analogy is that it's a band-aid on a flesh wound.
  - gsich 8y ago
    I don't blame the ribbon design for using vertical space. Unfortunateley nearly all programs do so. It goes hand in hand with the poor vertical resolution of monitors. 1920x1080 is not better then 1920x1200, but marketing says otherwise ("Full-HD"). The inital design phase of the ribbon style was probably at a time where 4:3 or 5:4 monitors were more common. The floating palette is not inconsistent. It appears when you select text. First it's half transparent because you might not need it. If you want to use it, hover with the mouse above, the palette becomes non-transparent. If you just want to highlight something by selecting it, you can move the cursor away, the transparent palette hides. I can reproduce this behaviour all the time. It might not be the best idea, but it's not inconsistent in its usage.
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      > The initial design phase of the ribbon style was probably at a time where 4:3 or 5:4 monitors were more common Though they were more common, the market had already moved to notebooks outselling everything else. Microsoft should have had foresight. In fact, you might say they did, with Windows Sidebar in Vista; whilst not fantastic, it was a good use of horizontal space. Besides this, they already had interfaces in prior versions of Office that made more efficient use of vertical space __and__ made efficient use of horizontal space on widescreen displays; they were the sidebar palettes, still used in Visual Studio. They just needed further development; instead, they were completely removed. > It's not inconsistent It is if you're a user with special accessibility requirements, especially those with motor skill problems or vision difficulties; ephemeral interfaces are hard to target, and without a means to manually invoke it and a consistent location, might as well not be there for many a user. A well-designed interface doesn't need to account for edge cases. Office 2003 and prior's interface, whilst not pretty, was already extremely usable in that sense. All that was needed was context-sensitivity; instead, the baby went out with the bath water.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Yeah. I found only one thing Ribbon excels at, and it's not even in Office. It's in Explorer and some other applications, when used in tablet mode. Then, suddenly, Ribbon becomes a brilliant thing, reinforcing my view that Windows is the only sane, non-toy OS for tablets. But Office use is keyboard-heavy, so I don't understand why the Ribbon is there, or why it started there.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Even then, the touch targets are all of different sizes. I find it really bizarre to have small touch targets on a tablet interface. That said, I'll agree that the Ribbon does work best on a full screen interface at the top, though I still think a or two context-sensitive toolbar(s) would work better. I was thinking about this in the shower: why is mapping a drive letter to a path in the Ribbon? Shouldn't that be a button somewhere in or near the navigation tree interface in the left sidebar, grouping it with the other aspects of disk drives and paths. Plenty of what's in even Explorer's relatively simple ribbon could be in a context-based location for greater semantic grouping. That could simplify the Ribbon, and turn it back into a simple toolbar, maybe with a secondary, highly context-sensitive toolbar at the bottom of the window. That's not an unprecedented thought. Windows XP had it with the Quick Tasks sidebar. The problem there was the use of sentences rather than simple command names made it difficult to separate the signal from the noise; plus, if you didn't change any of the defaults, you had that little dog making the whole thing seem rather unserious when it was actually a rather power paradigm, poorly implemented but with much untapped potential.

leoedin 8y ago

I've been using my taskbar on the side of the screen for the past decade, because every screen I use has an excess of width and limited height. I seem to be very much in a minority here - I guess people don't change things from default?

