6 ms·

While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it displeases me that the FOSS community is so hostile to the ribbon-style UI MS uses in its office prod

While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it displeases me that the FOSS community is so hostile to the ribbon-style UI MS uses in its office product. Its such a great concept that using LO is like stepping back into the Office 97 days. Frankly, I'd rather just pay every few years for a home edition of Office than do all the mental gymnastic needed to properly switch to LO.

jdlyga 12y ago
Agreed. Didn't like the ribbon at first, but grew to find it very useful for Office.
- italophil 12y ago
  I like the ribbon, but it takes up too much vertical space on a 16:9 display, especially in Word. LO Sidebar uses the space better, and I can see more of the document at once.
  - tpeaton 12y ago
    You can double click the heading on top of the ribbon to collapse the whole thing.
    - scholia 12y ago
      Indeed, I think it's been collapsed by default for some time...
  - scholia 12y ago
    Sure, but that's why you keep it closed almost all the time. For practical purposes, the ribbon takes up less space than the header on Notepad. I've added my most used Word functions to the quick access bar, and some features are provided by the ghost menus that appear by the cursor, and I know a load of keyboard shortcuts. All of which means I very rarely open the ribbon. But when I do need it, it's orders of magnitude better than the rat's nest of menus and task panes we had before.
  - vetinari 12y ago
    You can collapse it. Then it looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/owymIV4.png http://i.imgur.com/owymIV4.png
e40 12y ago
That's your opinion. I don't like the new MS UI. In fact, paying for Office every few years means relearning a new UI, or at least relearning where everything is on the menus now. I find that incredibly frustrating and annoying. My issue with LO is that it doesn't work on complex spreadsheets and powerpoints. I had spreadsheets corrupted and I just had to turn away from LO and go back to Office. I was much happier in LO, but alas I cannot stay.
- worklogin 12y ago
  Did you try the ribbon for a week or two? I loathed it too. But then I got used to its workflow. It exposes a lot more options more intuitively than the current LO menu system.
  - JustSomeNobody 12y ago
    I have to use Office at work. I have not liked the ribbon since it came out. It's not that I don't like new ideas. I am a SW dev and I embrace new. I change jobs every 6 mos just so I don't have to deal with old code, that's how much I like new things. The ribbon sucks. It mind numbingly sucks. Note: Some of this was an exaggeration to drive home the point of how bad the ribbon interface sucks.
    - andybak 12y ago
      Is it really worse than toolbar hell? http://www.mlponies.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/officebars.png http://www.mlponies.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05... Icons without text labels work ONLY for frequently performed tasks with an obvious visual representation. For everything else text and icons is probably optimal.
    - scholia 12y ago
      Do you also struggle with tabbed web pages and toolbars? If you can't use either of those, then I agree, you will have problems with the ribbon. If you can use both of those -- and I'm certain you can -- then I don't see why something that simply combines tabs and toolbar icons is such problem.
mtmail 12y ago
Microsoft also started some FUD when registering a patent of their ribbon design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29#Patent_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29#Patent_... Personally, FOSS or not, I simply don't like the ribbon style menu.
Zigurd 12y ago
Not everyone likes ribbons, and "touch-first Office" is going to be the thing LO needs to aim for, though probably not by imitation. LO could be a big part of making Linux tablets useful.
- skrowl 12y ago
  It already works (somewhat) on Android: http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Android-ARM@24-Bytemark-Hosting/current/ http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Android-ARM@2...
  - elektronjunge 12y ago
    That's just a viewer. Getting documents to render and making a usable touch interface for editing documents are two very different things.
    - chris_wot 12y ago
      It's a viewer because editing is disabled. Editing is coming :-)
      - Zigurd 12y ago
        Having a well-supported full-featured word processor on Android should be very popular. It could multiply the audience for Libre Office. Congratulations on a monumental effort.
JadeNB 12y ago
I downvoted. If you want to use the ribbon-style MS UI, then use MS products. I am glad to have a place to go that allows me to read and edit ubiquitous Office documents without having to be part of the Office eco-system. I agree that LibreOffice probably reminds more of old than of modern Office—I use both as little as possible, so don't keep up with the trends—but so what? To put it differently, why should Microsoft automatically be celebrated for monkeying with an input regime that worked? What is wrong with 'classic' software?
- scholia 12y ago
