Why Microsoft’s ribbon sucks
Bottom line, I have a lot of respect for Microsoft and many of the outstanding people that work there (e.g. Bill Buxton).
But the new ribbon sucks.
I’ve been using it daily for months (Word, Powerpoint, Excel), and I consistently stumble on the same functions over and over again. I doubt I will ever master it. And I’m an interface designer!
When I want to center text both horizontally and vertically, I can always find the horizontal centering, but have to search for quite some time to find the vertical centering.
I consistently to this day scan all of the available options in the ribbon looking for things.
Just yesterday I couldn’t figure out how to change the paragraph style for some text without looking for 3 to 4 minutes.
When I want to print a page, I have to remind myself that it’s under the big Microsoft circle button. And there are so many more…
Bottom line, for me at least, nothing is automatic. Nothing is natural. Learnability is poor. It’s as if I’m looking at a bag of goodies and my eye has to scan through all of them to find the particular piece of candy I want.
If the problems were all a result of change, that would be one thing. But I’ve been using Office 2007 long enough to exclude change as a problem. If the changes were learnable I would have certainly learned them by now. I believe the problems stem from the following:
1) visual density/complexity
There is just too much to process on the screen. It’s a Swiss Army Knife with every tool exposed (well, not all of them). Not only is it too much, but the density, the proximity and variety, make it difficult to process quickly or to associate a function with a location. For example, it’s impossible to mentally associate upper-middle with paragraph styles because upper-middle is too broad and would include many other functions. My mind must process the ribbon each time rather than jump to a location.
2) anticipated functionality
The designers chose (through testing and usage data I’m sure) what functions to display prominently and where to display them. Whatever criteria they used leaves me with less than half of what I need visible on the screen at any given time to accomplish what I need to do. So I wind up searching for what I need — everytime. In my experience, anytime I’m asked to anticipate what users will want to do, I hesitate. True, very often you have to do it to some degree, but it’s challenging to get right. And the degree to which this was done with the ribbon, in my opinion, made it an impossible goal to achieve.
We (designers) all make mistakes. I recently designed a navigation system that I thought was innovative and efficient. In testing it failed miserably and I had to redesign it. What amazes me given what I know about the Office redesign, and the amount of work that went into it (along with the great minds that contributed), is that they must have gotten good test results and I can’t fathom how. I personally would have failed.
I would love to hear comments from others on their experiences. I haven’t heard many positive remarks personally (except regarding the context-sensitive right-click menus, which I think are excellent).
I completely agree, as you know. One of the most disturbing things about the “ribbon” is the extent to which it is a complete break with the previous modes of working. I’ve been using MSFT Word and related products since they first appeared (more than 20 years!) and Office 2007, especially the ribbon, seems to based on the belief that what users already know and expect does not matter. Upgrading a product with a wide user base and long history is a different problem than “new and cool.” The ribbon feels like someone thought it would be new and cool, but it’s been a huge disruption to productivity.
Jim McQuaid / software guy & videographer
While I agree with certain aspects of your argument, I think much of this has more to do with the chosen placement of things rather than the functionality of the ribbon itself. Maybe it just needs some more tuning.
Overall, I find the ribbon amazingly intuitive. I’ve met a lot of people, mostly novices, who’s single most common refrain was “Oh, so THAT’s how you do that”.
Power users, and those set in their ways seem to be the most vocal about decrying it. The former have some legitimate gripes IMO, and those should be addressed, but the latter are just arguing that progress should not move forward because of the laziness of users.
It’s hard to please everyone.
I agree that the new ribbon has damaged productivity me too. I’m use to the old look and feel. The new ribbon might, might, have a better/more logical layout though. However, it’s too much [change] too late.
Good article. If a little longer it would be slashdotworthy!
One thing that always throws me off is that “Insert Footnote”, “Insert Citation”, and five other “insert” functions are on the References tab. I always go to the Insert tab looking for these functions!
I have run into exactly the same thing – having to search for functions because they were grouped in ways that I did not readily intuit. But the biggest problem is that once I find it, I still have to search for it the next time I use the product. I think a key consideration is that users need to be able to store such information in “muscle memory”, in “finger memory”, or some such. The Ribbon, though looking nice, does not have this desirable property.
So I’m not the only one having trouble with it. There I was thinking, “There’s something wrong with me, ’cause everyone else seems to love the darned thing.”
I don’t think people’s ribbon stumbling (> 5 minutes to figure out how to save!) can all be written off to differences from the old way.
After all, lots of folks adapted just fine to the “floating inspectors” style in iWork, even though it’s quite different than the typical dense toolbars and modal dialogs from other suites.
Ok, i just don’t get that. How can it take you > 5 minutes to figure out how to save? There’s a standard save icon right there at the top of the screen that doesn’t change. It’s the ame icon that’s been used for 15 years.
While I agree they need to tweak the layout a bit, I am convince the majority of the people the complain are change phobic. There are some people that whenever they see a change, their brain just shuts down. They simply aren’t capable of going “oh, that save icon is just half an inch higher up, that’s not a bid deal.” Instead, they shut down and stare at it for 5 minutes, hoping it will mysteriously change back to their old familiar ways..
Snarky Tech Guy:
I learn new applications frequently (I’m a small business IT consultant); I’m not opposed to learning new things. It’s just that I don’t see the value in learning a new way to do an old thing, unless it is quicker/easier/etc. Keyboard shortcuts are a great example of learning a new way of doing an old thing in a more efficient manner — to me, this is a positive ROI on my time. But the Ribbon? It’s just a different means to the same end — a different means that you are forced to use. There’s even third-party “restore your old menu” plugins being released; clearly something is amiss.
While most of us will bludgeon our way through the curve, some users’ (like alot of my 40+ administrative clients) worlds have been turned upside-down. The curve will be long, expensive*, and frustrating for these long-time Office users who have memorized a very linear path for each task they complete with their Office applications.
Where the Ribbon came from, I have no idea. Surely no one asked for it. Maybe MS needed a complete turnover in the knowledge industry so they can print more books and MOUS certifications; maybe they needed another bullet in their “why upgrade?” promotional material; perhaps some new UI guru at MS needed his ego stroked. Who knows, but clearly their customers never asked for this upheaval.
* we’ve already had requests for “orientation” training sessions for a few of our clients, not to mention lost productivity costs.
I was thinking about the same issue.
The ribbon will never be a high productivity tool. Toolbars are gone altogether. You can add shortcuts only in quick access toolbar which is a monoblock. You can’t drag anything around anymore.
You have to perform many clicks to get to the target. At least there could be mouse over activation of ribbon tabs but AFAIK that’s not possible.
I guess their starting point was height limitations.
As most of the 15.4″ laptops offer 800 pixel height, the traditional menus and toolbars consumed large space on those.
So they removed them altogether.
But on this approach, the real deal should have been to place the ribbon on the screen sides. I personally place taskbars, toolbars vertically so that I don’t waste the precious height.
Just to increase vertical space, they added auto hide feature to the ribbon after beta releases due complaints. I don’t think anyone with a 4:3 screen would have such problems.
The other thing is desktop computers, in which Office applications are probably used more often, nowadays have huge vertical resolution possibilities such as 1440 pixels.
With so much height available, placing more toolbars would be possible. Now such computers have huge Excel sheets, complete A4 views, 150% zooms instead of toolbars.