snazz 8y ago
> I guess people don’t change things from default? Precisely. The average user assumes (often correctly) that the way things are is the way things are. When it comes to what technical people think are basic features (pairing a wireless keyboard to an iPad, or changing default text size on iPhones, or any number of similar tasks on any system), the modern “ease of use” guidelines suggest hiding everything away as much as possible, severely limiting setting discoverability.
- bdamm 8y ago
  Well, I consider myself an expert user, but I rarely change the default because I switch between environments so often that it would represent a major time overhead to extensively customize application to the way I really want them. And besides, the way I really want them is so far away from the way they are shipped that it's normally unrealistic to maintain that level of customization. So I get used to the defaults. It makes it easier to throw out, reinstall, or switch environments if I need to. In any given day I use 5 or 6 different primary environments.
  - xte 8y ago
    Probably i switch so often because of actual limited and limiting system design: in a Plan9-like world user's desktop is the center of the world and anything start from it and being done and used from it. In a commercial world it's common to have tons of crappy devices (so you pay more things more often) and no real integration. Time ago I have a discussion with a "commercial" guy who say that the sole really integrated platforms are cloud&mobile so they are obviously the future because we are a society and we need to interoperate. I respond plugging my laptop HDMI into the room projector and show a quick Emacs/EXWM(-X) demo: email? Hit a single key (F6 in my case) and my MUA (notmuch-emacs) popup instantly. On top of it's big search bar I have few single-key accessible saved searches and bottom the big series of tags, a far superior "dashboard" than bloated GMail UI. Of course compose a new message can happen with a single key at any time with any open application I have focused. Oh I imaging someone demand me a demo, a quick M-x skeletor (ivy-completed) popup, a single key to choose beamer slide, quick typing and slides are made, tested locally and uploaded. Another imaginary interruption and another task (skeletor again + org-mode), an imaginary patch sent via mail and voilà: magit integration. All datas are really integrated and usable in a consistent environment, anything can be done in a snap and NO other monster modern GUI or '90-style can do the same. That's the past (starting from LispM/MIT AI lab glory time) and the future like we have had "golden age" of ancient Greek polis and more modern "middle (dark) age" and again a modern age. That's integration and customization. No need to switch between systems (while can be done easily with NixOS/GuixSD + homeManager/GNU stow + unison). My system is main and I can replicate/extend it on any decent hw as nedeed. That's "switching systems" IMO :-)
zapzupnz 8y ago
I put the macOS Dock on the side, but I still keep the Windows taskbar at the bottom; I just prefer how that looks, aesthetically. That said, I change its size to small, I don't need huge icons.
int_19h 8y ago
I dock the taskbar on the left ever since it got an icon-only mode in Win7.
baddox 8y ago
Most screens are wider than they are tall, but I wouldn’t say there’s an excess of width. I use the width for multiple windows side by side, and I’m fine with having a “global” taskbar running horizontally and using a small portion of the height. MacOS and other operating systems cleverly have a global top bar that changes depending on the focused application, which I like.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  There's an excess of width if you aren't a pro user, who knows how to take advantage of it. Linux has tiling WMs, Windows has basic tiling functionality + someone out there made a hackish tiling WM in AutoHotkey of all things[0]. But you're unlikely to discover this as a regular user, unless someone shows it to you. -- [0] - https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n
Pxtl 8y ago
No, I do the same thing. It also allows me to put text labels on my running applications, because I read English and not heiroglyphics... Especially when MS loves to change their icons for VS and Office with every major release.
Foobar8568 8y ago
I have always put the Taskbar on the left as long as I remember I could. At work, it seems I am always the only one with such habits for more than a decade in different client environment.
amalcon 8y ago
I've been doing that since the 1990s (or, at least, when I use a system with a taskbar). I've never seen anyone else who does it either.
Wildgoose 8y ago
Me too. I want as much vertical space available as possible.
tracker1 8y ago
I've done that... but some of the orientation experience should actually be flipped... example, in horizontal/left, the windows start menu should probably still be in the bottom left, with taskbar climbing upward. Notifications flipped to top-left. In the end, I find that left-side orientation is rarely done well, or well imho. I did really like the Unity UI in Ubuntu, but I think I'm the only one on this. I used to position my launchpad in macos on the left as well, but this is awkward, and easier to just have it auto-hide.

Tagbert 8y ago

You do know that there is a "collapse ribbon" icon (v) on the right side of the header. double-clicking the header will do it too.

zapzupnz 8y ago
Collapsing the Ribbon is lipstick on a pig. In the end, using the basic functions of the software becomes a game of "is my mouse pointer in the right place to trigger the Ribbon to temporarily show without getting fed up and just making it stay shown all the time?". Ever seen a non-technical user move the mouse with the same dexterity as you or I? I haven't. The mouse always roams around for a month of Sundays before it eventually arrives in the right place. This is not a stable interface; it is an ugly hack to make up for wasteful the Ribbon was designed to be At best, it could be a sort of distraction-free writing mode except that you can still see the rest of the interface, some parts equally as eye-catching as parts of the Ribbon.
- dbcurtis 8y ago
  > Ever seen a non-technical user move the mouse with the same dexterity as you or I? I haven't. The mouse always roams around for a month of Sundays before it eventually arrives in the right place. Not just non-technical. I hate having to hunt for the tiny target. A very highly technical friend of mine invented a term for that: “pixel spearing”. I am truly insensed at how much time I waste trying to spear the exact right pixel.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    It wouldn't be so bad if the correct zone for bringing up the hidden area obeyed Fitt's Law, but (A) the zone isn't directly at the top of the window, and (B) that wouldn't work with non-maximised windows anyway. It's why hiding toolbars dynamically works well in macOS' fullscreen mode; flinging your mouse to the top of the screen always shows the menubar and toolbar without fail (unless the mouse is captured by the app, of course, like in a game).

