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LibreOffice Will Have New 'MUFFIN' UI (documentfoundation.org)
New submitter iampiti writes: The Document Foundation has announced a new user interface concept for LibreOffice. Users will be able to choose from several toolbar configurations including the "Notebook bar" which is similar to Microsoft Office's ribbon. According to TDF, "The MUFFIN (My User Friendly -- Flexible Interface) represents a new approach to UI design, based on the respect of user needs rather than on the imposition of a single UI to all users"
I haven't seen this new UI, but it is safe to assume "usability experts" were hard at work at making trendy and user un-friendly changes to it.
no Ribbon!
For most common operations keyboard shortcuts are great. When I need to find an option that I don't use much, I hate hovering over every icon in the ribbon to find the one that does what I want. I don't know what all the icons mean. Give me some sorted menu bars that i can look though. And the keyboard shortcut is right there.
Why would anyone want to have Betty White's muffin in their spreadsheet?
I share your fears. When it comes to user-interface, change is almost always bad. The new interface may be easier to use for newcomers, but the folks, who've used the program before, will need to climb the learning-curve again.
Hopefully, developers will have enough collective sense to leave some kind of "Switch to Legacy Interface" (SWILIN?) option available and sufficiently prominent for the users to select.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I hope they are not filing the serial numbers off the M$ office interface and bolting it to Libreoffice. The current interact that libreoffice has is one of the reasons I like it.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
>>> a new approach to UI design, based on the respect of user needs rather than on the imposition of a single UI to all users
This never ends well. In my former life I spent many happy months ripping out (more) senior developers' pet-project UI templating features (e.g., "pick your GUI colorz"), key remapping (e.g., "now you can pick if the arrow keys are reversed") and other UI customization features. The result? Every time? My customers loved the "cleaner UI" and especially loved the fact that once you documented how to do something with my product, it didn't change in the next release, or on the next-guy-over's screen. (Remember corporate, er, office users, just want to do their job and GO HOME.)
What they really need to do is learn why Microsoft Office still has the best UI (it optimizes what people do most frequently, and puts most functions where people expect them) and build something about as good (without infringing on Microsoft's ribbon patent of course). But they won't, because it's the same lesson OpenOffice never learned. (e.g., Ever pick a color in OpenOffice? Have you ever seen THAT interface anywhere else, ever?)
Muffins...
I must be one of the few people in world who likes the Ribbon UI. It actually makes a lot of sense. You have a top level menu, and clicking on each item gives you all the available commands for that menu item. Its cleaner and more consistent than adding all of the older style toolbars you need or using the drop down menus, which are often inconsistent in their ordering or placement.
The only reason I consistently read from people who dislike the Ribbon is basically "It's not what I'm used to"
I'm excited to see it in Libreoffice. And I'm glad they chose to make it optional.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
QUIT FUCKING AROUND WITH THE UI!
There are thousands of other things that need to be worked on but no, instead we fuck around with the UI and make it worse than before. very VERY rarely has a major UI change made something better.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I just don't know what could go wrong... 6_9
UI flexibility is a great thing. This looks like a nice improvement, particularly in that users can choose what they like best. Unfortunately, what they need most is to redesign those butt-ugly icons! They just ruin the screenshots of the new Muffin UI. This issue has plagued Libre- and OpenOffice for years. I don't understand why it's still an issue. There are so many great graphic designers in the open source community that could help. (Sadly I am not one.) If they put out a call for assistance, I'm sure it would be solved in no time. Unless it's...intentional? I just don't understand it. Looking at those icons makes my eyes bleed.
I wish more applications would use a sidebar - with monitors spreading horizontally for video display reasons, there is an awful lot of whitespace that isn't used by most word documents, webpages etc. Vertical space is getting to be a premium now.
I'm going to go stand in the corner now.
I really like Libre office. It is a total and complete replacement for Microsoft. My brother runs his business on it and thunderbird. He is now completely free of Microsoft. I'm completely free of Microsoft. Good times.
The proposed options are:
I find great that, differently to current trends in UI design, they're giving the users options. Everyone can choose whatever they like best. ...) and usually they give you no choice.
Yeah, it may be confusing to some users that there're several options (although I guess that that kind of users will probably never even stumble upon the option to change the default), it does add a bit of extra code (but not much, since it's just a bit of UI code that ends up calling the same logic code) but I think it's positive overall.
This also touches me personally since I don't like some current trends in UI design (e.g. Win 10's mobile UI elements for every form factor, very limited theming, latest Gnome
You're quite right, I can confirm that...right now, actually.
I like that change, and I see no problem as you can continue using the old UI style.