Microsoft should have made the old interface optional. Many software companies change their interface but also give the option to use the old interface. (e.g. AutoCAD)
There is another choice -
For those who want the original (and fully customizable) Classic menus and toolbars – ToolbarToggle and ToolbarToggle Lite (http://www.toolbartoggle.com) has brought back them back to Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 for less than $20.
ToolbarToggle can replace or be used side-by-side with the Ribbon at the same time!
Would appreciate any feedback you have regarding the program.
Why would they stick the save button behind an ambiguous icon? It took me a long time to figure out how to save my document.
I really struggled using Word. I hope the release on Mac isn’t as bad.
Amen!
The ribbon is a mode so far as I’m concerned:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/06/has-google-turned-into-microsoft/
So is the ribbon the ‘new clippy’?
I have been using Microsoft Office since before it was called Office (over 20 years). Each new version was better than the last. I am not opposed to change. Nor do I mind learning newer, better ways to do things. In past upgrades there was usually a short learning curve, but the changes were fairly intuitive. So after doing an old task a new way once or twice it became burned into my brain. By contrast, I’ve been fighting with the ribbon for two months. I still don’t get it. Of the hundreds of buttons they chose to display, very few are the ones I need most often. After playing “Where’s Waldo” for a few minutes I usually end up squinting to find–and carefully navigate to–that tiny, faint icon in the lower right corner of some of the groups to get the full dialog containing the useful functions. What a waste of space. Two square inches of useless text and buttons so I can click an icon the size of a pin head. Even if I can find the correct button, it’s often a hassle and extra clicks to get to it. I don’t see how this is better.
I just glanced at the ToolbarToggle site that someone posted above and it looks like it may be worthwhile. I really don’t like going backwards, but that’s the direction my productivity is going with this ribbon.
No one has mentioned the other lame UI stuff coming from Microsoft lately. IE7′s ribbon-like interface isn’t any better than Office’s. Vista’s Explorer is challenging, to say the least. And the new help system that replaced useful context-sensitive help with a search engine that never finds anything. Overall, I’m very disappointed in Microsoft this year. That’s a first for me. I’m usually one of their biggest supporters. But where I used to wait anxiously for each new software release, I am now seriously considering wiping my computers and returning to XP & Office 2003. After all, I do need to get some work done.
Agree, it COMPLETELY sucks. It makes Word amazingly inconvenient.
I am a technical writer with lots of experience in Word and FrameMaker. When I started using Word 2007, I thought to myself “self… don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.” But after 4 months I have yet to feel comfortable.
Eventually, I got so frustrated that I switched to Open Office. Now I am in an interface that looks and feels like the old versions of Word, and while it might be a little clunkier, I am relieved to revert.
The things that kill me are goose-chase items that were never very well placed from the start. Things like bookmarks, and updating bookmarks. And on and on. Yes, the things I need are there, somewhere, but we have grown up with Word’s inadequacies for years, and we have learned how to locate hard to find items in the same way that we have learned the maze-like patterns of an unmarked hiking trail. It literally takes years to get your muscle-memory in place so you don’t have to think about things – you just know the terrain. And with one upgrade, Microsoft has reorganized the trails, the signs, and even the landscape itself. It makes no sense to me. What arrogance to think they could discard the years of learning we have donated to them – with faith that they would safeguard it.
I have never been part of the “I hate Micro$oft” camp. And I have had plenty of reason to be. Two of my former employers had to scrap their successful products because Microsoft stole good ideas after partnering with us. I think I am now part of the camp for this, seemingly benign upgrade, regardless of their cutthroat history.
It’s official. I proclaim my disdain for Microsoft. Screw them.
It’s the 80/20 rule. 80% of Word users (probably more actually) only need to create a 2 page document with a few bold headings. That is Microsoft’s audience for Office. The ribbon will work for them.
For the other 20% minority who actually use some of advanced features Word offers….well, that stuff isn’t used by the 80%, so it gets buried. And we suffer. We are not the Office corporate user audience the product is designed and positioned for.
I customized my toolbars to no end in previous versions to get rid of icons I never used. Wish I could do that with the ribbon.
I couldn’t agree more. I’m also an advanced user of all Office products and have been using them since they were introduced.
The “ribbon” UI may not be so bad for NEW users, but certainly not for experienced users.
I can’t believe Microsoft wouldn’t offer a ‘Classic View,’ as in the past.
I also had quite the time figuring out how to do a “Save As”, “Section Break”, “Style Formatting”, etc. And, some of the keyboard shortcuts no longer work. To make matters worse, online help does nothing to assist with the transition.
Arrrghhh! (Thanks for the place to vent).
You’re kidding, right? I use Excel all day, every day and I LOVE the ribbon! So much faster to use than those stupid pull-downs or tiny icons. I don’t think it took me more than a day or two to learn the new layout.
I’ve been using it for almost a year, and it still takes several minutes for what I used to do in seconds. Awful design. “Insert row below” in a table. There is a special tab that comes up called table tools – Great! must be there! NOPE. ok, well, it must be in “insert”, that would make sense. wrong again. maybe i can right click to insert a row. No no no. Page Layout? sorry. its in the last tab – layout! of course, silly me. This is what happens when you have creatives do IA.
I spent a solid fifty minutes doing a homework assignment in Excell 2007. I remember doing the exact same functions last year, even with 98, and I’m positive this would have taken no more than twenty minutes. Dealing with charts now is absurd. Unlike every other feature, a chart will pop up three new context menus, instead of one, with no obvious notice.
I think the thing that saddened me most though, was that no matter how much work they put into the new, terrible ribbon, the insert symbol interface has not changed since 95. The one thing that was broke, they didn’t fix.
I too have been using Word since the 80′s. Not only does the ribbons implementation leave a lot to be desired, but my Word and PowerPoint performance and stability are terrible. Word takes a long time just to open, and Word and PowerPoint often hang and/or die. I’m ready to uninstall Office 2007 and go back to 2003.
I completely agree. I have to use Office 2007 because my college upgraded to it. My college is 100% online, so everything I do is submittted with some type of Office program.
On 2003 it used to take me no time at all to do assignments. Sometimes I used keyboard shortcuts or used the menus. Either way it was fast and efficient.
Yesterday I turned in a report that took me forever to do because I had to keep switching from one ribbon to another to find what I needed. On 2003, pretty much everything I needed was on the menu bard. One click away. Now I have to search to get things done.
I just had to take that report and turn it into a power point presentation. I must say that now I am extremely disappointed. I can’t do the same animations that I could on 2003. Why did they take the animations away????
I can’t wait until I graduate because then I am going back to the better program, Office 2003.
I wish someone would please tell me why Microsoft has suddenly decided to downgrade themselves so far with Office 2007 and Windows Vista. They are by far extreme downgrades from Office 2003 and Windows XP. EXTREME DOWNGRADES!!!!!!
—Stefanie Cawley
Stefanie et al:
You might want to check out http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html for the reasons why the ribbon made its appearance. What puzzles, however, is why Microsoft don’t provide a toggle to turn the ribbon / classic menus on or off.
I used Office 2007 for 3 months and gave up – and downgraded to Office 2003 – which does what I want exactly as I want it to. Oh – and this was on a PC that came with Vista / Office 2007, and which I had downgraded back to XP.
