4 ms·

I confess, I am a ribbon hater. For three main reasons: 1) It kills muscle memory by changing the size and location of the buttons depending on the window size

I confess, I am a ribbon hater. For three main reasons: 1) It kills muscle memory by changing the size and location of the buttons depending on the window size. And not just the size, but also their shape, appearance and place in dropdown hierarchies (i.e. top level versus behind a dropdown). So even after years of using MS Office with the ribbon I still hunt for commands. 2) It encourages multiple copies of the same command. So instead of learning the one place font-size (e.g.) shows up, you end up hunting every time through 3 or 4 tabs for the place you saw it last. 3) The UI features it was meant to replace was left in the program further increasing the number of areas you have to search through. Looking at Powerpoint as an example, it has the ribbon, formatting panes, traditional formatting dialogs, and the right click quick options menu. There are features available on all of them, but there are also options missing on some but not others. Sometimes I find myself hunting through 3 or 4 of these places for some obscure (e.g. table padding) option. This opinion is based on using the ribbon in MS Office, which was the first and (I would hope, based on the team's resources) best implementation. Maybe somebody uses the ribbon to its fullest. I buy their pitch that they studied beginner users and those people had an easier time with the ribbon. But for advanced users, this interface is a nightmare. And can't really be avoided.

maliker 7y ago
Self-reply, sorry, the ribbon really gets my goat. Here's the deck from the Office team on how and why they designed the ribbon: http://video.ch9.ms/slides/mix08/UX09_Harris.pptx http://video.ch9.ms/slides/mix08/UX09_Harris.pptx I realize the Office team had a very hard task. They can't remove features or some of their 100 million users get mad, and they're making a ton of money so they've got a lot of devs looking to add features, so they've got thousands of features and of course users can't find things. For a contrasting approach, I think the Keynote app on Mac went a different and easier-to-use route: 1. All the options with no context (e.g. insert new object) are in the top menubar, and the contextual options (e.g. change font color) are in a sidebar. So it's clear where to look for things. 2. Commands are in one place only, so you remember where you should look. (Okay, there's a little bit of duplication as the OS-level font menus are in the menu and the sidebar). 3. The contextual stuff is on the side instead of the top, which works better with the wide screens we use everywhere on desktops these days. 4. Contextual menus options stay the same size and shape and in the same location relative to the content, so you retain your muscle memory.
bilekas 7y ago
> This opinion is based on using the ribbon in MS Office I was just about to say the same thing.. Ribbon is good, when done right, but recent iterations of office have just obfuscated things so much that its infuriating.
JohnFen 7y ago
I couldn't agree more. I hate the ribbon so very much. You stated the many problems with it better than I, but here's why it actively makes me angry: It takes a lot of space, and seems to always make it very hard to find the things that I need to use. If I have no option but to use the ribbon, my productivity using that software plummets because I so often have to take a lot of time to find the operation that I need. It's incredibly frustrating.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Did you know you can scroll through Ribbon tabs on most (every?) implementation with your scroll wheel? I've been surprised how often that seems to differentiate between people that think finding things in a ribbon is hard/slow versus easy/quick. Beyond that, have you tried navigating a Ribbon via keyboard? It has also surprised me how many people that liked the old menus because of keyboard navigation don't realize a lot of the same tricks and navigations work exactly the same (Alt, arrow keys, Esc, letters, etc).
  - benhurmarcel 7y ago
    In addition, when it comes to taking too much space, most people don't know it can be collapsed (double click the active tab).
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > Did you know you can scroll through Ribbon tabs on most (every?) implementation with your scroll wheel? > Beyond that, have you tried navigating a Ribbon via keyboard? Yes, to both of those things. Scrolling through the ribbon tabs doesn't address or ease my issue with the ribbon (which is trying to find the operation I want). The problem isn't how quickly I can scroll through the ribbon, but that finding things in it is hard. That said, a good UI solution wouldn't require me to scroll anything like that in the first place. Keyboard shortcuts let me bypass the ribbon, which is good, but they don't help me with things that I don't do all the time because I won't remember the shortcuts. Aside from the waste of screen space, the ribbon doesn't bother me when doing the routine things.
Smoosh 7y ago
Microsoft also added a "Tell me what you want to do..." search box, which I think is a clear indication that the current UI is unsatisfactory for a large number of people.
- mcswell 7y ago
  I tried that today. We moved to the new Outlook 365, and it had a bunch of useless (to me) dividers when I sorted by date that said "today" and "yesterday" etc. I wanted to get rid of them, so I asked the search box "how do i omit the today and yesterday dividers". All I got was how to search for emails sent today/ yesterday. I finally found what I wanted using a web search. (The old Outlook probably had those dividers as well, but I must have found the trick to get rid of them back in 2010.)

