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thumbarger
Posts:156
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| 12/07/2007 7:08 PM |
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Here is a discussion thread from Design of Software that I thought was interesting to share with Catalyze - and to see if there were anyone with an agreeing or contrary opinion.
INITIAL POST
I'm curious to know if anyone has implemented the new Microsoft Ribbon UI look in an application. In particular, how has your user base responded to the new look?
Grinder  
Monday, December 03, 2007
REPLIES
Yes. We've implemented it in one application. Beta users are confused by it. One of the devs wanted to do it (ooh shiny!) and the phb approved it without knowing what it looks like. It is too late to yank it out and replace it with a normal UI, and I have been (dis)appointed to be in charge of MS license compliance for the ribbon.
Peter
Monday, December 03, 2007
I've been told by various people that use Office 2007 that the ribbon grows on you. Regardless, I assume that as more people become familiar with this UI widget the more usable it will become to the masses. BTW you'll be happy to learn that with Visual Studio 2008 you'll be able to create a ribbon using good ol' MFC: http://ericomguy.blogspot.com/2007/11/mfc-back-to-future.html
"I've been told by various people that use Office 2007 that the ribbon grows on you."
Well, I've been using Office 2007 for a few months now and I still hate it. I really have no idea what Microsoft was thinking - what exactly was wrong with normal toolbars?
Arethuza
Monday, December 03, 2007
The Ribbon is great, if you use it right. If you just s/toolbar/ribbon/gi, it the ribbon will suck big time.
Office 2007 reworked the entire hierarchy to fit the new afforances provided by the ribbon. Everything you can change in a document is right there in front of your face now. Better "right there" is mostly pictures, not text. Better still is when you hover most options, Office will temporarily update the document with the new look.
Basically, dont s/toolbar/ribbon/. Play around with Office 2007 before you judge. Those of you who are cynical will have to say "I'm learning a new language, things are different and I don't know if it is good or bad. I promise I will not curse". Kinda like when I learned the Mac - I promised myself I would not curse and go with the flow :-)
I must say, I love the Ribbon. I've been using Office 2007 for many months now, and I dread going to client sites where they still have Office 95 (not really, but it feels like it).
I have implemented a Ribbon-style UI on one major project so far, and it has been well received. These are people who don't know what Office 2007 is (they'll probably get that in 2015), so it was interesting to drop it in there and see how they use it, with no previous exposure to such a UI.
I think it has been a success. It is great that you can give emphasis (through size/style of widget) to some important features, and down-play others.
It was not hard too implement in HTML/JavaScript/CSS. I know there are libraries available now, but at the time it wasn't the case. I'm happy that I did it myself, as it allowed me to build in hooks specific to my application.
Entries of Confusion
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Sorry - as a long time user of Word (even before the Windows version - I've even used Word on SCO Xenix) I do think the ribbon is one of the more misguided user interface changes I've seen.
It's not like I am alone - 95% of MS Office users I know hate the new interface.
Arethuza
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Do you know 100 users of Office then?
>It's not like I am alone - 95% of MS Office users I know hate the new interface.
Of course they do. Users hate change.
Troels Knak-Nielsen
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Sounds like mixed reviews. At this point it might be more helpful to Grinder elaborate why users feel the way they feel, especially for users that don't like it.
- Is it just a matter of learning something new, but then it's worth the benefits?
- Is there a flaw in MS's implementation that Grinder can avoid in his/her own app?
- Is it something fundamentally wrong with it?
The ribbon has its place. I like it and have found many features in Word/Excel that I never new existed.
However, it should only be used when there are 100's of menu/toolbar items and the application is context based, e.g. you expect to do different things with a picture highlighted compared to a table.
One of the worst examples I seen of a complete mis-use of the concept is here:
http://www.devcomponents.com/dotnetbar/ApplicationGallery/rikware/MainForm.png
There is no justification for it here other than the developer thought it was 'kewl' Adrian
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
"Of course they do. Users hate change."
Users hate change for the sake of change. Count me among them.
All this talk (not here, but elsewhere) about "innovation" and the Ribbon is ridiculous. Handheld email readers are innovation. MP3 players are innovation. Computers so cheap you can have one on your desk is innovation. But flashy little UI widgets aren't innovation, they are just someone trying to squeeze a few extra dollars out of a tired old product.
Greg
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Outlook 2007 uses the standard toolbar
nessuno
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
What is so wrong about making something look nice? The ribbon looks nice and takes advantage of modern computers with modern resolutions. Best of all you can do really slick usability enhancing tricks that would be very difficult with the the old school toolbar.