There's an old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
After all the bullshit everyone had to put up with Microsoft changing to the ribbon (love it or hate it, you have to admit it had productivity and retraining costs), why on EARTH would they do this? I thought one advantage to open-source type stuff was we could leave well enough the fuck alone, and not fuck things up every quarter to push sales or brand awareness.
I remember when StarOffice became OpenOffice, which then became LibreOffice. Have they jumped the shark now too? If so, which fork will we be migrating to?
The new options are options, you can stick to the old way, and the new interface comes with a commitment to maintaining the old way as one of the 3 major interface methods in the long run.
to quote the post
"The MUFFIN (My User Friendly -- Flexible Interface) represents a new approach to UI design, based on the respect of user needs rather than on the imposition of a single UI to all users"
ie. you can have it both ways
Instead of adding new features (probably nobody wanted anyway), fix the bugs / features that you have. For years now, when typing a text document, the blinking icon where you are vanishes for no reason, it makes selecting text more difficult when you need to go back and add / delete / edit a word, or select chunks of text. If you're scrolling, then good luck finding where you are on the page without the missing blinker.
Secondly, Why does the page layout in writer STILL not show a dotted border for the boundary of the entire page / multi-column container? All you see is the corners - of no help at all.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
You really shouldn't talk about your daughter that way. It's quite inappropriate.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Apple has already proven that "look and feel" is something you can litigate over.
What's more important than icons being ugly, is the fact that they are actually clear in what they represent. I have seen more than enough user interfaces turn to interfeces because the icons were beautiful, but hard to understand.
Wow, I can't believe all the negative comments on here. Did any of you actually read TFA? How is this news anything to be negative or cynical about? More UI options + you can still use it the old way = win/win.
I remember where things are on the menu. The Ribbon is "responsive", meaning that in MS Office, I routinely spend 10 seconds looking for icons which have been collapsed because I resized my window.
The ribbon is visually oriented. It's trivial for me to find "Format/Table", even to see that when I hit alt-f, I can see the shortcut key to bring down that menu item. The ribbon? the table-tab appears and some little grid icon which may or may not have text shows up, unless your display is too small, then there's some little arrow to get a drop-down which shows you a bigger array of icons. In the end, you find the stupid grid icon, if visually, you know what you're looking for and what it might mean, it still gives you no clue what the keyboard shortcut is. You just have to get used to mousing and looking away at your screen rather than using your keyboard.
MUFFIN (My User Friendly -- Flexible Interface)
Hah. My ex called hers that as well.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm not sure that applies to hillary's muffin.
Although I run Linux on the server, I use a Mac for the desktop. And LibreOffice really looks it of sorts there. I hope they took the opportunity to make it look nice as well as functional.
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We should reinvent more user interfaces over and over.
How about a new keyboard layout with every new computer?
The ribbon was the ONE reason I gave up on Office for good and took on OpenOffice and then LibreOffice. A set of menus and buttons without order that changes depending on what you are currently doing, so it's impossible to have a memory of it, yeah, what a great user interface advancement, right ! And it takes up a lot of real estate too, instead of being nicely tucked away in hierarchical menus with quick alt-keys...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The MUFFIN (My User Friendly -- Flexible Interface) represents a new approach to UI design, based on the respect of user needs rather than on the imposition of a single UI to all users
Where have I heard this before? Oh that's right, that was the same justification that brought us the ribbon design. Hide the elements not used by a user from the user until they need it and then have it pop up context sensitive.
Oh and this new design is DA BOMB so we should impose this new UI that respects the user on all users.
Not only do we have content with commercial usability "experts" re-arranging both websites and applications at random to "help" their users (translated: cancelling years of accumulated knowledge on how the older interfaces worked & replacing them with newer interfaces that do the same thing... but in a different way, congratulation!) ... now even the relative safe haven of Libre Office are going full Gnome wars on us and re-arranging everything instead of making their software fast and stable.
Side rant: recently tried Word 6.0 from 1993 - it fits in at about 9MB before install and has full support for modern fonts (thanks TTFs), charts, pie-charts, tables, auto-spelling control, etc. and ran fine on Win7... what exactly has been improved over the last 24 years?! Embedding of huge scripting languages so that modern Office packages need constant security updates alongside with obscene random changes in the document structures to help us all understand the necessity of upgrading to the latest and greatest. Plus of course loads of "improvements" (i.e. pointless reshuffling) of the UI. Honestly. Something is not right with how software (OSS or otherwise) is being written these days.
Users will be able to choose from several toolbar configurations including the "Notebook bar" which is similar to Microsoft Office's ribbon. According to TDF, "The MUFFIN (My User Friendly -- Flexible Interface) represents a new approach to UI design, based on the respect of user needs rather than on the imposition of a single UI to all users"
This is how it should be. The only correct UI choice is the choice that is most flexible[1] and user-configurable (ideally through a scripting language of some sort, though I've no idea if this is how they're doing it.) This has a nice side effect of (at least theoretically) forcing them to keep their own code as modular and clean as possible in order to easily support multiple layouts.