I kinda like the ribbon in Word but it sucks really bad in Excel. It’s far easier to scan 1 block of little buttons than 10 tabs of huge icons. Classic Menu plugin to the rescue! And wtf is up with the docx xlsx formats….then saying all the “old” formats will kill functionality…yeah right!
So I generally agree.
For me the biggest problem with the ribbon is that everything is iconic. I have never used the toolbar in any application. And I consistently throwaway apps that only let me do any given function in the toolbar.
I CAN READ. Give me back my menus. I can NOT quickly determine the subtle differences between two nearly identical pictures in the ribbon.
I would encourage those having trouble adapting to watch this video below. It explains how they came up with this design.
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx
I also have some general questions. How long did it take you to learn to use Office pre-2007? How long does it take you to learn to use any software for a computer?
This new interface for Excel is ridiculous. I’ve been using it for two months and I’m still struggling to be productive. Power users will suffer. Newbies will love it.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall to see what the users in the MS Redmond office are saying.
Probably:
“This ribbon is a piece of crap… How does Bill expect me to get the reports/analysis done in the same amount of time…I can’t believe the public is buying this… how can I buy the third party interface program and get it through purchasing…”
I just got back from PDC, and while I’m excited about much of what Windows 7 has to offer–it has some real improvements over Vista–one thing I’m not excited about is that infernal Ribbon is making inroads into the built-in Windows applications. Sigh…
I HATE THE RIBBON. It’s just awful. I’m losing a lot of visual space, especially on a laptop. They have to fix this.
Can’t stand the ribbon. I’ve been struggling with it for the last couple of months. I’m constantly looking for the same commands over and over again.
Apparently, Microsoft is aware of people’s complaints. Here’s a page that shows where the commands are in 2007 compared to 2003: http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/asstvid.aspx?assetid=XT100766331033&vwidth=1044&vheight=788&type=flash&CTT=11&Origin=HA100744321033.
What would have been the harm in allowing users the choice, ribbon or menu?
Well, we’ve just been forcibly upgraded at work, and I’m installing OpenOffice 3.0 because it will be far easier to use than the new ribbon interface.
Every short cut, every way I work has been disrupted by this ribbon interface. I would have no trouble if MS had made the classic menus an option, but they didn’t. And I’m not going to be throwing good money after bad buying add-ins that almost-but-not-quite make it look like 2003 again, from companies I’ve never heard of.
Saikey has succinctly put into words what I was trying to put my finger on – “I CAN READ [...] I can NOT quickly determine the subtle differences between two nearly identical pictures in the ribbon.”
I think that eventually Microsoft must recognise that the Ribbon is another big failure in one row with Clippy and “intelligently” half-hidden menues. It fails to adhere to the main design principle: “Don’t make me think!”
You can’t develop a muscular memory for it – you always need to pause for a millisecond and think: What tab am I on? Which one do I need? Where on that tab is what I need?
So for a novice, who thinks anyway about how to do things, it may be good. But you can’t get really productive with it. Its like working with a hammer which is like whenever you want to take it, you need to figure out where the handle is.
I adopted Word 1.0 (!!) and ditched Wordstar because of innovations it had (and great pricing). I have praised MS for the improved functionality in every version from 1.1 through WordforWindows until Office 2007. I have elegant ways to handle large documents and daily tasks that are apparently now impossible without buying 3rd party software to get around this vapid design. I frankly am ready to go to Open Office — when MS loses me as a friend, they are in real trouble.
The obligatory ribbon is an unmitigated disaster. I’m skipping Office 2007 until they fix this.
I’ve been forced to use the ribbon since about a year now, and I still cannot get used to it. The whole concept of it is crap, as it slows you down in doing what you want. Every time again it makes you think where you have to look for a specific function.
Microsoft, it really can’t be difficult to give your users the possibility to upgrade to your previous menu structure, can it???
Isn’t the point of a mundane set of products like MS Office to do office support? get the real work on an office done? do it WELL? Anything that slows down real work just is acceptable. The job is not to learn a new product, the job is to get the documents, spreadsheets and communications out successfully and in a timely manner. For my staff you may leave the gamer type interfaces and Mac GUI to the recreational users. If it is not making the task efficient don’t bother. “Old” is not a four letter word, except to marketing, whose word is sell. We use Ofc 2003 and XP well. So far we have avoided the mess that is based upon hype and have not sacrificed getting the Word out to our community.
I used Word 2007 for the first time today at the library to do a research paper. After trying to figure out how to do a word count for five minutes, I remembered that I had OpenOffice on my flash drive, and suddenly, my problems disappeared.
I HATE THE RIBBON TOO. It’s terrible and totally non intuitive! It is pain for eyes!
Losing of visual space with ribbons is just funny! As someone wrote: it looks like interface for children or people with disabilities.
Nightmare is that MS is willing to “ribbonize” all apps interfaces! (Not only Wordpad and Paint!)
Can someone change this shocked direction?
Maybe we should write kind of official protest to them, with 500 000 signed users?
You described my own experience exactly. I develop client software for Windows for 15 years now. I gave myself 6 months hoping I will finally be able to find things in Word or Excel without wandering 2-3 minutes for them. After 6 months I finally decided that there is no value in doing all this to me so I reverted to Office 2003. On the paper the design of the ribbon seems fantastic. At daily work to me (and to people that I work with) seem like a big problem that’s not at all short and caused by the switch but is a long lasting one causing to switch back to Office 2003 or Open Office. I’m afraid that this change wouldn’t be fixed no matter what users say because it is a way to differentiate new MS products, a way to drive sales of something that is hard to be sold otherwise than based upon fashion.
I started with Wordstar. Via Wordperfect & Lotus I landed at Windows 3.1. and have worked through the lot. Have worked ON Office 2007 for 4-5 months. Still working AT it, not WITH it. I was agast once I realised the ribbon could not be customised. The quick access toolbar just does not work.
The only pro is that modifying tables in Word is easier. Excel is a disaster, unless you are into pretty things rather that calcs, etc.
In order to FIND Office 2003 commands in 2007 I too tried the website;
http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/asstvid.aspx?assetid=XT100766331033&vwidth=1044&vheight=788&type=flash&CTT=11&Origin=HA100744321033
After a few minutes it confirmed my complaint that many of my previous one click commands on an Office 2003 customised toolbar is now anything up to four clicks. For example; Double column command in Word has gone from one to four clicks.
I use the Drawing toolbar extensively. Went to View/Drawing on this website only to be told that there is no equivalant in Office 2007. In Office 2007 this now is multiple clicks for each shape.
The majority of industry has ignored Vista/Office 2007. No wonder. I work in oil & gas manufacturing, visiting many factories. I have only seen ONE Vista/Office 2007 screen. All other screens are Office 2003 with customised toolbars.
Perhaps thats the difference; we use the PC as a tool to aid production, not to churn out beautiful creations.
Watch out Microsoft. If the W7 has FIXED ribbons industry will ignore it. They buy a lot of software and their suppliers follow their lead.
I am intruiged… here are a lot of people calling themselves powerusers, and all they can do is whine that the can not find the save-button.
I have been working with Office since the 90′s, I remember using Wordperfect on a DOS-machine. (Talk about change… no more cardboard reminders on my keyboard telling me what function-button to use with a shift or control).
The new ribbon changed the look and feel of office that I was used to since I first fired up Office 4. But they did not change shortcut-keys I have been using all these years. The ribbon took me -and I consider myself a poweruser, too- some time to get used too, and I am at times searching for an option I know must excist. But that doesn’t take minutes…
I used Microsoft applications since Windows 3.1, and I always felt comfortable with the toolbar/menus combination.
