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Firefox To Replace Menus With Office Ribbon
Barence writes "Mozilla has announced that its plans to bring Office 2007's Ribbon interface to Firefox, as it looks to tidy up its 'dated' browser. 'Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menu bar is going away,' notes Mozilla in its plans for revamping the Firefox user interface. '[It will] be replaced with things like the Windows Explorer contextual strip, or the Office Ribbon, [which is] now in Paint and WordPad, too.' The change will also bring Windows' Aero Glass effects to the browser." Update: 09/24 05:01 GMT by T : It's not quite so simple, says Alexander Limi, who works on the Firefox user experience. "We are not putting the Ribbon UI on Firefox. The article PCpro quotes talks about Windows applications in general, not Firefox." So while the currently proposed direction for Firefox 3.7 involves some substantial visual updates for Windows users (including a menu bar hidden by default, and integration of Aero-styled visual elements), it's not actually a ribbon interface. Limi notes, too, that Linux and Mac versions are unaffected by the change.
I had no idea it was April already.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I agree. Thankfully, I'm sure there will be a theme or add-on to fix this GUI abortion.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Good point. However, Microsoft Bob was also the result of advanced research into user interface design. So was Clippy. Microsoft has a way of taking very innovative ideas and stripping them of all sanity and usefulness.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
However Ribbon's "contextual" system is horrible to user too. People get used to where things are, even more so with computers. That is why static, normal menus and buttons are good. When the system is trying to contextually offer the "best" options to user, in seemingly random places it thinks are most relevant, they just get confused.
I use browser and I I've learned where things are. I know better myself what I'm looking for than some algorithm that will just mix things up.
See, I get it for Microsoft Office. Its alot user intuitive for users to find the save and print and formating buttons with the ribbon system they've got set up. Good for that.
But seriously, when was the last time I used the menu bar in any browser? I enter a URL... I browse... I close it when I'm done...
I hate clutter at the top of the sceen, eating up valuable viewing space for bigger pictures and such. I was upset when IE snuck a Search Toolbar in there without me really asking - since its automatically set to search if the URL doesn't resolve to anything... But whatever, removed it and got over it.
Now they want to take that less than an inch menu bar and make it take up 2 inches of my screen so that I can NEVER use it. Besides the fact that I never find a need to go in there, everything will be relayed out and I probably won't be able to find what I'm looking for when I do need to.
The problem I have with the ribbon, and the reason I'll download an add-on to replace the menus in Firefox or just switch to Safari, is that it's a disorganized mess, with everything getting roughly the same amount of visual play. Worse still, some things get more play just because they take more space to show.
With the menu, some things may be buried a few levels deep, but at least it's highly organised and I can quickly figure out where to find things using common sense. In the long run this works out much better for me. Maybe it's different for users who are just encountering a computer for the first time or something.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Actually the ribbon style is not built for eye candy but rather for usability. The problem with menu style systems is that it is not intuitive. There is resistance to the change because of 'menus are the way we are used to doing things' not necessarily the way things should be done.
The way things "should be done" is the way people want them to be done and are used to them being done.
All this "intuitive" BS is nonsense. What is "intuitive" about looking at a screen and picking something off a "ribbon" at the top of a bar over a bunch of text and images? There's nothing in human instinctual behavior that would guide that. We know to do something like that because we have learned how to do it.
And there is just no reason to have to learn a new system when we have all already learned how to use menus. I still can't get anything done beyond the most basic tasks in Word because of the stupid ribbon, and I've basically given up on the whole app because of it. I used to use it for everything, now I use it as a last resort - I use Wordpad for most other things that I can't use Notepad for. (My version of Wordpad still has menus; I didn't realize there was a version with the ribbon. Now I know to avoid it.)
You know what I wish people would stop doing? Assuming I'm too dumb to use menus, but smart enough to learn a whole new system that I've never seen before. And I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way.