Stop screaming at them to not touch the UI. This is the one change that everyone here should be clamoring for... provided one of the options given is to duplicate the old UI.
1. It's worth noting that Apple, Microsoft, GNOME and many other projects/companies explicitly reject this approach and instead assume that they must heard and train stupid users to follow The One True Way. There's a grain of logic to this, but in practice they simply end up with a bunch of attention grabbing glitter welded to tablet-inspired emu shit.
tl;dr "Gosh. The marketing guys segment their demographics by generation, and they told us each generation needs their own UI. Here's a graph to back that up. No, we don't know what each generation's needs are, but by golly, look at these graphs! Four generations! Also, we've noticed that you wacky users actually have all sorts of different screen sizes. Who knew? So to accommodate everyone we give you two traditional toolbar layouts, one vertical layout, and our very own innovative new 'Notebook Bar'. (Any resemblance to the 'ribbon' used by the Leading Brand of Office Suite is purely a coincidience, we assure you.)"
BTW, what's with the ugly dithered 16-color indexed screenshots? Is that really the best way to introduce people to your fancy new UI?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
You really shouldn't talk to the president that way, it's quite inappropriate.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
I want to be able to tune the interface so that I become more productive.
Alas, that what was I expected from Microsoft. You know, since they claim they're attentive to clients wishes, that they're a Marketing company, that Windows is easier... but no, no choice for you. The Ribbon is better. Period.
Never mind that nobody ever produced a logical explanation of why it is better, but, hey, we're better than Libreoffice which looks old.
Now, if Libreoffice gets a similar "useful" interface, at least we can stop hearing about that very (and I mean actually VERY) shitty thing called Ribbon and perhaps Microsoft starts offering the classical interface again.
If we pay for a new version, of course. :-\
(When I say "we" I mean the wise people at work who decide that we must have Office, because Libreoffice is good enough for me at home).
I'm sick to death of new software versions throwing out well-recognised icon designs such that I now have to think every time I want to go and click on Open or Save or whatever. Open is a yellow folder, and that's just not negotiable. Why is there a war on colour these days? People use colour to help find things. Some idiot at Microsoft has decided to change the decades-old icon to run a query in the view designer in SQL Server Management Studio. It's no longer a burgundy exclamation mark icon, it's some nondescript grid with a green triangle, that looks like all the other black and green icons nearby. I now have to study the toolbar carefully to identify the correct icon. Whoever decides these things should be shown the door!
For one, the Ribbon's grouping is too arbitrary. Second, it wastes a lot of space. Third it's too crammed to easily read.
I'd rather see have the prior-style tool-bar which is customizable (add/remove icons) and has a pop-up dialog option similar to the ribbon sections, but better spaced. (Ribbon-sections are like overly-stuffed dialog boxes/menus.)
For example, the toolbar may resemble:
File: A B C | Im/Export: D E | View: F G H I | Layout: J K ...
The capital letters represent icons.
Each label (or icon with a label), such as "View" will open up a dialog box that has gizmos similar to MS's Ribbon, but with better spacing and labeling.
All the letters represent icons that can be added or removed as needed, as was typical in the older style tool-bars, perhaps even with ability for options (icons) to run custom scripts.
Table-ized A.I.
My girl's muffin is user friendly, flexible and inflatable, thank you very much.
FTFY
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
What they're doing is the opposite of what I'd like to see. I'd simplify and unify, give it a single clean look, something with a "90s feel", a la ClarisWorks.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Google Docs and Office 365 work great.
LibreOffice still cannot open up MS Office documents correctly. Maybe focus on actually working well instead of mucking around with the UI.
Well if they go to the ribbon style interface - I won't be upgrading.... Now if they are SMART - they will give the user the OPTION to use the ribbon interface or NOT use it.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
But he was a muffin.
Seriously, when was the last time you watched a LibreOffice youtube demo? Or read the word processor documentation? Most technical people assume that things should make sense, and try to figure it out on their own; the documentation is just the last resort. Most non-technical people try asking technical people.
Re-designing a perfectly usable GUI is what developers do when they don't have the patience to work on the important things. I know because I've done it myself in my younger days. It's kind of like re-painting your house when what really needs to be fixed is the leaking roof. It provides a visible distraction to take your mind off the thing you don't want to think about.
Next up: The MuffinTop UI!
It has love handles to give you a handle. On your computing. Or something.
Right. Just like the hammer has left the screwdriver behind.
You must be an MCSE.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."