maliker 7y ago

Self-reply, sorry, the ribbon really gets my goat. Here's the deck from the Office team on how and why they designed the ribbon: http://video.ch9.ms/slides/mix08/UX09_Harris.pptx http://video.ch9.ms/slides/mix08/UX09_Harris.pptx I realize the Office team had a very hard task. They can't remove features or some of their 100 million users get mad, and they're making a ton of money so they've got a lot of devs looking to add features, so they've got thousands of features and of course users can't find things. For a contrasting approach, I think the Keynote app on Mac went a different and easier-to-use route: 1. All the options with no context (e.g. insert new object) are in the top menubar, and the contextual options (e.g. change font color) are in a sidebar. So it's clear where to look for things. 2. Commands are in one place only, so you remember where you should look. (Okay, there's a little bit of duplication as the OS-level font menus are in the menu and the sidebar). 3. The contextual stuff is on the side instead of the top, which works better with the wide screens we use everywhere on desktops these days. 4. Contextual menus options stay the same size and shape and in the same location relative to the content, so you retain your muscle memory.

bilekas 7y ago

> This opinion is based on using the ribbon in MS Office I was just about to say the same thing.. Ribbon is good, when done right, but recent iterations of office have just obfuscated things so much that its infuriating.

JohnFen 7y ago

I couldn't agree more. I hate the ribbon so very much. You stated the many problems with it better than I, but here's why it actively makes me angry: It takes a lot of space, and seems to always make it very hard to find the things that I need to use. If I have no option but to use the ribbon, my productivity using that software plummets because I so often have to take a lot of time to find the operation that I need. It's incredibly frustrating.

WorldMaker 7y ago
Did you know you can scroll through Ribbon tabs on most (every?) implementation with your scroll wheel? I've been surprised how often that seems to differentiate between people that think finding things in a ribbon is hard/slow versus easy/quick. Beyond that, have you tried navigating a Ribbon via keyboard? It has also surprised me how many people that liked the old menus because of keyboard navigation don't realize a lot of the same tricks and navigations work exactly the same (Alt, arrow keys, Esc, letters, etc).
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  In addition, when it comes to taking too much space, most people don't know it can be collapsed (double click the active tab).
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > Did you know you can scroll through Ribbon tabs on most (every?) implementation with your scroll wheel? > Beyond that, have you tried navigating a Ribbon via keyboard? Yes, to both of those things. Scrolling through the ribbon tabs doesn't address or ease my issue with the ribbon (which is trying to find the operation I want). The problem isn't how quickly I can scroll through the ribbon, but that finding things in it is hard. That said, a good UI solution wouldn't require me to scroll anything like that in the first place. Keyboard shortcuts let me bypass the ribbon, which is good, but they don't help me with things that I don't do all the time because I won't remember the shortcuts. Aside from the waste of screen space, the ribbon doesn't bother me when doing the routine things.

Smoosh 7y ago

Microsoft also added a "Tell me what you want to do..." search box, which I think is a clear indication that the current UI is unsatisfactory for a large number of people.

mcswell 7y ago
I tried that today. We moved to the new Outlook 365, and it had a bunch of useless (to me) dividers when I sorted by date that said "today" and "yesterday" etc. I wanted to get rid of them, so I asked the search box "how do i omit the today and yesterday dividers". All I got was how to search for emails sent today/ yesterday. I finally found what I wanted using a web search. (The old Outlook probably had those dividers as well, but I must have found the trick to get rid of them back in 2010.)