  Classic software worked just fine, in its day. I can still remember most of the classic WordStar commands. ;-) The celebrations come when there are significant improvements, and there have been plenty of those. The (web-inspired) tabbed Office ribbon was a big one. Sorry they moved your cheese but the rest of the world isn't going to stop progressing even if you do.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    >Classic software worked just fine, in its day. // So, it doesn't work now? The main question would be 'how much more productive one can be now than before?'. It would be nice if there were independent quantative studies on this - as word-processor use is a central part of most governments administrative functions I'd imagine that one can't move for the vast number of such studies ... lol. I'm guessing that the UI changes between Wordstar and Office 2015 amount to a tiny change in the time needed both for training and useful production of word-processed documents. When it comes to spreadsheets I can see things have probably moved on - at least in speed of processing if nothing else. I'd love to ask, of the top 100 functions used - how many weren't in office applications 5 years ago, 10 years ago? How has the average time per word in production of business letters changed (reduced?) over time and what specific [versions of] applications caused the greatest change?
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      Productivity isn't really the benchmark for LibreOffice, at least not until they're close to 100% compatible with the latest version of Office. Compatibility with everybody else's bizarre, overcomplicated, crappy files is the benchmark, and they use a hell of a lot more features than WordStar ever had. I'd prefer to have a product with a crappy UI that can interoperate with everybody else seamlessly, than one with a great, simple UI that can't.
jsherer 12y ago
I believe there was controversy in the FOSS community over Microsoft's patent application for the concept: https://www.google.com/patents/US8255828 https://www.google.com/patents/US8255828 I'd speculate that this patent application provided at least a small amount of hesitation towards the FOSS community implementing a similar interface.
logn 12y ago
The ribbon is stacked button bars. Navigating the ribbon is as unsettling at stacked tab bars. One nice thing about menus is that you peruse them without clicking. Ribbons force you to hunt and peck through the layers with the mouse. Further, when you have no idea where anything is, it's easier to read the menu labels versus scanning the disparate icons and hovering for tooltips.
- elektronjunge 12y ago
  Hit Alt the numbers and letters are the shortcuts for moving around the ribbon. That's actually one of my favorite parts of the ribbon, you are able to see what the shortcuts are very easily. The alt trick works on just about anything in windows.
LordKano 12y ago
I absolutely despise ribbon interfaces. They're a show stopper for me. I am forced to use it at work, so there's nothing I can do about that but FLOSS is all about user empowerment and choice so I don't think I'll ever use it at home. I'll stay with an old version of the package if upgrading means having the ribbon foisted upon me. I like the idea of having an option to select a Ribbon interface or a Standard interface. That way, everyone can get what they like.
macspoofing 12y ago
>Its such a great concept that using LO is like stepping back into the Office 97 days. Maybe there's a reason why ribbon-style components haven't really taken off outside of core Microsoft products. I don't think the ribbon is actually that great-looking and I don't think it's that functional. I'm also a fan of a LO forging it's own identity. For far to long Open Office strove to mimic MS Office in look-and-feel.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  The Ribbon is amazing when you have lots and lots of commands, many which aren't always commonly used. Few programs approach the sheer number of commands. IIRC, in Office 2007 it was like 1300? One of the main designers ran a blog explaining the design process. Even if you hate the ribbon, the explanation of how they came to it (heavily driven by telemetry, eye tracking studies, etc) is pretty cool. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story...
  - robwilliams 12y ago
    The video is great: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09 I couldn't go back to taskbars and task panes after watching that.
- jamesmishra 12y ago
  Autodesk Inventor uses the Ribbon, and it makes doing 3D CAD extraordinarily intuitive. I think the sibling comment is right---the ribbon makes a lot of sense when you have tons and tons of commands.
chris_wot 12y ago
What's wrong with the sidebar? If you think about it, most of your available unused screen real estate is on the side of the window, not the top... The sidebar, IMO, is rather more versatile than the ribbon anyway. (Thanks IBM!)
esfandia 12y ago
I have stayed on Office 2004 for Mac (running on Rosetta, and with the free docx compatibility plugin: I'm pathetic, I know) for the longest time on my laptop just to avoid having to use the ribbon (which I "experience" daily on my Windows machine unfortunately). Since my next Mac laptop won't have Rosetta I'll have to move on, and that means switching to LO, not upgrading Office. And if LO ends up also using a ribbon, I'll move on to something else.
- yuhong 12y ago
  I think you can turn off the Ribbon and show the Formatting toolbar in Office 2008 and 2011 for Mac. Yes, this is Mac-only.
chengiz 12y ago
I have come to dislike all manner of menu based interfaces. They are annoying as fuck unless you are well used to the program, and then they keep changing them with different versions. What I would like is a search as you type entry field, similar to the Windows 7 start menu. I type in "cro..." and cross reference shows up, then I click on it. And it'd have the option of keeping the commonly used ones nearby for easy click. I havent used any apps that do this, but would love to see something like this.
- makecheck 12y ago
  The Mac OS X Help menu has this type of search, provided that all application commands are in menus.
- rz2k 12y ago
  Use command-shift-/ (shortcut to help search) in OS X to find any menu items. It is nearly instantaneous. If Windows doesn't have the same thing already built in, I'd guess there must be some add-ons that do the same thing.

