Slashdot Mirror
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.
In my opinion this is a really, really dumb move. While its all eye-candy and nice, it brings down the usability a lot. If you want to get to the menu, you have to find some button from somewhere obscure location and then the menu will be vertical to begin with, like right-clicking. On top of that its one extra mouse click. I hate the same thing with Office. Another good example is MSN Messenger. I can never find the menu button, and when I do the menu looks just retarted.
The ironic thing is that a menubar is the least intrusive UI object on the screen. It's small, it doesn't get in the way and it goes nicely along with title bar. And you still find everything easily and fast from it.
This doesn't "tidy up" 'dated' browser. There a lot more issues to look at, like UI responsiveness, fast drawing of loading websites and better & smoother scrolling, in which Firefox is actually lacking behind (still wins IE tho, but thats not much)
Another sad thing about this is that it forges Windows UI style to Linux and other OS, and stops being consistent with the rest of the system.
Gladly I'm not Firefox user, and even less so with this. It seems Firefox is going more and more to the way of grandma-understands-too. While I myself more and more like the approach Opera takes; feels like a complete suite for browsing. Maybe it'll gain more marketshare for Opera in power users, who still value usability and the simple efficient things like menu bars.
I had no idea it was April already.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Please, don't.
Why take away a perfectly good, easy to use menu and replace it with that shit-tastic ribbon concept?
I can understand having it as an option for those few people who actually like the ribbon (which, IMHO reduces usability, while taking up way more space), but forcing that garbage on the general public seems like a waste of both energy and goodwill.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Menus exist for a reason (they are useful and organized), and the "Ribbon" takes up more space than the menus. The Ribbon's "Contextual" interface just means that things aren't in the same place all the time. It means that action A is not always in action A's spot, and sometimes action B is in action A's spot. It's just terrible. I guess that's the last I'll be using of Firefox.
The point of the ribbon was to consolidate many complicated context sensitive (in this case i mean, menu items disable and enable based on current document context) menu items/tasks into a more readily available context sensitive toolbar (making a menu bar obsolete).
However, a web browser doesn't need that many context sensitive too bar elements. Chrome, Safari and even IE 8 already has a very simplified and usable tool bar (with one or two drop down menus for more detailed options - hardly requiring a ribbon).
i just don't really get this...
No, wait, I mean that other thing -- lame!
That's really clever. The Ribbon is fully available to any application that doesn't compete with Office... I would have never thought about a web browser as being within that fold, but it most certainly is. IE is not part of the office ecosystem. This is smart move towards integration and a clever way to utilize the platform. However, there likely will be some backlash from purists. Might I suggest a branch of Firefox not unlike Camino for Mac? Perhaps a Windows-centric version of the Mozilla browser would be in order to better provide for the range of needs and interests in the community.
The Office 2007 ribbon is very effective for exposing contextual functionality, but it's also capable of being a lightweight interface. I am curious to see how Firefox implements this. I wouldn't anticipate it being nearly as wide open as Office's ribbon, with much of its functionality likely hidden in the globe.
Alongside some Windows 7 integration, these features could go far towards making Firefox more of a native browser and less of a competing visual element in Windows.
Firefox To Replace Menus With Office Ribbon
Many To Replace Firefox With Opera
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Dear TheMCP,
I use a PET2001. There are no menus. It has no graphical rendering. I can't even get Lynx to run on it.
This letter has as much to do with the discussion as yours does. Please take your fellatious Mac worship elsewhere.
Love,
Red Flayer
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I fully expected to hate that damn ribbon, but the reluctant truth is that I find the more I use it the more generally useful it becomes -- especially for exposing semi-obscure but useful Microsoft Word features (like creating cross references). Still, there's a catch. When it doesn't work it falls flat on its face and you spend the next three hours trying to figure out how to do something that should only have taken 5 minutes.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
The screenshot in TFA looks nothing like the Office ribbon. The purpose of the ribbon is to make apparent the options the are usually buried within expanding hierarchical menus. In the screenshot it looks to me like they just replaced pulldown menus with pulldown buttons.
I love the Office ribbon and would be very happy to see this standard propagate into more user interfaces. I'd love to see it implemented in Firefox, but I see no such thing here.
I'll wait until the obvious font problem is fixed.
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".
The quote verbatim from Mozilla's wiki (found here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Windows_Theme_Revamp/Direction_and_Feedback)
"Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menubar is going away. To be replaced with things like the Windows Explorer contextual strip, or the Office Ribbon(now in Paint and Wordpad too). Many apps still retain the menubar as an option to be pinned or to be shown briefly by holding the Alt key...Firefox isn't the type of application that necessarily has contextual actions in the same way Windows Explorer does. So how to handle the functionality of the menubar if it is hidden?"