I don’t know exactly why, but Microsoft decided the old interface wasn’t good anymore, and came with this ribbon. I tried to like it, but I couldn’t get used. I liked Office like it was.
I’m sorry, Microsoft, but I’m using OpenOffice 3.0. It is not exactly like your Office, but it is good enought. In fact, after using Office 2007 for some time, OpenOffice looks better and better.
Good luck Microsoft. We had a good time together, but I think it is time to move on.
Maybe Microsoft have patented the ribbon, so any competitor can’t use it. When people will be accustomed to it switch to alternatives will be extrimely difficult. It’s a strong lockin future. They don’t care usability, just look for a way to lock customers to their product. Think about all the student that use Office as school and will learn for years the ribbon interface. They will not want throw away all the knowledge to adopt OpenOffice or something else.
Microsoft consistently overthinks features that used to be really useful, like track changes. Features end up being so convoluted you wish you'd never seen 'em.
I absolutely agree, I actually wrote an article with almost the same title: http://blog.schauderhaft.de/2009/01/08/the-ribb...
Perhaps it isn't meant to make you more productive. Could be a conspiracy to slow down the competition as posited by Joel in his famous “Fire and Motion” article:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog00000...
The new Ribbon interface is terrible. As you so aptly pointed out in your review – users of software want to innately home-in on functionality that exists in a specific place. Having to search through multiple layers of interface is counterproductive. The old-school toolbar system was much superior to the Ribbon debacle.
Obviously the designers at Microsoft have never used office or they would have known the ribbon idea was stupid. It takes up 1/2 the screen and if you auto hide, you cannot see information about your document you are typing (font, size, style, on and on). What a horrid idea. And NO WAY TO CUSTOMIZE. STUPID STUPID STUPID.
Widescreen displays are totally at odds with the ribbon. I agree 100% with you that it sucks on functionality, for exactly the reasons you state, but on top of that most laptops have a widesceen display meaning less height. I moved the windows task bar to the right hand side (vertically) to free up some real estate but the bloody ribbon eats at the precious screen height. Totally at odds with the change in screen form factors and worst of all NO COMPATIBILITY MODE! If 3rd party developers can release compatibility add-ons that turn the ribbon back into the traditional menus why didn't MSFT ship with one?
I've used it for more than a year and whenever I need to be productive I switch back to 2003. The only reason I manage to get anything done in 2007 at all is because I know a lot of the old keyboard shortcuts so I don't have to wander through tab after ambiguously named tab to find what I want.
If you're going to use tabs make them customisable and only have 3 – favourite, advanced and context. Make each one fully customisable so I don't have to have big silly pictures cluttering it up.
The key failure of this concept is that icons add a time-consuming step to every click, in this way:
Text commands require two steps:
1.) Read
2.) Click
Ribbon icons require three steps:
1.) Hover over dozens of possible icons to reveal the text of each until you read the one you are looking for
2.) Click
3.) Memorize that the particular image equals that text command for next time
Step 3. is particular impossible when there are hundreds of icons just pixels away from being the same as one another. If memorization doesn't happen – and it hasn't for me – one is left hovering over dozens of icons over and over and over throughout the day. After 6 months, this Excel programmer and power user still takes 3 or 4 minutes to find the most mundane commands.
Finally removed the POS that is Office 2007 from my PC and am back with 2003. I have persevered for the past 8 months as I will be expected to teach Office Applications using 2007 from this coming September – I will advising learners to stick with 2003. Top of my hate list is the Ribbon, closely followed by the inability to undock toolbars, something I use a lot when creating flowcharts using connectors. I have tried to like 2007, really I have, but the final straw was trying to format my wife’s dissertation and create a TOC – it just went totally wrong (TU!). The new version is not designed for power users, it is designed to look pretty and be superficially easier to use, start to go in-depth and you begin to despair. I’m writing this in Word 2003 which loaded in under 1 second and is a welcome return after 8 months of frustration. File compatibility is a non-issue as there is an Office2007 compatibility pack from M$ that will allow docx files to be read from and written to. I’m not sure how the staff at my college are going to cope, the students won’t have a problem as most of them have Vista/2007 anyway, so they won’t know any better. Bottom line – uninstall 2007 and go for 2003 or OpenOffice 3.
Autocad has also adapted the horrid ribbon system. I click on certain objects and the menu changes to a bunch of tools that can't even be used with what I selected. I'm not impressed and have gone back to the traditional toolbar.
Being a consultant, I recently went to a big government agency which, about a year ago, migrated its hundreds of users to Vista and Office-2007.
That was my first encounter with Word 2007 and it litterally threw me on the floor !
I have been using Word since the its DOS character-based version-4 and always welcomed the improvements, that is until the 2007 release ! For Microsoft I am in the negligible fringe group of power users who do not count.
I think that this "fluent user interface" as Microsoft initially labeled it is just a big window-dressing designed to lure the naïve newcomer.
Anyways, initially I kept my thoughts to myself; then I began to ask questions around. The typical remarks were to the effect that it was not so bad and that maybe I had a problem to adapt (after all, I am a soon-to-retire baby-boomer!). Digging further on, people began to confess that after a year there were still things that they could not figure out and just gave up.
I finally discovered that there was a means to access the old Office-2002 tool suite through a virtual machine in Citrix. So whenever I am in a hurry to do the right thing fast, I go to Word 2002 available that way. After a few months of trial and error with 2007 I finally arrived to a stage where I can to the same things that I used to do but never as fast. Now other poeple at this agency are quietly using the Citrix backdoor.
Personnally the worst initial frustration at was the setup of the header styles with hierarchical numbering (I finally figured it out !).
I am a strong advocate of using paragraph formatting exclusively with styles for keeping consistency in long documents. To me it seems that Microsoft encourages its users to litterally "paint" thier documents without promoting the intelligent usage of styles; for structured and consistant presentation in documents I perfectly understand the temptation to use LateX instead.
For those who question why Microsoft changed the user interface just remember Microsoft handles its programming like automakers handle their cars. A new program requires new interfaces. If its not new looking its not new. Stupid thinking.
[...] has attracted much criticism from users complaining about having to relearn commands they’ve used for decades to those who say its chunkiness eats up too much horizontal real [...]
It's not because you people can't adapt yourselves that it is forcefully a bad choice.
I find the ribbon much more powerful than the old convoluted bar with a lot of non descriptive icons.
When i see in the article that the author, so called power user, still use a click for a mere print.
One of the forte of MS Office are keyboards shortcuts for every actions.
BTW, you could have easily personalize a bar at the top to bring your most used function almost like the old bar.
God, people will always find something to complain about. Did you not even for one second think to write “Why *I THINK* MS ribbon sucks”
I find it easy to use and much better then the cluttered old interface and the File, View, etc, menus. Plus, majority of the things that you’ve mentioned here, like changing paragraph style, are under the right click menu that you’ve mentioned is good.
So, its not that the ribbon sucks, its that your perception of useful and not, probably due to the fact that your way of thinking is different then majority of people. I suppose that is because, as you said, you are an interface designer and think of it from that perspective and try to anticipate where the functions would be instead of looking at it from a user perspective.
