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Even if it does, so what? I'm all for having designers on the team, but gratuitous redesigns often end up for the worse. Something like LibreOffice is a giant

Even if it does, so what? I'm all for having designers on the team, but gratuitous redesigns often end up for the worse. Something like LibreOffice is a giant piece of software produced by a team that is far too small. They have to be conservative, and they have to focus their energy properly. Frankly, instead of playing around with trying to make things "beautiful" (which is hopeless anyway, given how opinions differ), I'd rather they turned their design brains towards the kind of small tweaks that make the UI flow better. There are bound to be hundreds or thousands of little corners where twiddling slightly with the layout of menus, dialog boxes, etc. would make users more productive. Focus on those, please. (Note that judging by the more detailed reports, this is actually what they are doing.)

tormeh 12y ago
The Ribbon UI idea - to highlight contextually relevant options and hide irrelevant ones - seems like a worthy idea to copy. That said, using horizontal rather than vertical space would be good.
- nhaehnle 12y ago
  There are good things about the ribbon, true, and you're spot on about using horizontal space. I wonder though whether the LibreOffice team have enough solid data about user behavior to make good decisions in what would be a huge redesign - not to mention that, judging by the screenshots, they are already starting to make good use of horizontal space. Also, I'd personally prefer if instead of just permuting UI elements they would adapt some of the really nice ideas that really make things flow better for everyday users. I suppose it's nice to have a bigger Undo button, but wouldn't it be less contentious and more useful in the long term to teach people about Ctrl+Z? In particular, the live previews don't require a permutation of the UI layout, and (during my admittedly limited use) I found it to be the nicest of the changes that people usually associate with the Ribbon.

tormeh 12y ago

The Ribbon UI idea - to highlight contextually relevant options and hide irrelevant ones - seems like a worthy idea to copy. That said, using horizontal rather than vertical space would be good.

nhaehnle 12y ago
There are good things about the ribbon, true, and you're spot on about using horizontal space. I wonder though whether the LibreOffice team have enough solid data about user behavior to make good decisions in what would be a huge redesign - not to mention that, judging by the screenshots, they are already starting to make good use of horizontal space. Also, I'd personally prefer if instead of just permuting UI elements they would adapt some of the really nice ideas that really make things flow better for everyday users. I suppose it's nice to have a bigger Undo button, but wouldn't it be less contentious and more useful in the long term to teach people about Ctrl+Z? In particular, the live previews don't require a permutation of the UI layout, and (during my admittedly limited use) I found it to be the nicest of the changes that people usually associate with the Ribbon.