Who cares though, right? I mean Windows 95 was just eye candy ontop of Windows 3.11 which is just OS2 with more eye candy, right?
Perhaps we should all just use green screen consoles? I mean, GUI? 3d rendering on the desktop? You call that innovation? Innovation is a cure for aids, even though clearly that isn't even innovation at all, after all it is just some modified variant of ?
I mean, what is the point of all those fancy digital controls on our microwave when the old mechanical timer worked just fine, right? I mean, where is the innovation with the "popcorn button", it is just a stupid button. Plus, the microwave isn't innovation at all, it is just some rip off of the toaster oven! Next thing you know, they'll create things that are incompatible with my 30 year old toaster oven and require a microwave to cook. A communist plot, really. Bastards! Why should I throw away my perfectly good toaster oven for a microwave??
Give me a break. Live in a cave. The future is Vista and the Ribbon. Either cope or find yourself obsolete. Whining only speeds up the process where you become unemployable.
... But yes. The ribbon (and Vista) is a change. You know what else is a change? Remember when the US changed the look of their $20's. Oh my, even I thought they were ugly at first. Now look at how dated the old $20's seem.
I like the ribbon too. If Microsoft writes defensive patents on it we'll just take dusty copies of Broderbund Print Shop for DOS and throw it at their lawyers/researchers and laugh. Someone should just clean-room it so that at opportune times it can be leveraged in web and desktop apps by ISVs.
Li-fan Chen 
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
"Remember when the US changed the look of their $20's..."
I like that example. I think I'll start using it if you don't mind.  Johnny Bravado
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
"Give me a break. Live in a cave. The future is Vista and the Ribbon."
Great Scott!! You can tell the future?
All joking aside...perhaps someone could dislike the Ribbon for reasons other than them being resistant to change? I mean, a lot of people genuinely dislike it due to the screen real estate that it takes up among other reasons.
Anyway, you can never tell in this industry...things change so rapidly. Everybody could be using Firefox 6 and Open Office 5 or Google Office Everywhere(beta) in 7 more years.
Wayne Bloss
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
"The future is Vista and the Ribbon. Either cope or find yourself obsolete. Whining only speeds up the process where you become unemployable."
Perhaps if I was in a position where I wrote applications rather than buying them then I'd take this view too.
From the point of view of someone who has to consider rolling out applications to close on to ten thousand desktops globally then the step change in the Office user interface looks like a bad idea.
Actually, the whole Vista & Office 2007 has made us seriously consider other platforms such as Macintosh or Linux. Not that I'm saying that we will move but at least alternatives are being looked at - which typically never happened before.
Arethuza
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
People say "user hate change" as though this hatred is somehow irrational. Speaking as someone who has been using Word and Excel since version 6.0 there is a reason why I still feel frustrated and annoyed by the ribbon. After all these years of using the products I knew how to get them to do the things I needed to do: insert a cross-reference, create a header or footer, define a pivot table blah, blah, blah.
Now I find that in order to do something I could previously do without thinking I have to stop, break out of my flow of concentration and try to guess where Microsoft has decided to move the relevent function to. It might only be a small annpyance but it is a persistent one and one for which there is no commensurate benefit.
Sure the ribbon might suddenly reveal a whole bunch of functions but you know what? There're not things I want to use. They're just distractions and annoyances. They're just thiings I have to get past when I'm looking for soemthing else.
GrumpOldGit
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
I can certainly relate with other comments about moving from older Office applications to Office 2007 and the Ribbon UI. I initally had problems finding things in Access 2007 and cursed it to death under my breath. After some use I did come around and I now prefer the UI, but the initial change was indeed tough.
My situation is different, since this is a brand new application with no backward compatibility issues. I may lose a few early sales, but I think that implementing the UI now will help eliminate a big UI change in version 2 or beyond.
Grinder
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
"Actually, the whole Vista & Office 2007 has made us seriously consider other platforms such as Macintosh or Linux."
Yeah, good luck with that. If you think that you are going to enjoy managing 10,000 Linux desktops you're crazy.
Just another case of bending over dollars to pick up pennies. Your support costs go up slightly because people are just getting used to a new OS. An OS that ultimately will save you tons of money over the long term with better security and manageability and you start considering jumping ship. And to what? Something that will be a COMPLETE change with endless support calls and upgrade costs. If you think that Vista and the ribbon is confusing to users wait until you throw Linux in front of them. Does that make sense in the least?
