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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 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?)
Dear Developers: Do whatever the fuck you want with your own time. Don't worry about bugs and features unless they are important to YOU. Do what you love—that's what developing open source software is all about. Until the whiners get off their ass and pay you to work on their token issue, ignore them. Most importantly: THANK YOU!
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.
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
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
I *STILL* fucking hate the "ribbon" interface....I just can't find shit nearly as easy as I used to in MS Office products.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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 ?
You really shouldn't talk to the president that way, it's quite inappropriate.
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