Exactly. We need consistency for usability. When something shows up inone spot, we need it to be in that spot the next time we look for it. For things used a lot, it makes sense to have a quick launch icon for one click access, and that is good enough.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
The context sensitive ribbon... what 'contexts' are there exactly? I'm viewing a webpage or.... viewing a webpage. That's it! It's not like Word where I might be editing text or drawing a table, or manipulating an inserted image.
Most of FF's menus are related to the configuration of the system. And configuration of the addons. This could be a little better organized but it's certianly not broken or a priority for redesign.
Imagine trying to tell your grandma over the phone how to set an option: "Click on Tools, then click Internet Options"... oh wait... there's no more menu. "Click on the icon that kind of looks like a toolbox with a wand over it... er".
Whatever the source of the data that they used, the result is something that the majority of advanced excel users hate and about 80% dislike. For intermediate users, about 40% hate it and 60% dislike it. Basically, people who know how to use excel already can't stand this ribbon, so MS has just royally pissed off some of their best customers perhaps to the benefit of those who don't use it so often. I have seen more people migrate to linux on their laptops due to this single "feature" than anything else. The ribbon is an even more than the problems with vista, although it is more of a straw that broke the camel's back sort of thing.
I already dislike the new gui for firefox on the mac (why in the world does the back button need to be so big?), and use safari because of it, but on linux I use FF all the time. I guess I'm going to sit back and hope that midori is released soon, or use konqueror.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Another important thing to remember that menus hide unused and rarely-used features. In most modern software that's actually a pretty good thing, as very few people need or want to leverage every single feature of an application in one session. It makes it harder to discover those features, but once you learn where they are the first time around, it's a solved problem. By presenting the user with large blocks of mostly unwanted toolbars, the ribbon scheme steals valuable vertical space without offering any usability savings over the initial discovery. You still have to switch between ribbon states to find half the features you want, and select from drop-down lists of icons insted of drop-down menus of options.
This will mesh better with Microsoft's vision of a modern application, for what that's worth. It might make some features easier to discover (I know people who are still surprised to learn about Firefox's keywords feature). Even so, I doubt it will be more popular than the current design, lead to significant changes in the way people use Firefox's features, or be worth the loss of valuable vertical real-estate. The only good thing I can say about it is that most people don't need to use menus in Firefox as it is, and the ribbon can probably be hidden like the URL bar, menu bar, and toolbars can already be hidden.
The way things "should be done" is the way people want them to be done and are used to them being done. Bull....to an extent. Intuitive means it behaves in a way that you can reason out, that is natural. CLIs for instance are not intuitive, there is no real world example of CLI
The other reply has mentioned natural language.
I read a study where some old people were taught how to use a computer (some Linux distro) using the CLI for most tasks. Most of them quickly understood the give command/get response paradigm, one said it was like talking to a child -- you had to be precise and specific, and exactly what you asked for would be done.
Think remote controls, all buttons are in front of you, at best there is an +10 on the remote.
The meanings of the buttons changes according to what's on the screen. My grandma doesn't like her new TV, it has "too many buttons". This isn't an interface we should replicate.
Or consider a more organic approach, at a grocery store you dont have to push fruit out of the way to get to the vegetables to get to the potatoes. You go to the produce isle and head for the potatoes right in front of you.
File -> Save
Produce -> Potatoes
Looks like a menu to me. (Salads -> Potato, on a dinner menu -- that's why it's called a menu!)
having them memorize a menu system is not useful.
You don't need to memorise a menu system, that's the whole point. The options you have are grouped according to their function, if you want to change the text colour try the "Formatting" menu, etc.
With a toolbar the minimum is to learn what each picture means, and this is significant. Grouping the icons is essentially making menus without text.
Actually I specifically meant to refer to situations where I don't know how to perform the task in question. With the menu bar I can quickly figure it out. With the ribbon I am flipping things in and out, trying to find something that seems relevant, wasting vast amounts of time waiting for tooltips to appear on undecipherable icons.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
You sound like a Microsoft developer I curse everyday. For those who actually have to be productive ie those of us in Finance Excel 2003 works great. Everyone knows where everything is and has modified the menus and buttons to make them more productive. Of course, the Ribbon is not for the power user its for the user who has no idea what they want thus its geared towards the lowest common demoninator ie the secretary or grandma. Anytime I have to drop into 2007 I lose 30 - 40% of my productivity because things that were one or two clicks away you have to first find then you are 4 - 5 clicks. Ribbon is just another word for unproductive mess.
