4 ms·

I read some of the other posts by OP and they mentioned that the ribbon interface was a mess. I remember I quite enjoyed it, and I'm also aware that some people

I read some of the other posts by OP and they mentioned that the ribbon interface was a mess. I remember I quite enjoyed it, and I'm also aware that some people didn't like it, but I never knew why they didn't like it. Anyone here care to enlighten me, from a UX standpoint?

Viliam1234 6y ago
For me, the ribbon interface makes it difficult to find things, unless they happen to be on the default ribbon. The classical menu is a tree structure. The first level is horizontal in the menu bar, every other level is vertical and opens when you click the previous level. You can easily go inspect the entire structure if you are looking for something that you use rarely and don't remember where it is. Also, the items are ordered by topic ("file-related things here, editing-related things here"), with ribbons it feels like "most frequently used buttons here, everything else randomly hidden somewhere else". It does not help that some ribbons are secret and only appear when you do a specific action, e.g. select an item of given type. I'd rather have a disabled menu item that I can't click, but at least I see that it exists. Shortly, with classical menu I feel in control: everything is here, neatly organized by topic, I choose what I want. With ribbons it feels like the system discourages me from doing anything that is not in the default ribbon, by making it more difficult to find. I have no idea how large part of this is simply a force of habit. But from my experience, new users who never saw a non-ribbon menu still have a problem finding things. Except now I have that problem, too. (In larger context, it feels like a typical Microsoft arbitrary change for change's sake. Just like the control panel is dramatically different in each version of Windows. It's like the more important something is, the more they love to experiment with it, where "experiment" means forcing it on all users.)
- tjchear 6y ago
  I see. I can only say that I was never advanced enough of a user that this became a problem; much of what I needed was already in the ribbon, and I could find them by just scanning the whole thing, as opposed to drilling down menus.
gertlex 6y ago
I was fine with the ribbon interface when I first encountered it with MS Word. I was in college then, and using that interface constantly. Now though, I occasionally run into programs that I use once or twice per year that adopt Windows' ribbon interface, and yeah, it's definitely harder to find things than a drop-down menu interface would be. I have to imagine that there's also a factor of context-switching friction in mixing both icons and words. I think the old approach of "common familiar icons in toolbars, those and everything else in organized drop-down menus" was superior for this reason as well.
uryga 6y ago
i don't have and concrete UX recommendations, but for me (a casual Office user) it always somehow manages to show both too much and too little... i.e. there's this distracting mess of buttons and fields on the top bar, but i still have to fish around various tabs to find what i'm looking for. and i can never remember which tab stuff is in, kind of like the way they grouped things in the Win10 Settings app
- tjchear 6y ago
  I had the same problem with menus too, so I thought ribbon was helpful because it showed most of everything I needed and I just had to give the whole ribbon a quick glance over to find what I needed. Admittedly my needs were simple enough that I never had to hunt around very much.

Viliam1234 6y ago

For me, the ribbon interface makes it difficult to find things, unless they happen to be on the default ribbon. The classical menu is a tree structure. The first level is horizontal in the menu bar, every other level is vertical and opens when you click the previous level. You can easily go inspect the entire structure if you are looking for something that you use rarely and don't remember where it is. Also, the items are ordered by topic ("file-related things here, editing-related things here"), with ribbons it feels like "most frequently used buttons here, everything else randomly hidden somewhere else". It does not help that some ribbons are secret and only appear when you do a specific action, e.g. select an item of given type. I'd rather have a disabled menu item that I can't click, but at least I see that it exists. Shortly, with classical menu I feel in control: everything is here, neatly organized by topic, I choose what I want. With ribbons it feels like the system discourages me from doing anything that is not in the default ribbon, by making it more difficult to find. I have no idea how large part of this is simply a force of habit. But from my experience, new users who never saw a non-ribbon menu still have a problem finding things. Except now I have that problem, too. (In larger context, it feels like a typical Microsoft arbitrary change for change's sake. Just like the control panel is dramatically different in each version of Windows. It's like the more important something is, the more they love to experiment with it, where "experiment" means forcing it on all users.)

tjchear 6y ago
I see. I can only say that I was never advanced enough of a user that this became a problem; much of what I needed was already in the ribbon, and I could find them by just scanning the whole thing, as opposed to drilling down menus.

gertlex 6y ago

I was fine with the ribbon interface when I first encountered it with MS Word. I was in college then, and using that interface constantly. Now though, I occasionally run into programs that I use once or twice per year that adopt Windows' ribbon interface, and yeah, it's definitely harder to find things than a drop-down menu interface would be. I have to imagine that there's also a factor of context-switching friction in mixing both icons and words. I think the old approach of "common familiar icons in toolbars, those and everything else in organized drop-down menus" was superior for this reason as well.

uryga 6y ago

i don't have and concrete UX recommendations, but for me (a casual Office user) it always somehow manages to show both too much and too little... i.e. there's this distracting mess of buttons and fields on the top bar, but i still have to fish around various tabs to find what i'm looking for. and i can never remember which tab stuff is in, kind of like the way they grouped things in the Win10 Settings app

tjchear 6y ago
I had the same problem with menus too, so I thought ribbon was helpful because it showed most of everything I needed and I just had to give the whole ribbon a quick glance over to find what I needed. Admittedly my needs were simple enough that I never had to hunt around very much.