I hope someone at M$FT is reading this. Quick scan suggests that more people hate it than love it. Its a small sample but surely its a mixed bag and points to some flaw. There can be no smoke without fire
For me, its a complete bummer of a feature. All the years of learning (I’m an oldtimer too..from the days of wordstar), just went out the window for me. No menus = FAIL. and ribbon is a horrible form of a menu.
With menus I dont even touch the mouse to navigate. I have no idea how to “use” the freaking ribbon with a keyboard! I hope it dies a horrible death.
I suspect there are two kinds of people, the ones that used the toolbar buttons a lot and the others that ignored the toolbars as much as possible and used the menus almost excusively.
Being a menu user myself, I understand and agree with the people that hate the ribbon.
Oh, for a return to FrameMaker. It might have had a crappy UI, but at least it was easy to work with.
As Donald Norman points out frequently, a good user interface provides you with a simple, understandable model of how the application works. This is Office’s problem — it’s a complex monstrosity which is impossible to fully understand. (Ever had a “Document too Complex” error?) The old interface might not have made Office a joy to use, but at least we were all used to it. The ribbon destroys any understanding, and throws the confusing mess that is Office functionality directly in our faces. This does make it easier to find (some of the) functionality, but it also highlights the problem as we still can workout how to make Office do what we want.
If Microsoft wanted to really fix Office, then they would rebuild it from the ground up to be simple and predictable. But that would mean throwing away backwards compatibility, so they won’t do that.
r.
PEG
> to write "Why *I THINK* MS ribbon sucks"
Everything I write on this blog is what "I think"…
> your way of thinking is different then majority of people
How would you know that? Do you have statistical data to support that? (I have not seen any good
statistics on this yet)
> interface designer and think of it from that perspective…instead of looking at it from a user perspective
What???? My JOB is to look at things from a user's perspective! That's what UI designers/developers do.
Having used the old office I find I need to relearn the word processing and spreadsheet packages. If I have to relearn teh packages why bother with MS office – why not learn a free Openoffice and why stay with micro-snot so why not get a free red hat Linux or CentOS?
Deadlines! No time to go searching for what I used to know.
My job is to use the tool, not to figure out how to use the tool.
Very unhappy w/ the ribbon! More unhappy that I can't change back to that which I am familar.
Hope MS reads the massive protest posts and fixes this… back to work (or trying to figure out how to do what I used to know how to do)
The ribbon is just a stupid idea. Now I can't use office without using Google. I’ve been using this for two years and it’s still a piece of crap. It will always be a piece of crap. It is, without a doubt, regardless of what anyone says, much easier to read one column of text to find a piece of functionality than it is to scan across an entire screen of icons and text. Except for the few icons you know by heart like copy or save, do you EVER find anything by the icon? Icons are iconic because they don't "say" what they are, you have to fringing guess. That's why the ribbon will never be easy to use. The icons are just pretty clutter that at best distracts me from the task at hand – finding how to do something! What's next, help files in hieroglyphics? Who, besides someone with a Photoshop (oh I mean Expression) fetish could have ever thought the ribbon was a good idea.
Ribbons blow
You make a good argument, especially as an interface designer!
I've been using MSOffice since about 2000 in school, and while it may look pretty and suit a lot of new users who have never used Office apps before, it still baffles me after using it for about 6-12 months now. For PowerPoint I need to have commonly used functions on the quick toolbar, while many of the shortcut keys I'm used to using (Alt key + underscored letters, e.g. Alt + F for File menu) no longer work, or have multiple "sister" functions. Both of the band-aid solutions to these problems (quick access toolbar, and the clunky step-by-step display of Alt shortcuts) are acknowledgements from Microsoft that the ribbon is far from intuitive particularly for seasoned users.
It's a blow to productivity of customers everywhere, who, let's face it, are overwhelmingly going to consist of either business clients or students, which are both groups that depend on productivity for success. Instead, the ribbons are a pretty accessory that will appeal to light users of Office who struggle with the task of writing an email to their nephew or great-great grandson.
I am a software engineer and GUI interface designer, since the early 90's. I have the ability to learn quickly and perservere until I meet a goal. I don't give up easily, but the Office Ribbon as reduced me to a blubbering idiot more times than I can count. I don't cry easily, but I have cried over the wasted time spent trying to reproduce the same steps over and over as I'm meeting a deadline.
I agree that it's the issue of trying to memorize icons that are extremely similar that adds to the frustration. At this time, I have added nearly all the features that I use regularly to the tiny short cut menu at the bottom of the ribbon. For some strange reason I have no trouble seeing those tiny icons and immediately picking out what function I need.
What stops me dead in my tracks is any new function that isn't already there in my tiny menu (Quick Access Toolbar). I don't look for them on the ribbon anymore, I go to Customize on the glowing alien button, and search for the shortcuts. So, if I'm already familiar with a function or go to Google to figure out what it's called, then I can usually find it in Customize. I also create macros to rid myself of two and three character menu shortcuts.
I'm a highly skilled and educated software engineer, and my only response to the Ribbon is the RE-ENGINEER it to make it work. I cannot deal with it as it is.
Someone stop the “ribbonizing” d***it!! Whats irritating to me now is that I have to deal with this BS using Autodesk products at work. What used to take a few seconds to alter/update is now a hunt and peck in an array of options. Having to switch tabs several times to complete a task isn’t more efficient, rather its the opposite. With toolbars or panels everything was layed out in the GUI exactly as I wanted instead of being dictated by the software. Customization used to be simple drag and drop, but now you need to know where your custom tool is located in order to use it. It’s like saying “I’ve got this great new set of knives… They’re in the kitchen somewhere, not sure exactly.”
Frustrating and time consuming is the bottom line for this new gadgetry! Leave things alone when they work well, fix the stuff that’s broken should be the general motto.
You might find my ribbon/WXGA rant interesting:
http://www.projectpro.com/letters/usability.html
http://www.projectpro.com/letters/usability.docx
Totally agree. I dont’ think they could have made it worse if they purposely tried to.
I’ve been using it for months … still can’t figure it out.
The biggest problem with Office 2007 is (and contrary to one of the comments above) that it really is not customizable. You can put a few of your favorites in one toolbar, but you cannot alter the program to suit your needs. In 2003, I made custom toolbars that engaged macros to do all sorts of things that saved me time (e.g., start a letter complete with letterhead, date, formatting, and electornic signature, all with one click). I also added frequently used commands to places where I knew they were and could access easily. The problem with 2007 is that they put in this kludge of an interface and essentially removed the customizability (which is what made Office products so good). I have not yet had time to play with the 2010 beta, but some of the MS info suggests they may have heard at least some of our comments.
P.S. I downgraded (I had purchased a personal copy early) back to Office 2003, and had to fight to keep the IT people in my organization from “upgrading” me again when they went through the whole organization doing this. This is the same IT group that has never allowed Vista machines to function (all new computers had to be downgraded to XP) —- Win7 machines will not be allowed until Summer 2010. But they did make sure we all were to have the “benefits” of Office 2007. Sigh.
Completely Agree. Microsoft couldn’t have made Office harder to use if they tried.
OpenOffice is looking better and better every time I have to use the Office Ribbon.
Quote: “It’s hard to please everyone.”
Implement a way to COMPLETELY turn off the asinine “ribbon” and use the EXACT SAME previous user interface, problem solved.
This mentality of *forcing* a “new” UI “invention” on everyone comes from software arrogance and nothing else period.