jdlyga 12y ago

Agreed. Didn't like the ribbon at first, but grew to find it very useful for Office.

italophil 12y ago
I like the ribbon, but it takes up too much vertical space on a 16:9 display, especially in Word. LO Sidebar uses the space better, and I can see more of the document at once.
- tpeaton 12y ago
  You can double click the heading on top of the ribbon to collapse the whole thing.
  - scholia 12y ago
    Indeed, I think it's been collapsed by default for some time...
- scholia 12y ago
  Sure, but that's why you keep it closed almost all the time. For practical purposes, the ribbon takes up less space than the header on Notepad. I've added my most used Word functions to the quick access bar, and some features are provided by the ghost menus that appear by the cursor, and I know a load of keyboard shortcuts. All of which means I very rarely open the ribbon. But when I do need it, it's orders of magnitude better than the rat's nest of menus and task panes we had before.
- vetinari 12y ago
  You can collapse it. Then it looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/owymIV4.png http://i.imgur.com/owymIV4.png

e40 12y ago

That's your opinion. I don't like the new MS UI. In fact, paying for Office every few years means relearning a new UI, or at least relearning where everything is on the menus now. I find that incredibly frustrating and annoying. My issue with LO is that it doesn't work on complex spreadsheets and powerpoints. I had spreadsheets corrupted and I just had to turn away from LO and go back to Office. I was much happier in LO, but alas I cannot stay.

worklogin 12y ago
Did you try the ribbon for a week or two? I loathed it too. But then I got used to its workflow. It exposes a lot more options more intuitively than the current LO menu system.
- JustSomeNobody 12y ago
  I have to use Office at work. I have not liked the ribbon since it came out. It's not that I don't like new ideas. I am a SW dev and I embrace new. I change jobs every 6 mos just so I don't have to deal with old code, that's how much I like new things. The ribbon sucks. It mind numbingly sucks. Note: Some of this was an exaggeration to drive home the point of how bad the ribbon interface sucks.
  - andybak 12y ago
    Is it really worse than toolbar hell? http://www.mlponies.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/officebars.png http://www.mlponies.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05... Icons without text labels work ONLY for frequently performed tasks with an obvious visual representation. For everything else text and icons is probably optimal.
  - scholia 12y ago
    Do you also struggle with tabbed web pages and toolbars? If you can't use either of those, then I agree, you will have problems with the ribbon. If you can use both of those -- and I'm certain you can -- then I don't see why something that simply combines tabs and toolbar icons is such problem.

mtmail 12y ago

Microsoft also started some FUD when registering a patent of their ribbon design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29#Patent_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29#Patent_... Personally, FOSS or not, I simply don't like the ribbon style menu.

Zigurd 12y ago

Not everyone likes ribbons, and "touch-first Office" is going to be the thing LO needs to aim for, though probably not by imitation. LO could be a big part of making Linux tablets useful.

skrowl 12y ago
It already works (somewhat) on Android: http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Android-ARM@24-Bytemark-Hosting/current/ http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/Android-ARM@2...
- elektronjunge 12y ago
  That's just a viewer. Getting documents to render and making a usable touch interface for editing documents are two very different things.
  - chris_wot 12y ago
    It's a viewer because editing is disabled. Editing is coming :-)
    - Zigurd 12y ago
      Having a well-supported full-featured word processor on Android should be very popular. It could multiply the audience for Libre Office. Congratulations on a monumental effort.

JadeNB 12y ago

I downvoted. If you want to use the ribbon-style MS UI, then use MS products. I am glad to have a place to go that allows me to read and edit ubiquitous Office documents without having to be part of the Office eco-system. I agree that LibreOffice probably reminds more of old than of modern Office—I use both as little as possible, so don't keep up with the trends—but so what? To put it differently, why should Microsoft automatically be celebrated for monkeying with an input regime that worked? What is wrong with 'classic' software?

