Slashdot Mirror
Preview the Office 2007 Ribbon-Like UI Floated For OpenOffice.Org
recoiledsnake writes "OpenOffice.org has prototyped a new UI that radically changes the current OO.o interface into something very similar to the new ribbon style menus that Office 2007 introduced and which have been extensively used throughout Windows 7. The blog shows a screenshot of the prototype in Impress (the equivalent of PowerPoint), but this UI is proposed to be used across all OO.o applications. Some commenters on the Sun blog are not happy about OO.o blindly aping Office 2007, and feel that the ribbon UI may be out of place in non-Windows operating systems."
One of the main reasons I use OO now is the ribbon on Orifice 2007.
I like OO file compatibility with MS Orifice, but please don't copy their ribbon user interface.
As a long time user of both OpenOffice and MS Office, I can say without a doubt that the ribbon interface is shit.
Not little shit, or even "the shit", it's a steaming pile. I will say this-Microsoft tried something new for the first time in years with Office. They thought it was intuitive and ground breaking. At least they were half right, it was something new.
It's frustrating to dig through trying to find what you want, only to find that the old, well understood Office dialogs are still there if you know how to get to them. The installation should have had a single checkbox that said "Use Classic Interface" and that be the end of it.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
So it is. Huh!
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."