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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."
The Ribbon is no good even in Windows. And isn't it patented? There's no reason Open Office needs to ape Microsoft's mistakes.
It only sucks in office until OO.o can implement it. Flame on.
They want to take what's probably the single most reviled "feature" of MS Office 2007 and put it into OpenOffice? When one of the big selling points of OpenOffice, among people I've talked to, is that it looks and feels more like the Office they're used to?
Please tell me they're only thinking of putting it in as an opt-in option, not as the default or only option...
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Aww, *hell* no!
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
Let me be the first to assure that the interface is also out of place in Windows OS'es. I'm still at a loss to figure out exactly what functionality that new interface added to Office. It did require us to purchase all new manuals and devote a considerable amount of time to retraining our users. Perhaps that was the "goal"?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Its a nice idea, I guess, and I understand that if you keep it closer to that one big name competitor, then you can make it easier for people to transition, but I prefer to dedicate my limited real estate on my screen to what I'm actually trying to work on, not the tools that I can use to get the job done. I can't imagine this interface on my eeePc. I think the only thing I'll be trying out on this interface is the option to set it back to the old one.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
If OpenOffice allows me to revert to the classic UI, or even a hybrid mix of the classic UI and the "ribbon-ized", then I think it's a good idea. However, if not, at least Gnumeric and AbiWord still have a sane UI.
I use Linux, Windows, and OS X. I have always found OS X to be the easiest of the three to use GUI-wise. Why is there such a following to a windows like interface? Go for better! 3-D, or maybe a new scheme all together. MS interfaces are just the most horrible things - stuff hidden in illogical places, five or six mouse clicks to do things... I can go on but perhaps others following will. There are other ways.
If the new UI is a user-selectable option, I can't see anyone having an issue with it. It may even help the adoption rate of Open Office, since it would be an easier transition for people used to MS Office.
If the new UI is the only UI, I predict a lot of yelling and screaming. Changing an existing UI is never a pleasant thing.
I think the program was called GeoWorks. It used a layout of icons very similar to what I saw in the screenshots. We've come full circle. The old is new again.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I like the Office 2007 ribbon now that I'm used to it, and the simplicity from tabbed toolbars over deep hierarchies in tall menus.
BUT... That "ribbon" in the article looks horrible! They've lost like ALL functionality but the buttons in them, and the design looks like a big step backwards. Note how Office 2007 ribbons add/remove rarely used commands as you resize the window, and crams in much more features in the space than OO.o there. I hope the end result will look nothing like in the preview. There are ribbons, and there are ribbons. :-(
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Is the Ribbon UI that groundbreaking? To me, this argues that we are just shuffling & renaming things and calling it a new version. Software word processors have been around for at least 30 years, are you really trying to tell me that this "innovation" will change everything and make me super productive? Honestly, development on this could have stopped right around when mail merge was added and I think we'd all have been fine with it.
I like the ribbon, it's helped me convince people to use Open Office.
Wait, what? Ah, shit...
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
OO.o
When I started rolling out Office 2007 at a company I used to work for I was asked, often, if the ribbon could be disabled. I went to the office support site (which is something Microsoft actually has right) and started watching training videos to see which ones I should suggest to users. The first thing the video said when addressing the ribbon was you were stuck with it, can't turn it off.
I personally prefer OpenOffice.org. I have a copy of Office 2008 for my Mac that I was given, I don't even have it installed now that I don't have that job anymore, I prefer using Neo Office on my Mac, and OpenOffice.org on my Linux machines.
That being said - the interface is fine, as long as it's optional, I'm all about customization and user preference.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
And that's exactly how much of his post you needed to read to get his message:
1. He uses OO because it doesn't have the ribbon like Office does
2. He doesn't like Office (hence the pejorative).
Seems to me that he communicated quite effectively.
Of course, you can decide that he isn't worth reading because he pokes fun of a product. If that's the case, I feel sorry for you. Plenty of insight is draped in sarcasm or stupid name-calling.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I know there will be a lot of "haters" regarding this. However, if the hopes of smoothly transitioning users from MS Office to OpenOffice it will need to give an option to have a similar look and feel.
To transition non-tech employees to Linux, I used an XP theme on Ubuntu. http://ubuntu.online02.com/node/14
The transition was flawless.
Besides, I wonder how much money was spent by Microsoft on usability studies to come up with this interface. How much money has been spent on usability studies for OpenOffice? Might turn out to be a better way to work in the long run. Just because it is MS does not necessarily mean it is sh*t. That just seems to be the default.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Blasphemy you say!! Well I'm an Office 2007 user so I know what the damn ribbon looks like. From what I can see is that they took the idea behind the ribbon of grouping commonly used features into clusters and unlike MS they went with large enough Icons with decent contrast to be easily visable on a high rez monitor (1280x1024+) like what I use.
So before everyone goes apeshit about this proposed change, take the damn time and actually compare the stinking ribbon with this and you'll see that the change doesn't resemble the ribbon. What I'd like to see is this being offered as an optional customization for those who appreciate its usefulness.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
One of the most frequent criticisms I often hear regarding FOSS is that the applications don't "look and feel" like the OS or other software in the ecosystem. They don't always use the system-default Save/Open dialogs, menu style and common controls and for a lot of users, like it or not, gives the perception of out-of-placeness or inferior. Firefox is a prime example where going out of the way to fit into the UI based on the OS has helped user-comfort and therefore adoption.
If Windows 7 is going to implement the ribbon system-wide, it makes sense that OO.org would minimally make this an option, if not the default on the Windows release, even though I am amongst those who are not fans of the ribbon.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
What. The. Fuck.