You are all complaining about a complete non-issue. But this is /., so that's to be expected. The ribbon actually IS a much better menu system once you get used to it. All the normal things that most users generally use are pretty easy to find, and many of the mid-level and intermediate things they weren't already aware of are presented more easily. And, the shortcut keys for advanced users weren't changed for the most part.
Most people who actually give the ribbon a chance get used to it in about 2 weeks - much better than most software changes as big as moving to the ribbon. It's just the people railing against it for the sake of railing against change who can't handle it.
Get over it. Not all change not initiated by YOU is bad.
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
I'm sorry, but you're quite wrong here. Previously used conventions are a major part of UI design, but abandoning old conventions for better ones is both a major and necessary risk at times. By your definition, how intuitive a system is depends entirely on the person using it, and the results of testing would have no objective value. The fact is that old Office menus were complete garbage, and we only liked them because we'd been using them for the better part of almost 2 decades.
I remember my heuristics professor once telling us how she was at CES one year and there was this black device at one of the booths. It just looked like a box, and had no buttons or anything, and she stood there for a while trying to figure out how to turn it on. It never occurred to her to just touch it. When she did, it immediately lit up and exposed interactive elements on it's surface.
Something being intuitive is not what you describe it to be. It is the ability of a system to be learned and adapted to quickly. Prior knowledge of other systems can either help or hinder this scenario, but the baseline is from the perspective of one who's never interacted with this sort of technology before. If you are accustomed to other systems for the same task, but which function differently, this will be an obvious hindrance as your mind subconsciously begins looking for the same conventions, which are notably lacking. The real measure of its worth is how long it takes to relearn how to use the new system.
I was personally hesitant to try it as well, and put it off for about two years, but found it surprisingly comfortable to use when I finally capitulated. Additionally, it's very obvious that the ribbon's real purpose is actually to provide a common interface for legacy, and potential future touch screen displays, with its use of large buttons and more area.
Except that even once you're used to it, it still takes up a HUGE chunk (relatively) of vertical screen real estate which you can never get back. You know, the dimension that's becoming less and less available as the OEMs beat the "widescreen" drum because they can claim the same number of inches for less pixels?
On my install of firefox 2, I have the toolbar, menubar, *AND* address bar all stuck on the same line. It takes up 16 vertical pixels. The tab bar is another 16 pixels. This is a godsend on tiny screened devices. Yes, I may be able to hide the ribbon, but it's not very useful when it's hidden, is it? It adds another click to *everything* that simply does not need to be there. Used to be, in Word, I could cram all of the functions I use often (including "hide spelling/grammer errors") onto one toolbar. One toolbar which would fit next to the menubar on most screens. The other functions were there under the menus if I needed them. Can I do that now? (Maybe I can--if the ribbon can be reduced to ~16 or so pixels tall while still giving one-click access to functions, then maybe it's less of an abortion than I've given it credit for.)
I can't understand why vertical screen space is treated like it's free and unlimited when really it is becoming more precious with time.
I'm really surprised that the Slashdot crowd has so much trouble with the ribbon. I'm an IT consultant and across all the people I've deployed Office 2007 to, not one has had more then a handful of questions and zero complaints (at least with regard to the ribbon). Many people actively sought a budget to get 2007 after seeing someone else use it, I never pushed it on anyone. On top of that, people are using styles instead of hand formatting everything, creating locked forms and templates (and editing them later without calling me for help) and using all sorts of feature, sometimes asking me about features I had never used. I've been using it so long, it's far more jarring to try to go back then the transition ever was. Plus auto-hiding the ribbon works great on notebooks / netbooks. Of course, I don't see how it will work in a web browser, but I guess we will see.