They are just using the ribbon as an example of an interface that has eliminated the menu bar. If you read further they have mockups of the 3.7 and 4.0 interface, it looks absolutely nothing like the ribbon.
I can't agree more. I had the pleasure(?) of helping a friend take his basic "Office 2007" computer class for college. Fortunately our company didn't go to Office 2007 so it was my first experience with it. It has to be one of the most unintuitive interfaces that MS has pushed out in years.
The tabs try to present too much information in a limited space. I felt like I was playing those old Monkey Island pixel hunt games. I found it totally unnecessary to have a picture for every function I was trying to perform when simple functions like FILE, EDIT, and VIEW would serve so much easier. We ended spending more time just trying to FIND the sub tab info than we did learning about new functionality. It's almost like they did it just to make Office look 'different' but failed to realize they weren't really innovating anything. They were just putting pictures in place of easy to read text, and adding more 'clutter' in places where it wasn't needed.
Haven't we had that argument a couple of times here already? Anyway : the reason you had trouble with it is not because it isn't intuitive, it's because you're very fluent with and accustomed to the old UI.
Here's a nice little car analogy : if you gave a modern car to someone used to a Model T, he would find changing gear awfully counter-intuitive, have to learn to drive again almost from the scratch, and complain loudly that it worked just fine so why the hell change it. The modern approach is still better.
Jesus, here we are on Slashdot, and people are bitching about Microsoft not maintaining backards compatibility...
Actually, on a modern car, with the exception of park and lower gears (which most people STILL don't understand), on an automatic transmission, they don't have control over the shifting anyway. He would probably appreciate the power steering and brakes as well. The driving interface is quite possibly the best user interface I know of, because the basic design hasn't changed since the days of the horseless carriage.
To continue with your car analogy, the switch to the ribbon is like switching a car to a joystick... It might be more intuitive for younger people (who play too much Xbox), but it isn't necessarily the best tool for the job.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Mod parent down.
The ribbon system allows for the logical grouping of actions by function.
What, exactly, is logical about the Home ribbon in Excel then? SMASHED in with cut/paste is formatting and sorting. None of which are particularly clue-ful or present any sense of order whatsoever.
How come there isn't a 'File' tab with lots of file functions smashed together?
In addition, every common action can be performed in two mouse clicks or less: one to select the ribbon governing what you would like, and one more to select the specific action.
Opening a file? at least three clicks. Printing? three clicks. Sorting? At least two, probably more clicks for most sorts. Data activities? Three clicks at least. Stop spreading misinformation
I'll give you the undo/redo buttons conform to your claims, and there is 'buttonizing' of some things that Microsoft probably had complaints about, but as broadly as you make your claims they are materially false.
Please, don't change the scope of your sweeping declarations in order to for your claims to approximate truthiness.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
>>>people are bitching about Microsoft not maintaining backards compatibility...
Well I've tried and failed multiple times to make Wing Commander operate on Microsoft and failed spectacularly...... but never mind that. - Improvement is only an improvement if the overall usage is improved. Yeah I know you're probably thinking "No shit sherlock", but that basic idea is something many people overlook.
The current interface presents a nice CLEAN list of commands, which can be quickly and easily scanned. The new ribbon interface presents a confusing mess of pictures and words that make a "quick scan" very difficult. It's the computer equivalent of tacking an organized library, and just randomly tossing books everywhere. Yes the books might be neatly arranged, but they are still random to the eye, and finding the book you want becomes very difficult.
Put the books/menu commands back in a nice, serial order so the human eye can scan and find what it's looking for.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Apple has a look and feel that screams Apple. Most vendors comply with the look and feel. That Aqua, gray and blue like look.
GNOME has a HIG that they really would love for everyone to follow. You're not forced to but, you can almost spot the applications that don't follow the GNOME HIG. That makes up a lot of the look and feel, add Ubuntu's wonderful brownish / orange; Fedora's blueish; or SuSE's green everywhere and you have a look and feel that screams the distro's GNOME.
Microsoft has the Aero glass and wonderful (*snicker*) ribbon. Microsoft is slowly getting everyone on the glass and ribbon theme. There is no absolute rule that you must use glass and ribbon styles on your Microsoft application, but people notice when it doesn't match up. It gives Microsoft that Post-XP look and feel.
