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The way people reacted to the Ribbon disagrees with you :) Toolbars specifically were replaced with an improved chunk of UI, everything else was left the same,

The way people reacted to the Ribbon disagrees with you :) Toolbars specifically were replaced with an improved chunk of UI, everything else was left the same, and people were furious. Rightly so, to a degree - learning to use it was an adjustment. Now imagine that the whole app's UI incrementally changed and not just parts of it... nobody's gonna be happy about that.

eitland 6y ago
> Toolbars specifically were replaced with an improved chunk of UI, everything else was left the same Was hiding the file menu items behind a round logo that looked nothing like a button part of that improved UI? Is the current file menu that looks like the rest of the menus but behaves totally different part of the improved UI?
- kevingadd 6y ago
  The Menus were a toolbar before the ribbon existed, which is why you could customize them. Visual Studio was the same. So it was natural for the ribbon to eat up the menus as well. Certainly that's part of why people disliked it, but the artificial separation between 'menu' and 'toolbar' was already kind of a problem and that's why they were unified.
  - ethbro 6y ago
    People disliked Ribbon because it took a logical system geared towards power users (hierarchical menus) and replaced it with an organic system geared towards new users (usage-driven ordering). There was no way that wasn't going to piss off a very vocal segment of users, and Microsoft, to their detriment, badly botched the messaging.
    - eitland 6y ago
      My point is that even if Ribbon was a good idea the implementation had a number of flaws that made me question of UX really was the reason and not something else. My go-to example is how the File menu was hidden behind a non-button that looked just like a fancy application logo. Why would an actual, caring ux developer do that in a flagship product?
meddlepal 6y ago
Am I the only damn person that liked the ribbon's?!
- wyattpeak 6y ago
  I don't think it's a question of what people ultimately like. It's that change is frustrating, especially for only marginal benefit. I like the ribbon today, and I complained when it was released. And I stand by that complaint, I think pushback against change serves an important role, and developers should feel pain when making UX changes. It's not just a matter of some changes being bad, even when they're good there's a cost. My grandparents both had iPhones, loved them and loved learning to do different things on them. Whenever I'd visit they'd have a laundry list of things they wanted to learn to do. Over time, that list was slowly supplanted by relearning how to do things they once knew, but had changed. It was extremely frustrating because so much of it was near-pointless. Easy for me (and most of their test-base, I'm sure) to relearn, but very difficult for nonagenarians.

eitland 6y ago

> Toolbars specifically were replaced with an improved chunk of UI, everything else was left the same Was hiding the file menu items behind a round logo that looked nothing like a button part of that improved UI? Is the current file menu that looks like the rest of the menus but behaves totally different part of the improved UI?

kevingadd 6y ago
The Menus were a toolbar before the ribbon existed, which is why you could customize them. Visual Studio was the same. So it was natural for the ribbon to eat up the menus as well. Certainly that's part of why people disliked it, but the artificial separation between 'menu' and 'toolbar' was already kind of a problem and that's why they were unified.
- ethbro 6y ago
  People disliked Ribbon because it took a logical system geared towards power users (hierarchical menus) and replaced it with an organic system geared towards new users (usage-driven ordering). There was no way that wasn't going to piss off a very vocal segment of users, and Microsoft, to their detriment, badly botched the messaging.
  - eitland 6y ago
    My point is that even if Ribbon was a good idea the implementation had a number of flaws that made me question of UX really was the reason and not something else. My go-to example is how the File menu was hidden behind a non-button that looked just like a fancy application logo. Why would an actual, caring ux developer do that in a flagship product?

meddlepal 6y ago

Am I the only damn person that liked the ribbon's?!

wyattpeak 6y ago
I don't think it's a question of what people ultimately like. It's that change is frustrating, especially for only marginal benefit. I like the ribbon today, and I complained when it was released. And I stand by that complaint, I think pushback against change serves an important role, and developers should feel pain when making UX changes. It's not just a matter of some changes being bad, even when they're good there's a cost. My grandparents both had iPhones, loved them and loved learning to do different things on them. Whenever I'd visit they'd have a laundry list of things they wanted to learn to do. Over time, that list was slowly supplanted by relearning how to do things they once knew, but had changed. It was extremely frustrating because so much of it was near-pointless. Easy for me (and most of their test-base, I'm sure) to relearn, but very difficult for nonagenarians.