scholia 12y ago
Classic software worked just fine, in its day. I can still remember most of the classic WordStar commands. ;-) The celebrations come when there are significant improvements, and there have been plenty of those. The (web-inspired) tabbed Office ribbon was a big one. Sorry they moved your cheese but the rest of the world isn't going to stop progressing even if you do.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  >Classic software worked just fine, in its day. // So, it doesn't work now? The main question would be 'how much more productive one can be now than before?'. It would be nice if there were independent quantative studies on this - as word-processor use is a central part of most governments administrative functions I'd imagine that one can't move for the vast number of such studies ... lol. I'm guessing that the UI changes between Wordstar and Office 2015 amount to a tiny change in the time needed both for training and useful production of word-processed documents. When it comes to spreadsheets I can see things have probably moved on - at least in speed of processing if nothing else. I'd love to ask, of the top 100 functions used - how many weren't in office applications 5 years ago, 10 years ago? How has the average time per word in production of business letters changed (reduced?) over time and what specific [versions of] applications caused the greatest change?
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    Productivity isn't really the benchmark for LibreOffice, at least not until they're close to 100% compatible with the latest version of Office. Compatibility with everybody else's bizarre, overcomplicated, crappy files is the benchmark, and they use a hell of a lot more features than WordStar ever had. I'd prefer to have a product with a crappy UI that can interoperate with everybody else seamlessly, than one with a great, simple UI that can't.

jsherer 12y ago

I believe there was controversy in the FOSS community over Microsoft's patent application for the concept: https://www.google.com/patents/US8255828 https://www.google.com/patents/US8255828 I'd speculate that this patent application provided at least a small amount of hesitation towards the FOSS community implementing a similar interface.

logn 12y ago

The ribbon is stacked button bars. Navigating the ribbon is as unsettling at stacked tab bars. One nice thing about menus is that you peruse them without clicking. Ribbons force you to hunt and peck through the layers with the mouse. Further, when you have no idea where anything is, it's easier to read the menu labels versus scanning the disparate icons and hovering for tooltips.

elektronjunge 12y ago
Hit Alt the numbers and letters are the shortcuts for moving around the ribbon. That's actually one of my favorite parts of the ribbon, you are able to see what the shortcuts are very easily. The alt trick works on just about anything in windows.

LordKano 12y ago

I absolutely despise ribbon interfaces. They're a show stopper for me. I am forced to use it at work, so there's nothing I can do about that but FLOSS is all about user empowerment and choice so I don't think I'll ever use it at home. I'll stay with an old version of the package if upgrading means having the ribbon foisted upon me. I like the idea of having an option to select a Ribbon interface or a Standard interface. That way, everyone can get what they like.

macspoofing 12y ago

>Its such a great concept that using LO is like stepping back into the Office 97 days. Maybe there's a reason why ribbon-style components haven't really taken off outside of core Microsoft products. I don't think the ribbon is actually that great-looking and I don't think it's that functional. I'm also a fan of a LO forging it's own identity. For far to long Open Office strove to mimic MS Office in look-and-feel.

MichaelGG 12y ago
The Ribbon is amazing when you have lots and lots of commands, many which aren't always commonly used. Few programs approach the sheer number of commands. IIRC, in Office 2007 it was like 1300? One of the main designers ran a blog explaining the design process. Even if you hate the ribbon, the explanation of how they came to it (heavily driven by telemetry, eye tracking studies, etc) is pretty cool. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story...
- robwilliams 12y ago
  The video is great: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09 I couldn't go back to taskbars and task panes after watching that.
jamesmishra 12y ago
Autodesk Inventor uses the Ribbon, and it makes doing 3D CAD extraordinarily intuitive. I think the sibling comment is right---the ribbon makes a lot of sense when you have tons and tons of commands.

chris_wot 12y ago

What's wrong with the sidebar? If you think about it, most of your available unused screen real estate is on the side of the window, not the top... The sidebar, IMO, is rather more versatile than the ribbon anyway. (Thanks IBM!)

esfandia 12y ago

I have stayed on Office 2004 for Mac (running on Rosetta, and with the free docx compatibility plugin: I'm pathetic, I know) for the longest time on my laptop just to avoid having to use the ribbon (which I "experience" daily on my Windows machine unfortunately). Since my next Mac laptop won't have Rosetta I'll have to move on, and that means switching to LO, not upgrading Office. And if LO ends up also using a ribbon, I'll move on to something else.

yuhong 12y ago
I think you can turn off the Ribbon and show the Formatting toolbar in Office 2008 and 2011 for Mac. Yes, this is Mac-only.

chengiz 12y ago

I have come to dislike all manner of menu based interfaces. They are annoying as fuck unless you are well used to the program, and then they keep changing them with different versions. What I would like is a search as you type entry field, similar to the Windows 7 start menu. I type in "cro..." and cross reference shows up, then I click on it. And it'd have the option of keeping the commonly used ones nearby for easy click. I havent used any apps that do this, but would love to see something like this.

makecheck 12y ago
The Mac OS X Help menu has this type of search, provided that all application commands are in menus.
rz2k 12y ago
Use command-shift-/ (shortcut to help search) in OS X to find any menu items. It is nearly instantaneous. If Windows doesn't have the same thing already built in, I'd guess there must be some add-ons that do the same thing.