In the end, operating systems are trying to make a look that defines them, that people can easily recognize. Much like Google has their own look and feel of blue and flat that they've got going on. People identify readily with a unique look and feel and that is, in a nutshell, cheap advertising. There is nothing wrong with developers not going along with the look and feel an OS uses, Winamp comes to mind as a big one, but it automatically points out that the user is using something different, something not part of the OS; and if the OS is using a really slick look and feel with all kinds of neat effects, not going with the OS look and feel makes you look dated, or posing (if you're trying to do your own slick look and feel effects.)
For 90% of us here on Slashdot, this is all just a bunch of useless eye candy. However, it's a real important factor for the other whatever percentage of the general population who just buy into marketing hype.
Chrome looks out of place on Windows sans the glass effect. It looks like a giant blue rubber browser. However, that doesn't mean that it is silly, just looks exactly not like a Windows Vista/7 application. We can debate the merits of looking like a Windows application till the cows come home, point being it looks out of place.
Whatever your take is on the ribbon UI, I won't argue you there, but that's where Microsoft looks like they're heading for general UI, just like Mac OS X puts the menu bar at the top of the screen. It's just part of that look and feel and companies are very geared to have a distinct look and feel so that people can instantly recognize that the product in use.
So are we going to toss stones at Mozilla for actually going the with the look and feel of a Windows program, when they try to achieve the same on Mac OS X and Linux? I think the better answer for all the people who are heading down to the rock quarry is: If you do not like the glass/ribbon look and feel, maybe you should change to an OS that matches the way you want it to look?
I can almost hear the angry replies, but I will say this in my defense. The look, feel, and usability of a given OS is a marketable thing. I ditched Windows when I saw what they were going to do with Windows post-3.11. I couldn't stand it, but I understood that this was the way Microsoft was going (start buttons, browser like file navigation, etc...) I can not fight a war with a company that is trying to market stuff. So, I switched to an OS where I could dictate how things are going to work, Linux. I've not looked back since.
We just need to understand that Mozilla is bringing their application to look like a Microsoft application, just like they did with the Linux version of Firefox when they added GTK+ integration. Just like they are trying to do with making Firefox look like a Mac OS X program. So, come on, if you don't like the direction MS is taking with their look and feel, stop waiting for more applications to break ties with the Microsoft look and feel. Instead, switch over to an OS that matches what you want. It's not that hard really, and after a few weeks, you won't notice the difference. Let's make peace, not cast stones.
I don't think I will like this on FF. BUT in office it works. I actually like it.. I can find features that I used to use and always had to google for at my finger tips..
IMHO the office ribbon bar is the menu system for office finally done right.
will it work in FF? I don't know.
More annoying than this is as of FF 3.5 you can now longer kill the instance if you close the last tab.. Instead it is noop or blank, that's fucking annoying!!!
For an even more recent example, look at the United States and its reasons for not switching to the (clearly superior) metric system.
(Note: I'm a US citizen)
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
My biggest problem with the system is the strict use of pictorial representations of functions. I don't know what "Properties" or "Insert" or "Cross Reference" is supposed to look like. Nor would anyone be able to describe to me how to find them since they would be describing a tiny icon picture which I would then have to interpret instead of using a single word explanatory statement.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
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.
Don't get me started with these bad car analogies. I'm still pissed about moving the high beam switch from the floor to a stupid stick on the steering column.
I keep getting my left foot caught in the steering wheel switching to low beams.
Have gnu, will travel.
Haven't we had that argument a couple of times here already? Anyway : the reason you had trouble with it is not because it isn't intuitive, it's because you're very fluent with and accustomed to the old UI.
Don't think so, it violates quite a few basic rules of UI design. I know there are issues with the old 7+/-2 rule, but a higgledy-piggledy hodgepodge of non-intuitive icons is hard to search, it takes more screen real-estate than necessary, and is hostile to touch typists who don't want to have to keep moving their hand from keyboard to mouse and back (Alt-F S has become Alt H F D F -- double the keystrokes).
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
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.
>>>Most people who actually give the ribbon a chance get used to it in about 2 weeks -
Wow. 2 weeks of my life wasted so I could save 1/4 second selecting my command. Yeah. Benjamin Franklin had a saying about that - "Penny wise; pound foolish," to describe people who count pennies but spend dollars recklessly.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The current interface presents a nice CLEAN list of commands, which can be quickly and easily scanned. The new ribbon interface presents a confusing mess of pictures and words that make a "quick scan" very difficult.
Yeah, but there's a trade off here. In the old office menu system, you'd often find what you're looking for buried in a menu somewhere with a half-assed dialog box to go along with it. Sure, you could scan each menu every time fairly quickly, and it was easy on the eyes. But once you found what you were looking for, repeating the path there really sucked.
