5 ms·

> I think it's loads better than the semi-random arrangement of cryptic menus and toolbars we had before. we had meaningful, sensibly grouped, sets of standard

> I think it's loads better than the semi-random arrangement of cryptic menus and toolbars we had before. we had meaningful, sensibly grouped, sets of standard icons, but graphics designers got bored and thought those should be updated. i like the ribbon but i think standard icons are better.

hexmiles 7y ago
the two are not mutually exclusive, are they? You can have a ribbon with standard icons right? I see ribbon as an alternative to the menubar plus toolbar layout, more than visual style.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > You can have a ribbon with standard icons right? That would be fine, as long as it's possible to completely hide the ribbon.
  - frosted-flakes 7y ago
    You can. Just double-click any of the ribbon tabs, or press the "un-pin" button.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      That must depend on what apps the ribbon appears in. I have no such option in the ones that I use. But on investigation, a couple of them do have a hard-to-find option to remove the ribbon entirely, which was a welcome discovery!
      - frosted-flakes 7y ago
        Every implementation of the Ribbon I've seen allows you to collapse the ribbon, including Office, Paint, AutoCAD, and others.
benhurmarcel 7y ago
> we had meaningful, sensibly grouped, sets of standard icons Come on; the normal method to find the function you needed when you didn't know the icon was to hover them all one-by-one.
mcswell 7y ago
"the semi-random arrangement of cryptic menus and toolbars we had before." Well, yeah, if some program had a semi-random arrangement of cryptic menus, I guess that was bad. As I remember, Word's' arrangement was quite good and non-cryptic. Now we have instead a semi-random arrangement (afaict) of cryptic icons. (There's a reason the alphabet replaced hieroglyphics.)
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  To quote the linked page: > For example, almost any command in a document creating and authoring program could belong in tabs labeled Edit, Format, Tools, Options, Advanced, and More. Guess what menus Word used? All of the buttons on the ribbon have labels, except for very common ones on the Home tab. That's one of the main tenets of the ribbon. As compared to toolbars, which made very little use of labels at all.
franga2000 7y ago
> sensibly grouped That joke seriously made my day! Where is the global settings/properties menu for Firefox? Photoshop? Eclipse? Premiere Pro? Android Studio? Between those 5 apps, some of the same category or even same vendor, you can find that one very ubiquitous entry under: Tools, File, Window, Edit, File but there's 4 of them.
- eska 7y ago
  So instead of replacing the entire menu paradigm with ribbons, how about just grouping things better, wouldn't that solve the problem? On Mac OS for example the "Preferences" item is always in the same location and has the same shortcut, throughout first party and third party apps.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    Yeah, I think at least half the problem is that among those 5 cross-platform applications, only some of them try to respect the native UI standards on all platforms.
- jml7c5 7y ago
  Global settings never standardized in one place for some reason. Everything else is well-organized, but for whatever reason an "Application" menu never became common. It's a shame Microsoft didn't promote such a menu in their own software back in the day.
- blackandblue 7y ago
  > Where is the global settings/properties see? that's part of what i was trying to say. you say settings, i think cog, hamburger menu, or even three dots. it's so hard lately because designers want to innovate and make their UI different.

hexmiles 7y ago

the two are not mutually exclusive, are they? You can have a ribbon with standard icons right? I see ribbon as an alternative to the menubar plus toolbar layout, more than visual style.

JohnFen 7y ago
> You can have a ribbon with standard icons right? That would be fine, as long as it's possible to completely hide the ribbon.
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  You can. Just double-click any of the ribbon tabs, or press the "un-pin" button.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    That must depend on what apps the ribbon appears in. I have no such option in the ones that I use. But on investigation, a couple of them do have a hard-to-find option to remove the ribbon entirely, which was a welcome discovery!
    - frosted-flakes 7y ago
      Every implementation of the Ribbon I've seen allows you to collapse the ribbon, including Office, Paint, AutoCAD, and others.

benhurmarcel 7y ago

> we had meaningful, sensibly grouped, sets of standard icons Come on; the normal method to find the function you needed when you didn't know the icon was to hover them all one-by-one.

mcswell 7y ago

"the semi-random arrangement of cryptic menus and toolbars we had before." Well, yeah, if some program had a semi-random arrangement of cryptic menus, I guess that was bad. As I remember, Word's' arrangement was quite good and non-cryptic. Now we have instead a semi-random arrangement (afaict) of cryptic icons. (There's a reason the alphabet replaced hieroglyphics.)

frosted-flakes 7y ago
To quote the linked page: > For example, almost any command in a document creating and authoring program could belong in tabs labeled Edit, Format, Tools, Options, Advanced, and More. Guess what menus Word used? All of the buttons on the ribbon have labels, except for very common ones on the Home tab. That's one of the main tenets of the ribbon. As compared to toolbars, which made very little use of labels at all.

franga2000 7y ago

> sensibly grouped That joke seriously made my day! Where is the global settings/properties menu for Firefox? Photoshop? Eclipse? Premiere Pro? Android Studio? Between those 5 apps, some of the same category or even same vendor, you can find that one very ubiquitous entry under: Tools, File, Window, Edit, File but there's 4 of them.

eska 7y ago
So instead of replacing the entire menu paradigm with ribbons, how about just grouping things better, wouldn't that solve the problem? On Mac OS for example the "Preferences" item is always in the same location and has the same shortcut, throughout first party and third party apps.
- wtallis 7y ago
  Yeah, I think at least half the problem is that among those 5 cross-platform applications, only some of them try to respect the native UI standards on all platforms.
jml7c5 7y ago
Global settings never standardized in one place for some reason. Everything else is well-organized, but for whatever reason an "Application" menu never became common. It's a shame Microsoft didn't promote such a menu in their own software back in the day.
blackandblue 7y ago
> Where is the global settings/properties see? that's part of what i was trying to say. you say settings, i think cog, hamburger menu, or even three dots. it's so hard lately because designers want to innovate and make their UI different.