So go ahead and consider alternatives. But in the end you'll find that the minor changes in Vista and Office are trivial and this small bump in support costs will pass. And your long term support costs will drop. I seriously doubt that you will find any good business reason to make the switch.
anon
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Haha... move to Linux. That is the answer.
Most Linux GUI's steal all their desktop "innovation" straight from Microsoft. After "it is done when we say it is done," you'll open up your copy of Open Office and look mom! It's The Ribbon!
But go ahead. Hate on the ribbon.
PS: Hate aside... How would the ribbon work in Visual Studio? I was slightly surprised not to see it in 2008, but I really cannot see it working in that kind of application. It seems the Ribbon works best in applications where you make a lot of visual changes to documents.
I hate Vista. I hate the new Office UI. I hate Gnome and KDE. I've switched back from Vista to XP (Win2000 style) and I love the sheer speed of it. And I love not being constantly asked for approvement by some dumb dialog.
At my workplace we're equipping trucks with old IBM T30 Thinkpads running Win2000. What a great UI experience Win2000 is compared to all the other crap that is out there...(well, maybe except OSX, have no real life experience with that none).
MS, please bring that those LEAN_AND_MEAN programmers!
fritz
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Ribbon in Visual Studio would be kind of... hrm... odd. I was going to post that same question, but after thinking about it a few minutes I just decided that Microsoft would not do anything so damning as to put a ribbon bar in the Visual Studio IDE.
There are some things that can't be easily lumped into a ribbon control, like the Refactoring menu - among other things.
Nate
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Deleting … Approving …
If Detroit did the same thing to cars that Microsoft did to the Office interface, would you want to drive for the next 5 years?
Jess Dinkin
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Deleting … Approving …
"And I love not being constantly asked for approvement by some dumb dialog."
Fritz, you might want to spend some time in the following thread. You might learn something:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.571026.4
Pay special attention to the following point:
"If you are being inundated by Vista UAC popups then the problem is YOU. You are doing something fundamentally wrong. With normal usage you should NOT be bombarded by UAC prompts since this indicates that you are attempting to perform a privileged action."
As for the fact that you've "switched back from Vista to XP (Win2000 style) and love the sheer speed of it", I guarantee that you were one of the detractors when XP originally came out. You probably called it "eye candy" and talked about how crappy and slow it was just like you do today with Vista. And you probably did the same thing with Win2000. So my point is that you quickly become accustomed to these new things and quite attached to them as well. In time you will speak about Vista the same way you do XP or Win2000. And that's the whole point. Users will always bitch initially. But eventually they learn to really like the changes and recognize that progress has indeed been made. If not, we'd all still be running DOS. anon
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Deleting … Approving …
"Ribbon in Visual Studio would be kind of... hrm... odd. I was going to post that same question, but after thinking about it a few minutes I just decided that Microsoft would not do anything so damning as to put a ribbon bar in the Visual Studio IDE."
It certainly would. I did notice that InstallAware 7 uses it though, and that seems to work pretty well. Visual Studio is a way more complex beast, though.
Like many others, I was sceptical of the Ribbon UI at first. Havign used it for a while I can say that it gre on me, although the change in shortcuts was annoying to say the least.
That said, the decision not to provide a compitability mode (primarily for companies who would otherwise have to retrain their staff) seems quite frankly astonishing (verging on commercially suicidal) to me.
Damn typos. Where's the "Edit Post" button again?
Deleting … Approving …
Well, to summarize the comments here, it sounds like the main criticism of the Ribbon is learning the new locations for some commands, which Grinder says won’t be an issue for his app. The real question is will the Ribbon be better than a traditional pulldown/toolbar when users have no prior experience with the app?
To get closer to an answer there, it’s worth noting that the Ribbon was developed to solve a problem specific to MS Office. Details can be found on Jensen Harris’s blog ( http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx), but the problem was users could not find advanced features in Office. In early versions of Office, the pulldown/toolbar worked brilliantly, but then they added hundreds of new features, and many features were poorly placed in the menus/toolbars, and then they tried to fix it with things like cascade menus, adaptive menus, and task panes, but that just made it worse, so they decided to scrap the whole thing.
Based on that, I would go with Adrian's suggestion above: if your app is closer to Word 2.0 (about 100 menu items, and one or two simple toolbars), you’re better off with a pulldown/toolbar. If you have (or anticipate having in a later release) several hundred commands, and you can't avoid the pitfalls Office had in organizing them, then a Ribbon may be a safer bet.