One thing the new system does get right is that everything now has a keyboard short cut and everything is supposedly quicker to get to with less mouse acrobatics. The only reason you're used to the menu system is you've been trained since windows 95 to get good at navigating menus so you don't notice anymore.
I'm sure if you took two people, started one up with a ribbon, started the other with a menu, and then switched them after about a year, they'd both immediately complain. But that's obvious. The real question is after a month or so of training and learning, who will be performing better and is that performance change (if any) worth it?
It's also difficult to describe to another person on the phone. That can matter because some of us poor suckers have to provide telephone tech support to people and stuff.
At least with a classic text menu you can say, "See the menu bar? Now click on File, then Print, etc.." Its a whole lot easier with words up there.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
<sarcasm>Yes, I'm sure that's what he meant. You have to spend 336 hours straight studying the Office ribbon before you can use it correctly.</sarcasm>
His point (which I agree with), is that all things being equal, the ribbon is a better interface than the file menu. Of course all things are not equal. You've been practicing on that clunky "Word for Windows" file menu for 15 years. It may take you a little time to retrain yourself. People like myself, on the other hand, don't use Office regularly, and find the new interface much easier to use.
Microsoft is taking a calculated risk to separate themselves from their competitors. I think it was a good decision.
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.
Here's the problem: while KDE and Gnome are strongly influenced by the interface introduced with Windows 95, were there any real decent alternatives that could be easily picked up by "newbie" end users? The windowing interfaces you saw on SGI and Sun workstations in the late 1980's and early 1990's weren't paragons of ease of use.
We forget that Microsoft has spent a HUGE amount of money in their Usability Lab doing nothing but studying how user interfaces work for computer programs. That's why Windows has a generally pretty consistent interface on the surface, and someone used to Windows 95 could fairly easily pick up learning and mastering even Windows 7.
... look at the United States and its reasons for not switching to the (clearly superior) metric system.
Actually, as many historians have pointed out, the US has been "metric" for more than a century now. All the American "Imperial" units of measurement are legally defined in terms of ISO units. Thus, the inch is 2.54 cm because that's the legal definition of the inch. And if you look at the labels on most American goods, you'll find that they include the metric size (weight, volume) of the contents, along with the Imperial size.
I've seen it described as an "extended metric" system, in the same sense that much American industry and marketing uses the term "extended". We have not just meters, centimeters, millimeters, kilometers, etc.; we also have inches, feet, yards, miles, which are also defined as some multiple of a meter. We have all the power-of-ten prefixes, and we also have other really weird multiples for the people who prefer those. So our system is obviously better, right? After all, people who know only metric terms can't easily tell you the length of a(n American) football field, but those who know the additional "yards" unit can.
The problem isn't that the US hasn't "gone metric"; it's that people refuse to stop using the old terms and switch to the metric terms. But hey, we have Free Speech here; the government can't force us to stop talking about inches and feet and force us to talk about meters. That's good, right?
Well, at least it's good for the marketers, who can present us with a confused mess of bizarre units, and make it very difficult for us to compare prices of goods. Take a good look at the price/unit labels in most grocery stores, if you don't know what I mean.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
disclaimer: I use a Mac, I've never used the Ribbon UI, and I'm an HCI professor. These two facts make me competent to talk about it.
In short: Microsoft (which I do not support usually) people has done a lot of work usability-wise (see the end of this msg): no it's not eye-candy.
It's ok for some people used to the old interface to complain: they have to learn new ways of interacting, it's costly, but the designer's bet is that it will pay off in terms of efficiency at the end. ALL interfaces need users to learn before (hopefully) becoming efficient. Changing for changing will only oblige users to forget what they've learnt. But changing for more efficiency is valuable, and that's what Ribbon designers claimed they have done, and it seems the processus they have used to design the thing is good. I think you can't blame them for that.
A link about the story of the Ribbon: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx
In summary:
word 1: 50- menu items Word 2003: 250+ (not counting toolbars, small property windows etc)
something has to be done
design took five years
Designers have:
Visited people at their workplace
Visited people in their home
Invited people into our labs for freeform working and discussion
amassed over 10,000 hours of video of people using Office, Over 3 billion data sessions collected from Office users ~2 million sessions per day
Over the last 90 days, theyâ(TM)ve tracked 352 million command bar clicks in Word
tracked nearly 6000 individual data points
Analysis:
Which commands do people use most?
How are commands commonly sequenced together?
Which commands are accessed via toolbar, mouse, keyboard?
Where do people fail to find functionality theyâ(TM)re asking for(in newsgroups, support calls,etc.)?
They also iterate a lot to find new solutions, and they evaluate the solutions until they were satisfying.