4 ms·

2003 was the pinnacle of MS Office for me. The introduction of the ‘Ribbon of Confusion’ in 2007 around the time of the adoption of 16:9 screens was appalling.

by knolan 7y ago

2003 was the pinnacle of MS Office for me. The introduction of the ‘Ribbon of Confusion’ in 2007 around the time of the adoption of 16:9 screens was appalling. The ribbon was welded to the top of the screen leaving a letterbox sized area for your documents. It was like using a toolbar encrusted IE. This all happened when Adobe were demonstrating excellent UI design in their pro apps with pallets that could be docked or moved about as required. It was like MS looked at InDesign and Photoshop and simply didn’t understand what they were copying, which imho typifies many MS design decisions.

dmitriid 7y ago
A huge amount of user research went into the original ribbon. However, it looks like they decided that no further research was needed and just started moving everything into the ribbons without any thinking whatsoever.
- willtim 7y ago
  Using the new ribbon version of office I found out that document properties could only be inspected by clicking on a golden orb and going into a menu called "Publish". Similarly most other less-often used features became impossible to find. I've refused to use office for any substantial document ever since. I can only assume that this research was targeted at new users and not existing users.
  - knolan 7y ago
    Similarly for editing charts in excel which became a multi-click hell. Whereas in 2000/XP office you could quickly rearrange series in charts by dragging and enable chart elements at a click now it’s a tedious unintuitive affair. I haven’t used Excel for any serious work since.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    Microsoft destroyed their old blogs and with them a lot of knowledge they contained. Thankfully, Internet Archive preserved the "Why the new UI" series of posts: https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn... Relevant parts: by Office 2003 they had 250 top-level menu items and 50 toolbars (Part V), and this was becoming unmanageable. In Office 2003 they started collecting info on how people are using Office: About 1.3 billion sessions since shipping Office 2003, over 352 million command bar clicks in Word over the last 90 days (Part VI). I won't quote the rest because it's a very good series of articles.
- knolan 7y ago
  I’d be curious to see some of that research. Some technical tools I use have migrated to ribbon UIs. Matlab is one example and it’s utterly broken. Tiling the main IDE window beside a text editor (a standard way of using matlab) on a 15” MBP results in many of the ribbon sections turning into big empty gray spaces requiring yet another click into a cascading shitshow. Fortunately I rarely need to use anything in there as the wasn’t enough there to warrant a ribbon in the first place. Another example is CAD software like Solidworks, but that’s a masterclass in awful UI design all on its own.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21363156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21363156
- UweSchmidt 7y ago
  The word "research" implies "science", but to me is valid only if you go all the way, and publish the methods and the data for peer review. Until then my take is, someone had a bunch of opinions and didn't allow users to keep the old menu.
  - computerex 7y ago
    I think that's a very narrow view of research. There are many private for profit entities that don't publish their findings because they'd rather capitalize on their findings.
MikusR 7y ago
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2006/04/17/the-size-of-things/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2006/04/17/the-size...
- thrower123 7y ago
  It's unfortunate that when they have migrated so many of these older Microsoft blogs around, so many of the images and links have rotted.
- knolan 7y ago
  I’d really like to see those images. In older office I could move toolbars around. If I could have moved the ribbon to be vertically arranged on the right side (hence my Adobe comments) it would have been at least usable. EDIT: via the Wayback machine https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092652/http://officeblogs.net/UI/sizepics/Word97.png https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092652/http://officeblog... https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092624/http://officeblogs.net/UI/sizepics/Word2007.png https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092624/http://officeblog... My point regarding 16:9 screens stands. Many people would have migrated to cheap 16:9 panels (this was certainly the case for the cheap Dells most of the PhD students in my lab were given). The 97 UI has a lot of unused space To the right where you could drag the lower toolbar and expand as needed. You could also customise it and place your frequently used buttons where you wanted them. I always had super/subscripts in easy reach. The inflexibility of the ribbon to and the endless clicking about at least helped me move away from Microsoft and embrace *nix.
willtim 7y ago
And it was a completely different UI, forcing all the users to relearn most of the functionality. I suspect that such a user-hostile change was done in order to achieve a patentable UI, something that LibreOffice and others would not be able to copy.
- mminer237 7y ago
  LibreOffice was still OpenOffice at the time, but that does sound like a plausible theory. It isn't stopping Libre though... https://www.reallinuxuser.com/how-to-enable-the-tabbed-ribbon-interface-style-in-libreoffice-6/ https://www.reallinuxuser.com/how-to-enable-the-tabbed-ribbo...