anime_forever 8y ago

Weird, I like the ribbon a lot

gsich 8y ago

Double-click the ribbon to hide them.

zapzupnz 8y ago
Missing the point. I shouldn't have to hide the primary means of accessing even the most basic functions of the software just to save unnecessarily-wasted vertical space. At the very least, Office should then show a small context-sensitive toolbar (mini-ribbon?) or a sidebar; instead, the only recourses are either the inconsistent appearance of the floating palette that only appears when the stars are aligned with the user's mouse pointer or temporarily showing the Ribbon again. Like I said to another reply to my comment, lipstick on a pig. Maybe another analogy is that it's a band-aid on a flesh wound.
- gsich 8y ago
  I don't blame the ribbon design for using vertical space. Unfortunateley nearly all programs do so. It goes hand in hand with the poor vertical resolution of monitors. 1920x1080 is not better then 1920x1200, but marketing says otherwise ("Full-HD"). The inital design phase of the ribbon style was probably at a time where 4:3 or 5:4 monitors were more common. The floating palette is not inconsistent. It appears when you select text. First it's half transparent because you might not need it. If you want to use it, hover with the mouse above, the palette becomes non-transparent. If you just want to highlight something by selecting it, you can move the cursor away, the transparent palette hides. I can reproduce this behaviour all the time. It might not be the best idea, but it's not inconsistent in its usage.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    > The initial design phase of the ribbon style was probably at a time where 4:3 or 5:4 monitors were more common Though they were more common, the market had already moved to notebooks outselling everything else. Microsoft should have had foresight. In fact, you might say they did, with Windows Sidebar in Vista; whilst not fantastic, it was a good use of horizontal space. Besides this, they already had interfaces in prior versions of Office that made more efficient use of vertical space __and__ made efficient use of horizontal space on widescreen displays; they were the sidebar palettes, still used in Visual Studio. They just needed further development; instead, they were completely removed. > It's not inconsistent It is if you're a user with special accessibility requirements, especially those with motor skill problems or vision difficulties; ephemeral interfaces are hard to target, and without a means to manually invoke it and a consistent location, might as well not be there for many a user. A well-designed interface doesn't need to account for edge cases. Office 2003 and prior's interface, whilst not pretty, was already extremely usable in that sense. All that was needed was context-sensitivity; instead, the baby went out with the bath water.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Yeah. I found only one thing Ribbon excels at, and it's not even in Office. It's in Explorer and some other applications, when used in tablet mode. Then, suddenly, Ribbon becomes a brilliant thing, reinforcing my view that Windows is the only sane, non-toy OS for tablets. But Office use is keyboard-heavy, so I don't understand why the Ribbon is there, or why it started there.

zapzupnz 8y ago
Even then, the touch targets are all of different sizes. I find it really bizarre to have small touch targets on a tablet interface. That said, I'll agree that the Ribbon does work best on a full screen interface at the top, though I still think a or two context-sensitive toolbar(s) would work better. I was thinking about this in the shower: why is mapping a drive letter to a path in the Ribbon? Shouldn't that be a button somewhere in or near the navigation tree interface in the left sidebar, grouping it with the other aspects of disk drives and paths. Plenty of what's in even Explorer's relatively simple ribbon could be in a context-based location for greater semantic grouping. That could simplify the Ribbon, and turn it back into a simple toolbar, maybe with a secondary, highly context-sensitive toolbar at the bottom of the window. That's not an unprecedented thought. Windows XP had it with the Quick Tasks sidebar. The problem there was the use of sentences rather than simple command names made it difficult to separate the signal from the noise; plus, if you didn't change any of the defaults, you had that little dog making the whole thing seem rather unserious when it was actually a rather power paradigm, poorly implemented but with much untapped potential.