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As someone who likes ribbon interfaces, I have an issue with your metaphor, and it's that you're claiming the one item you're looking for happened to not be in

As someone who likes ribbon interfaces, I have an issue with your metaphor, and it's that you're claiming the one item you're looking for happened to not be in any of the actual aisles, but on an end-cap display. The problem is that the ribbon pages are the aisles. There are no hidden "aisles" in between the end-cap display tabs you're equating with the ribbon. Personally, I found I was able to accomplish visual tasks quicker with the ribbon than with the pull-down menus. Things as simple as creating a graph in Excel or choosing heading levels in Word are easier to do with a one-click picture button than with a pop-up menu with drop-downs. (And more advanced stuff that requires a pop-up, like changing paragraph formatting options or manually formatting a graph, have single-click buttons on the ribbon, or can be just as easily accessed through the right-click context menu.) Bringing it back to your metaphor, the classic drop-down system seems more like I'm walking through aisles filled with text-labeled drawers, and I have to open a shelf's drawer to see if it actually has the specific item I'm looking for or not. As opposed to the ribbon, which is just seeing the things I want directly on the shelves. I'm saying this as someone who experienced Office '97/XP/2003 as a young child, and got the 2007 ribbon in middle school. While I was obviously only a basic user in elementary school, I've also gone back to the drop-down system for a while with OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice, and now use LibreOffice's ribbon mode (which still isn't as visual and consistent as Microsoft's ribbon yet). I usually get the sense that people who hate the ribbon were simply at an advanced level of proficiency with the drop-down menus, and were understandably thrown off when things suddenly looked different; but I don't think anything about the drop-down menu is inherently easier or better than the ribbon (if anything, I'd think it would be the opposite).

PlunderBunny 3y ago
Each to their own - if the ribbon works for you, that's great. I'm not the poster you are replying to, but my problem with the ribbon is that it's just so much harder to remember where things are than a traditional hierarchy of menus. I think it's that items can change their horizontal position (based on context), and also that the combination of icons and text is harder to internalise than just text (I also dislike icons in menus too). Plus, sometimes the thing you want is in the overflow area (chevron), so you do have to 'open the drawers' to find things if you don't know whether they are in this part of the ribbon or somewhere else.
hulitu 3y ago
> Things as simple as creating a graph in Excel Selecting the same graph style from the ribbon: the 2 graphs are different.

PlunderBunny 3y ago

Each to their own - if the ribbon works for you, that's great. I'm not the poster you are replying to, but my problem with the ribbon is that it's just so much harder to remember where things are than a traditional hierarchy of menus. I think it's that items can change their horizontal position (based on context), and also that the combination of icons and text is harder to internalise than just text (I also dislike icons in menus too). Plus, sometimes the thing you want is in the overflow area (chevron), so you do have to 'open the drawers' to find things if you don't know whether they are in this part of the ribbon or somewhere else.

hulitu 3y ago

> Things as simple as creating a graph in Excel Selecting the same graph style from the ribbon: the 2 graphs are different.