Get a clue people, these microsoft “managers” and “engineers” are being highly paid to annoy millions of people.
I have heard on several occasions that when Bill Gates was given a demo of the new Office 2007 UI, his first question was “How do I toggle to get the classic menu?” and when he was told there is no way to do so, he predicted unresolved disappointment on the part of long term users.
Here’s one link that relays the story: http://www.mrexcel.com/classicexcelmenu.html
I know my company has not yet migrated to 2007 for this very reason. In fact, the US Government has just now (start of 2010) started migrating some of its agencies.
Huge screw-up in MS product marketing, or is it simply hubris?
As a high school student, I have no other choice but to use this. It’s ingrained in the curriculum to the point that the ribbon is the curriculum. I am not a power user of word processors by any means, I am fully open to new GUI changes, but this is absolutely horrible! It is probably the worst UI I have ever had the displeasure to work with, it is completely counterintuitive. The “office button” is extremely confusing, I thought for the first hour of using the app that it was just eye-candy while struggling to perform basic operations such as undo (I probably would have never figured it out had I not been informed by the instructor). I like to explore interfaces on my own, as i use many third party and indie applications and have run into some strange interfaces, but very few were unusable, and none of them even approached the difficulties I’ve been experiencing with Office 2007.
Well, I faced Office 2007 just recently. I am a user who needs Word for just 2-page document. However, I immediately switched to Open Office as soon as the new UI has some sort of moronic feel. It looks like there is some Great Moron in the Microsoft who made a decision that changing interface is what users need, and everyone had to cope with that. So what can I do if I hate this bullshit-bingo attitude (we are looking into the future blah-blah) since my Soviet childhood?
What makes it feel moronic? Actually, UI is nothing but the extension of the keyboard. And re-arranging means exactly the same that re-arranging keys on a keyboard. No one will do it in sound mind, not because the key location is perfect but because professionals use keyboard not looking at it. Keys re-arranging means total disruption for all administrative work and the explanation that in this way you can find them easier is completely moronic, isn’t it?
Secondly, the screen is something like your desk. One with a desk keeps most of the stuff in drawers, leaving just some necessary items on top. This is how the old UI worked. The new one has all tools taken out, so it’s just messy. Where there are just icons, you have to be finding out what they are, whereas icons+words congests the space with the same info repeated twice. Finally, if you hide the ribbon in order to get rid of this mess, you need not less clicking than it was before. And let me add I don’t like too much pictures as I am no more in a kindergarten and can use written words.
As if the very idea of buttons re-arranging is not silly enough, they decided to add a couple of things which simply abuse common sense. In the old UI everything you would do to a FILE (i. e. open, save, print) was in the FILE toolbar, which is no more there. Well, you expect to find this functions in the HOME tab, but there are just functions from former FORMATING and EDITING tabs. And “file” functions are carefully hidden under Microsoft button that doesn’t have any name and looks like old Microsoft emblem which was ever unclickable. This is the reason why experienced users have to spend minutes to find out how to open, save or print a document as someone decided to intimidate them deliberately.
There are other things but this is what came as the last drop of my patience. I just don’t want to go back to the USSR where people were constantly led to the happy future for everyone.
I’m just surprised why companies, anticipating productivity losses still switching to Office 2007 instead of boycotting it, as well as schools and even government. Why office staff doesn’t try to go on strike? Cheers.
Have to agree with the people who hate office 2007. I had to use google to find out how to undo. If your wondering its the curved arrow way up in the top left corner. I don’t think theres any other way. Also something that no one mentioned is the new docx format. Why change something that works to something that doesnt work with older versions. Of course each time you save you can switch it to a .doc format.
I learned to read a while back. Bring back the drop down menu’s or at least the option to turn them on. Icons and pictures are for artists. Remember the Wordperfect 5.1 and Lotus 123 ‘compatability’ modes for users to switch to the MS equivalent products?
yes. The ribbon sucks. it takes forever to scan accross the ribbon to find what you are looking for.
Microsof is so stupid and self indulgent. and they won’t listen to their customers. I have been using it for a long time and it has slowed my productivty down so much. It is like they are preaching to the world – “you are moving too fast. here is a new product that will help you slow down.” vista was the same way. tell that to my boss. idiots.
yes, stop forcing this communist control freak bull cr@p on us. listen to your customers. arrogance is right. do it our way. well there are a lot of different people out there. I work in IT and i am starting a MAC revolution. apple all the way!!! microsoft fail.
I absolutely HATE it! I have been using Microsoft products for the last 15 years. I never had problems adapting from one version to another. My boss will not wait for me to find the print button… I just switched back to office 2003.
Menu bar is a global standard in all kinds of software that I’m aware of. Microsoft, for the sake of ‘change’, managed to destroy the productivity of a good product.
For being “power” users you’re certainly showing a lot of resistance so something children can pick up and use. Sure it has it’s problems, but “boohoo I can’t find the save button”?
joejoe: I’m sure Apple will let you do it your way.
My experience exactly!
I do not care for the ribbon at all. I assumed there would be a switch where you could turn the fisher price interface off.
I was wrong.
Switching to OpenOffice so I can get some work done.
For anyone who might not switch because of how OpenOffice saves files, just do the following commands in openoffice and it will by default save in xls, ppt and doc format.
# Launch any OpenOffice.org application such as OpenOffice Writer.
# Click on Tools and then Options.
# Expand the Load/Save section in the left pane by clicking the + (plus sign).
# Click on General under the Load/Save section.
# In the area labeled as “Default file format” near the bottom of the dialog window, select the type of document you want, for example, Text Document for Writer files, in the Document Type drop-down list.
# To the right dropdown list labeled as “Always save as”, change or select the format as “Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP”.
# Repeat the above 2 steps for other documents such as spreadsheets or presentations that you want to save in Microsoft Office file format, and select the appropriate default save as format for them.
# Click OK to save the settings.
# From now on, whenever you want to save a document, the default format will be .doc, .xls or .ppt and other Microsoft Office file formats and extensions.
(Copied from here)
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/01/25/configure-change-or-set-openofficeorg-to-default-save-files-in-microsoft-office-formats/
abdbc – I suspect you’re the child. Word 2007 makes it easy for
children or neophytes to make a short message with pretty fonts or stick in a cutsey picture. Real work is a different story. I have written two well-regarded technical using versions of Word through Word 2003. Word has wonderful tools for tables of contents, outlining. indexing, handling graphics, but Word 2007 at least doubles the effort to get tasks done. If you don’t use these features, you don’t need Word, and you don’t have the basis to comment one way or the other. If you do use them, you’d know why there are all these complaints.
Quote: “For being “power” users you’re certainly showing a lot of resistance…”
For being a software company with almost 30 years of products, micro$$$oft is certainly showing a lot of forcing of hard-coded “new” “fancier” “blue-er” less-efficient no-choice locked-in breaking-familiarity more space-wasting user interface “designs”.
All of you at micro$$$oft and those of you that “love” the “ribbon” should have all of the controls in your car or automobile completely rearranged and moved around every 15 months without any option to put it back the way it was. All of the controls, knobs, and switches in your homes and on appliances should be moved and relocated every 15 months with no options, then maybe you will *think* for a minute.
It’s called breaking user familiarity and the top software companies are guilty of this and it’s a serious problem. People need to be aware of it.
