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."

Comments

How about some nice menus instead?

[russotto]

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.

Re:How about some nice menus instead?

[haifastudent]

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.

As a casual user with no time or interest to do a full OOo course (or even RTFM usually) I welcome the Ribbon UI. I understand that experienced and advanced users may not like it, but assuming that the original interface is not removed then the addition of the ribbon would certainly help weekend users like myself.

Re:How about some nice menus instead?

[Abreu]

I resisted my organization's upgrade to Office 2007 tooth and nail... I complained several times...

The IT department installed Office 2007 anyway.

And I hated the ribbon, with passion... for about two weeks, until I grudgingly admitted that, once you get used to it, it is quite easy to use and it puts the similar functions together in a intelligent way.

So yeah, I like it now

Re:How about some nice menus instead?

[pixelpusher220]

GUI usage is great for 'objects' like files where the variability between objects is relatively few.

*Actions* however are orders of magnitude more numerous. When you have to memorize an icon for every single action, it gets unwieldy. Icon graphics can only be so detailed before they are just blurs. *words* (little w) represent pretty specific ways to describe things and have done pretty well through the years me thinks.

Given Word's penchant for "everything including 5 kitchen sinks" in available functionality, it doesn't scale well to the icon/ribbon concept.

Most of this would be completely moot if MS has simply made the ribbon AN OPTION...but they force fed it to everybody. I don't want OO doing the same thing.

Re:How about some nice menus instead?

[Chapter80]

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. And if the Ribbon moves items based on usage (which it seems to), then it's a nightmare for support personnel:

"See the little icon next to Sort & Filter? You don't have Sort and Filter? OK what Icons do you have?"

Not to mention that Microsoft's categorization is just plain bad. Want to Insert a Powerpoint Slide? Don't press the Insert tab. Want to insert a row in Excel? Surely that's on the insert tab (nope).

Want to find out the Properties of a document in Word? Let's see, would Properties be under Home, Insert, Page Layout, Mailings, Review, View, or Add-Ins. I could make a case for several of those, but View seems to make the most sense... as in View Properties. But noooooooooooo .... it's under the "Click the unnamed icon with multi-colored squares on it, and press Prepare". WTF???

I've griped about this before... I'm sure the Ribbon has potential, IF IMPLEMENTED WELL, but it wasn't. Maybe Open Office will get it right.

Re:How about some nice menus instead?

[swilver]

The worst thing you can possibly do in a UI is hide stuff inconsistently (ie, outside of user control) or move stuff around.

For example, hiding menu options based on use patterns. What purpose does this serve? To save screen space? The user remembers the option they want (if they donot use the hotkey) by placement (almost at the top, just below the middle, etc). Hiding options screws this up. These experts seem to believe users actually READ all the options (or look at icons or something). They don't. They just remember that the recycler was somewhere bottom right, the file menu with open option is top left, tools is somewhere on the right side next to help, etc..

The same thing goes for moving options around, it doesn't matter for what reason. Moving them around means that the option that was in the right corner last week is suddenly somewhere in the middle this week -- mega fail.

Re:How about some nice menus instead?

[tftp]

You know, pull-down menus are pretty confusing to first-time users, too.

But they are not "in your face". People can work Word just fine without ever using the menu bar. Standard toolbars have everything for a common man. And those toolbars don't flicker on their own, so once you learn where the "Open File" button is, it's always there and the mouse movement is automatic. With ribbon you always need to look and comprehend why you see something else where another button was just a moment ago. That "feature" requires learning the whole palette of ribbons just to figure out where you are each time you need something.

Also, menus are structured far better. Everything insertable is generally under "Insert", everything about tables is in "Table" etc. In ribbons of MS Office some functions are duplicated, some are bound to the right-click event, and some are simply impossible to find. I remember looking for a footnote for 10 minutes; I did find it somewhere, but if I need to do that again I have no clue how that ribbon/button looks like.

Also, not everyone is image-oriented. There is a reason why most languages on Earth use limited character set, and why Chinese and Japanese and Korean scripts (CJK) [plus a couple more] are so hard to learn. Humans do better with fewer characters and longer words because our ability to distinguish shapes is not as good as our ability to form one complex object out of several simple ones.

Sounds like a bad idea to me

[danaris]

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

out of place in non-windows OS'es?

[Shakrai]

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"?

Oh, cool...

[Aphoxema]

I like the ribbon, it's helped me convince people to use Open Office.

Wait, what? Ah, shit...

Re:Underwhelming

[hannson]

I have a eeePC myself and I love the ribbon after I've minimized it, after that it works like a horizontal dropdown menu which is a plus because of the limited screen size. A minimized ribbon is actually smaller than menubars and toolbars. YMMV

Re:Knew this was going to happen.

[clone53421]

It only sucks in office until OO.o can implement it.

Correct. After that, it sucks in both of them.

Here come the haters

[bigredradio]

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.