by knolan 7y ago

dmitriid 7y ago

A huge amount of user research went into the original ribbon. However, it looks like they decided that no further research was needed and just started moving everything into the ribbons without any thinking whatsoever.

willtim 7y ago
Using the new ribbon version of office I found out that document properties could only be inspected by clicking on a golden orb and going into a menu called "Publish". Similarly most other less-often used features became impossible to find. I've refused to use office for any substantial document ever since. I can only assume that this research was targeted at new users and not existing users.
- knolan 7y ago
  Similarly for editing charts in excel which became a multi-click hell. Whereas in 2000/XP office you could quickly rearrange series in charts by dragging and enable chart elements at a click now it’s a tedious unintuitive affair. I haven’t used Excel for any serious work since.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  Microsoft destroyed their old blogs and with them a lot of knowledge they contained. Thankfully, Internet Archive preserved the "Why the new UI" series of posts: https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn... Relevant parts: by Office 2003 they had 250 top-level menu items and 50 toolbars (Part V), and this was becoming unmanageable. In Office 2003 they started collecting info on how people are using Office: About 1.3 billion sessions since shipping Office 2003, over 352 million command bar clicks in Word over the last 90 days (Part VI). I won't quote the rest because it's a very good series of articles.
knolan 7y ago
I’d be curious to see some of that research. Some technical tools I use have migrated to ribbon UIs. Matlab is one example and it’s utterly broken. Tiling the main IDE window beside a text editor (a standard way of using matlab) on a 15” MBP results in many of the ribbon sections turning into big empty gray spaces requiring yet another click into a cascading shitshow. Fortunately I rarely need to use anything in there as the wasn’t enough there to warrant a ribbon in the first place. Another example is CAD software like Solidworks, but that’s a masterclass in awful UI design all on its own.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21363156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21363156
UweSchmidt 7y ago
The word "research" implies "science", but to me is valid only if you go all the way, and publish the methods and the data for peer review. Until then my take is, someone had a bunch of opinions and didn't allow users to keep the old menu.
- computerex 7y ago
  I think that's a very narrow view of research. There are many private for profit entities that don't publish their findings because they'd rather capitalize on their findings.

MikusR 7y ago

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2006/04/17/the-size-of-things/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2006/04/17/the-size...

thrower123 7y ago
It's unfortunate that when they have migrated so many of these older Microsoft blogs around, so many of the images and links have rotted.
knolan 7y ago
I’d really like to see those images. In older office I could move toolbars around. If I could have moved the ribbon to be vertically arranged on the right side (hence my Adobe comments) it would have been at least usable. EDIT: via the Wayback machine https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092652/http://officeblogs.net/UI/sizepics/Word97.png https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092652/http://officeblog... https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092624/http://officeblogs.net/UI/sizepics/Word2007.png https://web.archive.org/web/20060423092624/http://officeblog... My point regarding 16:9 screens stands. Many people would have migrated to cheap 16:9 panels (this was certainly the case for the cheap Dells most of the PhD students in my lab were given). The 97 UI has a lot of unused space To the right where you could drag the lower toolbar and expand as needed. You could also customise it and place your frequently used buttons where you wanted them. I always had super/subscripts in easy reach. The inflexibility of the ribbon to and the endless clicking about at least helped me move away from Microsoft and embrace *nix.

willtim 7y ago

And it was a completely different UI, forcing all the users to relearn most of the functionality. I suspect that such a user-hostile change was done in order to achieve a patentable UI, something that LibreOffice and others would not be able to copy.

mminer237 7y ago
LibreOffice was still OpenOffice at the time, but that does sound like a plausible theory. It isn't stopping Libre though... https://www.reallinuxuser.com/how-to-enable-the-tabbed-ribbon-interface-style-in-libreoffice-6/ https://www.reallinuxuser.com/how-to-enable-the-tabbed-ribbo...