I agree about the Ribbon. There is a thing called “muscle memory”, which the ribbon concept completely ignores. People could find things on the old style FEV (File Edit View) menus because their brain remembers the relative position and size and position of the drop-down box (“View”, for example) where the command is located, and the relative place within the drop-down box (“Source” is 4th from the bottom on IE8′s “View” drop-down, for example). Not possible with ribbons, since the ribbon you’re looking at is the same size and shape of the other ribbons. Second, if you don’t know where a command is, it was very easy to systematically search every drop-down menu – because they were in a single column. Ribbons turn searching for a feature into a “Where’s Waldo” puzzle, since the commands are laid out in 2 dimensions. Third, ribbons just take up too much space. Fourth, you can’t use the keyboard like you could before – sure, you can still hit Ctrl-C to copy if you memorized that, but you can’t use the keyboard to find the command (alt-E, then use the arrow keys and enter to grab the command you want). Well, I guess the public has spoken – Microsoft Office is finally losing significant market share. Too bad, I was starting to really like it, until the Ribbons came along.
I HATE THE RIBBON. Call me a power user, I work in Excel and Access all day long and have done so for years.
You ribbon-lovers can never convince me that these were
done for any good reason or are helpful in any way:
1.) Changing “Insert” from Alt + I to Alt + N WHY???? I use this a million times a day. Now I’m “reminded” that I’m using an old shortcut… a million times a day.
2.) Changing “Edit” from Alt + E to who knows what. This forces me to stop the flow of work, reach for the mouse, point to the hated enemy Ribbon, and try to guess which rock is hiding the simple familiar task I need. This is purely sadistic. Somewhere a designer gone bad laughs.
3.) Changing “Print Preview” from the quick and easy Alt+P,V to the ultra clunky and extended Alt+F, P, Alt+W Why????? It worked so well and was shorter, quicker, more effecient, cleaner and prettier.
4.) Disabling the Control key when the Alt letters are activated. Why? Why? I bump up against this hidden monstrosity a dozen times an hour. I NEEED the control key functions to drag me out the tangles of Ribbon. CTRL+R CTRL+D Ctrl+P. CTRL+S they were oldies but goodies, now disabled when the Ribbon is activated by the Alt key. WHY????
5.) Changing “Set Print Area” from the familiar Alt+F,T,S to the totally unrelated Alt+P,R,S. Why? Why???
6.) For completely disabling the menu under Alt+F, T with no way out. Why???????
For this I hate you many times every day. I hate you, Ribbon, I hate you.
These are just a few user trust violations that quickly come to mind.
I could go on…
The “new” ribbons in Windows 7 are a cluttered, hieroglyphic throwback to the menus used by the DOS version of Lotus 1-2-3. Remember when pull-down menus were hailed as an improvement? What happened to that perspective?
I’ll tell you why ms came up with that nightmare ribbon
they are trying to compete with Mac what a feeble attempt
might as well buy Mac it’s better
The Ribbon is the Hindenburg of UI design. It’s big, bloated, and fails to achieve any real purpose other than to create utter chaos for everyone.
The reason so many people have had problems working out how to use ‘Save As’, etc. is because Microsoft’s ‘Ribbon’ interface is INCONSISTENT. Why did they suddenly introduce a circular ‘thing’ in the top left hand corner, which was actually a button to a drop down menu? This has never happened in any software before. It is a classic example of form over function.
The Ribbon is an example of the worst type of user interface design: the user normally uses SPATIAL memory to remember where things are, when using a normal drop down menu system. They remember that ‘Open’ is under the left most drop down menu. They remember that it is at the top, or very near the top, of that menu. Ditto for all the other commands. You find them, then remember approximately where they were, and THAT is how you find them again. SPATIAL memory.
The Ribbon destroys any hope of this, and renders the user helpless when it comes to remembering where a command is, since you cannot use spatial memory any more, but rather have to remember that ‘Command X’ is under ‘Tab D’, not ‘Tab A’, etc. It’s ridiculous.
And why does The Ribbon exist? Because Microsoft employed some douchebags whose very JOB it was to come up with something NEW to replace the old, WORKING system of menus, OR LOSE THEIR JOBS. Way to go, Microsoft douchebags.
The Ribbon is a joke, and anybody who claims to ‘like’ it is merely showing they are as thick as two short planks, and shouldn’t be using a computer. I’ve learnt hundreds if not thousands of programs over the past thirty years. Nothing compares to the abomination that is ‘The Ribbon’.
PD said: “What would have been the harm in allowing users the choice, ribbon or menu?”
The douchebag ‘designers’ would have found out that MOST people would revert back to the proper way of doing things, the menu, and we can’t have that…
Just like the douchebag web designers who design websites with text so grey that you can hardly read it, who give users no choice to change the text to black
The idiots at Microsoft think that somehow, they have to keep CHANGING everything in order to make a product ‘better’. That NEVER automatically applies to a user interface, quite the opposite. Unless you enjoy pissing off your customers.
“This forces me to stop the flow of work, reach for the mouse, point to the hated enemy Ribbon, and try to guess which rock is hiding the simple familiar task I need.”
You nailed it right there. It’s like playing ‘Find the lady’.
Seven coconuts, and under only ONE of them is the command you are looking for, and you don’t know which one it’s under until you have lifted up ALL the coconuts.
The Ribbon is just beyond a joke. I’d love to see the idiots who came up with it, try to explain themselves to their CUSTOMERS…
In order to get a downgraded version of word installed on my machine I had to prove to my work that the Ribbon ruin’s productivity . To do this I set up an experiment with 2 populations;
Control (6 people) – users who have never used either office.
Experimental population (14 people) – users who were familiar with both interfaces of word.
The experiment
I told each group to perform a set number of tasks the old ui and then the new on. Each task was timed. I sent out an email and told each person to record their times and send it back to me.
results:
users of both the control and experimental population had a significantly higher average and mean performance time on the ribbon while the old.
Control-old-ui
task time ranges – 3sec to ~4min
ave time – 65sec
mean time – 53sec
Control-ribbon
task time ranges – 13sec to over a 20min (users gave up after 20 min)
Ave time – ~3min
Mean time – 146sec
experimental-old-ui
task time ranges – 2sec to over a 131sec
Ave time – 30sec
Mean time – 15sec
experimental-ribbon
task time ranges – 2sec to 16min
Ave time – 2min
Mean time – 45sec
Conclusion
although there are some instances of quick task execution, both groups had higher completion rates with the ribbon.
ULTIMATE result
I got my old version of MS word.
@SnarkyTechGuy:
“Overall, I find the ribbon amazingly intuitive. I’ve met a lot of people, mostly novices, who’s single most common refrain was “Oh, so THAT’s how you do that”.
Power users, and those set in their ways seem to be the most vocal about decrying it. The former have some legitimate gripes IMO, and those should be addressed, but the latter are just arguing that progress should not move forward because of the laziness of users.”
What? amazingly intuitive? my guess is this “guy” works for MSFT. And it’s this sort of thinking that produced the ribbon – “the most stupid GUI design ever”.
Yeah, for sure novices dont care, because they don’t know there is a better, and older, way of doing things. I think a common misconception is “change = progress”, and whoever resist change are billed as anti-progress. So let go back and look at some of the “changes” MS introduced in the past: Windows DNA, Windows Me, DAO, MFC, … all of these concepts were real hot when first introduced and MS made a big deal out of them, but look at where they stand today.
