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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.
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.
>>> 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?)
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.
My main issue with ribbons is how much screen real estate they require. Your document is what's important, not the UI glam.
And they don't really do anything a menu can't do. Heck, most of them even cascade into menus anyhow, because you can't fit what you need on the already oversized ribbon.
And some things in the toolbars are just broken. Example: If I use an embedded picker in the toolbar, I expect the scroll wheel to choose items in the picker, like it does for every other picker, and not change the entire toolbar on me because the picker happened to be embedded.
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 can never find things in Outlook, Word or Excel 2010. The old style drop-down menus make it much easier to find what I want.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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 ?