They aren't even slightly alike. For one thing, it's attached to the window (floating toolbars *gasp* FLOAT). Floating toolbars generally didn't have multiple tabs of obtions in them-- I suppose there's no technical reason they couldn't have, but in my entire time using Classic Mac I never saw one. There's only one ribbon, where the typical Classic Mac app would have more than one floating toolbar. The ribbon has groups and a somewhat fluid grid layout, Classic Mac floating toolbars were just a simple grid.
Who modded this "Informative?" The ribbon is *nothing like* Classic Macintosh floating toolbars. The only similarity I can even think of it "they both have buttons."
Comment of the year
When I finally upgraded my work computer to have Office 2007, I was having a hard time at first, but soon I came to like the new PowerPoint a lot. At this time I was doing a lot of work in PowerPoint, so it's where I got the most exposure. The main reasons I liked it were the improvements in functionality of the tools themselves and some of the new tools. Smart Art is convenient, positioning objects is much smoother, auto-formatting of slides is smarter. I can whip up a very nice looking presentation without a lot of thought about formatting. Things are pleasing to the eye without having to study color theory first, because MS did the color theory part for you with their pre-defined color schemes that have consistent values, densities and complimentary colors. Word and Excel improved on their "intelligence" too. For instance, bullets and numbering just happens instead of it being an explicit instruction. However, when it comes to ribbon, I am torn.
In PowerPoint, the ribbon works. The reason for this is that the tools you use are very task specific. If I am inserting a picture, there is a certain set of tools that I always will use with a picture, but will rarely ever use with any other task. That way, the tools I need are right in front of me, and the tools I don't are hidden. However, in Word and Excel, the tools are not as task specific and the definition of what task I'm working on is very unclear. Furthermore, the tools used are not always perfectly described by an icon, which means it becomes very hard to find what you're looking for. This is especially the case in Excel, where ther are just so many tools available to you that turning everything into an icon on a ribbon just makes it impossible to find what you're looking for.
But the more I think about it, every time I switch back to older versions of Office, I don't miss the ribbon, I miss the other improvements. I can find may way around just as fast, if not faster in the old style than with the ribbon, and I've gotten pretty used to the ribbon now. While the new UI is completely bad, it really does not improve things overall the way it claims. Like I said, PowerPoint seems to be a good fit, but even still, I get by just fine with the old style.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
If you minimize the Office 2007 ribbon, it takes the exact same amount of space as a menubar. Even when not minimized, the ribbon is smaller than the default Office 2003 toolbars. I don't know who keeps spreading this misconception, but please stop-- the ribbon uses no more pixels than the menu/toolbars it replaced.
In short, Microsoft *did* think of the small displays. You're just assuming they didn't because your head is full of misinformation from reading Slashdot.
Comment of the year
You clearly don't use Office 2007, or are a moron. Outlook 2007 is the single Office 2007 application that DOESN'T use the ribbon interface. That apparently won't happen until Office 2010.
I just got a new laptop at work, and it has Office 2007, replacing the 2003 that was on the old one. The only thing that makes it at all tolerable is that my new screen is 900 pixels high instead of 768, so most of the space that the ribbon's burning up is new pixels, but it takes me longer to get to many of the features I use often, and I haven't yet dug around to find all the features I'd like to have, plus it'll take me a while to memorize where it's hiding everything that I considered to be reasonably obvious in 2003.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
He's not talking about the Ribbon interface though. He's talking about the custom window decorations that all apps (including Outlook) have in Office 2007. And he's right. None of them fit with windows XP at all and you can't easily tell which windows are active and focused because of the color.
Seriously; what UI changes wouldn't do wonders for the GIMP.
Have OO have an option to output LaTeX.
Any toolbar that needs a SEARCH to find SEARCH is broken.
That flippin' Find and Replace moves all over the place, from application to application.
Why was this marked Insightful?
Let's see... I fire up Word, I go to the Home tab ... there's Find/Replace/Select, on the far right. Open up Excel, open the Home tab of the Ribbon ... there it is again, Find&Select, on the far right. Let's try PowerPoint... open up the Home tab, lo and behold, it's on the far right, looking exactly like it did in Word. Even Access puts the Find/Select/etc. box on the far right of the Home tab of the Ribbon.
So which applications were you talking about that do it differently? The ones that don't use the Ribbon? Well I have great news for you: All of the Office apps will have the Ribbon in Office 2010, so everything will be just as consistent as it is in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Access now. You might want to wait to upgrade until then.
P.S. Psssst... but between you and me, I use Ctrl-F.
Breakfast served all day!
Have you used Outlook 2007? The message composing window definitely uses a ribbon.
I've been developing and supporting hundreds of Open Source projects and packages for close to 20 years now... and I "get it". But can we please stop imitating, and get back to innovating? Nobody likes the "ribbon", and it just confuses users. Ask them. Ask Windows users what they prefer.
Stop imitating, start innovating. Again.
Word and Excel have SOME consistency (except that they sometimes call it Find, sometimes Find and Replace. Sometimes it's an icon, sometimes it's not.) Sometimes it's a big icon, sometimes it's small. Now, let's go to Outlook:
Let's try to follow your instructions, when creating a new message in Outlook. Home tab? there isn't one. Maybe you mean the Message Tab which is located where the Home tab is in Word: Far Right? That's Spelling. No, Find is under "Format Text". How intuitive.
Next try to find "Find" when you are reading someone's message to you. Where's Find?
Now let's say you want to find a message in your Inbox. Where's find? OK let's try to find a message in a file folder. Where's find.
OK, let's go to Internet Explorer. Where's Find?
See? So much for consistency.
And using Ctrl-F proves my point. OK, so we're supposed to tell our users what? "I know the Ribbon sucks - just memorize this control sequence."