Let’s not mistake “mere activity” for progress. Loads of activities were involved in the production of Office 2007, but imo, very little real progress. (One feature I DO like about office 2007 is the Math Equation, which is super, but unfortunately buries under the stupid ribbon)
“Oh, so THAT’s how you do that” !!!!! The implication here is that these users stumbled across it rather than intuitively found it. Yet the ribbon is meant to be intuitive. So why could they not find it easily?
MS have reinvented the wheel, and made it square. The menu/toolbars worked perfectly well. You could customise them and learn where you put everything. Productivity increased as the speed to find functions fell.
Everyone accepts there is a learning curve to new products, but the ribbon is a curve too steep. So if businesses have to go through the hell of a new product and train all their staff, then why not something other than MSOF? It seems many are choosing this route (OpenOffice, MAC iWorks) rather than staying with MS.
MS, when will you learn the customer dictates the features required and the manufactures follow. Not visa versa. You’re becoming complacent and arrogant towards you customers, just like IBM in the 80′s; and look what happened to them. Some young upstart came along and stole their crown.
Having had a fair bit of time to think about *why* I think the Ribbon sucks (i.e. having gotten past the plain emotional response of yuck – that’s fricking hard to use), I think the fundamental reason is the complexity of these office applications means you cannot put more than a small subset of common functions on a toolbar.
Microsoft’s answer to this was to create multiple toolbars (i.e. the ribbon), but toolbars are actually good at *immediate* selection of common functions. What they are not good at. In fact, what they are absolutely terrible at is *navigation*.
By removing menus, and effectively replacing them with several toolbars (i.e. the ribbon) Microsoft made the toolbars the *navigation* mechanism for the UI, and here it’s fundamentally flawed.
A navigation mechanism’s top priority must be for the user to be able to efficiently navigate through and discover functionality. In order for this to be efficient it needs to be easy for the user to (1) visually scan and (2) discover functionality.
One of the principal reasons the ribbon fails on (1) is very basic – the navigation items (the icons, text etc.) are *not* lined up. Your eyes have to scan both down (within function groups) and across (both within and between function groups – by function groups I mean the subsections e.g. ‘font’ within a ribbon tab).
In addition, the representation of the ‘navigation entries’ or functions is inconsistent – some are represented iconically, some are represented as text.
Which leads to another point about navigation – it should be primarily TEXT based. Icons are great once a system is learned (for accessing common functions and for quickly identifying related parts of the system) but unless they’re very obvious and there are just a few of them, you don’t want the user to have to madly mouse over items to discover functions.
Add to this, that the navigation items are dynamic – that is the set of items and their placement and grouping changes according to the amount of screen real estate, with items being collapsed requiring further clicks to navigate and oh my gosh, it really is terrible. (Note, this dynamic behavior would probably be perfectly acceptable for a *toolbar* but NOT for a navigation system).
What else… well, of course even when full screened, to discover some of the functions you have to do further seeking around clicking on icons that have nested submenus.
And after all of that, when you finally realize that the item doesn’t seem to be on the current tab, your eyes have to seek back up to the tabs to select the next tab to try. At this point, your mouse is probably hovering over some icon (a ways away from the original tab header) that you had to mouse over in order to get a tooltip so that you could actually discover what it represents.
This all comes from just another software engineer – I’m not a UI designer but I do *care* about UI design and having applications accessible and easy to use. For me, I think it’s pretty inexcusable that Microsoft have turned out such a turkey. They’re lucky they have a virtual monopoly on office applications because otherwise this I suspect would be severely affecting their Office profits.
So, how is it that menu’s are better?….
1. They’re primarily text based (no mousing around needed to determine what an icon represents).
2. They’re visually lined up – your eyes can extremely quickly scan from the top of a menu to the bottom.
3. They’re (typically) not dynamic (unless you’re Microsoft and you want to only show the commonly used options and hide the rest – another dumbass UI decision). So, users can expect the placement and organization of items to be the same *every time*. (One of the best tips I ever got from a designer was to value consistency highly – consistency of location, consistency of organization etc. – i.e do NOT CONFUSE THE USER!).
4. They require minimal ‘mouse seeking’ – if, you determine that the option you want is not on the currently selected menu header, then most of the time all you have to do is move the mouse to the left or right since the mouse cursor will still be over the original menu header. This is usually the case since the user doesn’t need to mouse over icons for tooltips – i.e. again, it’s text based. The only occasion when the user may need to do some seeking back to the menu header is when they’ve searched a nested submenu. However, a well designed menu should have limited nested submenus.
So, where are toolbars better? – they’re great for quick access to commonly used functions which you have already learned. Once you have learned a system you will have memorized the associations between the functions you commonly use and the icons that represent them.
When first using an application, if the application has a sensible default toolbar, the application can also direct the user’s interest to just a few functions. (It shouldn’t overload the user).
As the user becomes familiar with the application and has discovered the functionality they need and most commonly use (hopefully through a good navigation system!) it is beneficial to allow toolbar customization so that the user can create their own toolbar groupings which contain the functions they need quick access to.
Finally, *WHY* did Microsoft make these fundamental errors?
I think I have a bit of an idea… Microsoft’s designers and developers have become overly fixated on dynamic customizable user interfaces. They have taken the lessons they learned with creating complex applications such as development applications (Visual Studio) and to some extent Office applications (Office 97 and earlier… i.e. before they really screwed up) to an extreme.
In order to enable users to be productive in the extremely open ended scenarios supported by applications such as Visual Studio and Office, Microsoft have needed to provide user interfaces which are extremely customizable – and so have provided customizable, dynamic toolbars.
Many of these applications have multiple modes of operation (you can be performing different operations or editing different types of content). This necessitates to a certain extent, dynamic UIs – since the set of toolbar options/toolbar subgroups needs to change according to the current mode. Also these applications usually have plug-in models which also tends to require a dynamic UI.
They need to be customizable so that the users can organize their toolbars so that they have quick access to the functions they commonly use.
Finally, these toolbar systems have dynamically organize themselves according to available screen real-estate. (Though the way in which this has usually been achieved is a lot more sensible than the unpredictable way in which the ribbon collapses function groups as the UI is resized).
Microsoft’s designers and developers having cut their teeth on these types of applications and these problems have gone positively BONKERS and created a navigation mechanism that is primarily icon based, impossible to scan (navigate) but if you think about it is consistent with the way in the design direction for toolbars – i.e. dynamic resizing according to the UI real estate, customizable (I believe – though I wouldn’t even try).
Add to this, what I’m guessing are some big cultural issues within Microsoft –
(1) they don’t have a design ethos or a ‘chief designer’ (I’d say that’s largely been Steve Job’s function at Apple) and therefore fail to think in terms of “How will people *use* this application”,
(2) when they ‘dog food’ their applications it is done largely with developers and designers who are used to complex customizable apps, and finally
(3) Microsoft have become accustomed to marketing new releases and differentiating new releases on a ‘new look and feel’
… Even if it sucks!
I finally gave up and went to open office. So much easier and productive. I don’t use 90% of the capability of the office software anyway. MS blew it again.
Great post Phil, especially this paragraph, which sums it all up:
“Microsoft’s answer to this was to create multiple toolbars (i.e. the ribbon), but toolbars are actually good at *immediate* selection of common functions. What they are not good at. In fact, what they are absolutely terrible at is *navigation*.”
Nothing beats drop down menus. Nothing ever will.