One way to think of the Ribbon is as a mechanism to provide a separate pulldown/toolbar set for each major task –that’s how it solves the problem of organizing 100’s of commands. Key to keeping it efficient is the ability to divide your commands into separate tasks –you don’t want your users thrashing between two tabs every other command, something Harris (and Adrian) warns about. You'll probably find that, like for Office, some of your commands span multiple major tasks (e.g,. cut, copy, paste, undo). If so, you shouldn't implement a Ribbon unless you're also implementing a Minibar and/or a Quick Access Toolbar, as done in Office. Deleting … Approving …
Indeed, I noticed it in Installer Aware as well. It works pretty well in their application.
Visual Studio would probably require a complete overhaul of their interface to integrate the Ribbon. Honestly, I think Visual Studio is getting due for an overhaul anyway. Somebody needs to figure out how to get Visual Studio to support dual monitors in a more elegant fashion. Every developer on earth has at least dual monitors and no application is really designed to take advantage of it.
I think Office doesn't have backward compatibility because the difference between 2003 and 2007 doesn't allow it. You'd basically have two separate application stacks in a single application. One would have to support a toolbar & menu model and the other would have a ribbon. How would it even work? I'm sure the Office dudes had huge debates about making the clean break that they did. It wasn't easy to pull off the Ribbon.
Visual Studio supports Dual Monitor just fine for the way I work: I put all the tool windows on my 2ndary monitor so i can get a full screen of code/designer on my primary monitor.
The only option that they need is to allow me to save this setup so when I switch between dual and single monitor I don't have to drag my tool windows all over the place. There is a plugin for this, but it's total crap (VsWindowManager).
Wayne Bloss
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Deleting … Approving …
anon
Thursday, December 06, 2007
I do the same, but you have to admit it just feels like you are going against the grain of the application.
I have no idea how to fix this though...
I will admit no such thing! =P
The tool windows are draggable. I can drag a windows to a different monitor. I don't see how that goes against the grain of anything.
Wayne Bloss
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Deleting … Approving …
"If Detroit did the same thing to cars that Microsoft did to the Office interface, would you want to drive for the next 5 years?"
Nice example when GM and Ford are desperately trying to stay afloat whilst Toyota whip them like a red-headed stepchild. The cause of their woes? GM and Ford kept doing the same old thing over and over whilst Toyota innovated.
Paul Brown
Friday, December 07, 2007
I think that's a tenuous point Paul, because Toyotas still have the same basic control layout as other cars.
John Topley
Friday, December 07, 2007 |
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john pimentel
Posts:11
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| 12/10/2007 4:25 PM |
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We are using it for a major web application.
Flattened menus and easy obviously selectable mouse target..............good.
Obscure, not so obviously selectable icon in top left corner with hidden functions under it...............not so good.
I like that the area surrounding the icon and icon label change color to let the user know what option they are hovering over and are about to select. It also makes a larger selectable area which can only help considering not everyone is proficient with the mouse. And who should have to spend the extra time finding a small selectable spot anyway.
For me, all too often I click on a "tab" and the tab is not really selectable. Only the text label w/in the tab is selectable. So, even if only selecting the text will perform the action, at least you've visually "told" the user what they have selected by changing color when they hit the spot. Simply underlining the text is a poor substitute, as small text and short words may not really even appear different. That is probably slightly off topic, but I was speaking to the obvious change to indicate to the user you are in target range for selecting the action. And again, the "target" is bigger. A plus!
I also like the focus on flattened menus and NOT repeating menu items.
Using Office 2007 myself, I am finding it hard to locate some things, but considering I could NEVER remember most options that were more than two menus deep, I am probably having an easier time than users who CAN actually remember where those menus items were.
We didn't try to implement a large indecipherable icon in the upper left corner with hidden functionality behind it (snicker snicker). We are just using the icon functionality and flattened menus, which again, I think are the strength of the new ribbon.
Everyone who has seen or tested our new application is fine with the ribbon. Most are complaining because it's a change, not because of how it looks or behaves.
As far as "Vista being the future..." goes, I would hope "better usability" would be the future.
Vista has its advantages, but before you drink the Vista coolaid, take a look at the login screen. Enter your User ID, but DON'T select the big button below the User ID text box. Select the unlabeled right arrow to log in. I have to FORCE myself NOT to select the big button every time I log into my son's PC to admin something. I realize the big button says "Switch User," but we all know users don't tend to read stuff. AND we shouldn't make them. The inclination is to his the big button. I'm not immune I guess.
I'm pretty sure Toyota hasn't implemented the new Microsoft Ribbon in any of their vehicles (hee hee hee). Toyota is whipping Detroit because the vehicles are reliable. Not very sexy stuff, I'm sure. |
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RWSTARINSKY
Posts:1
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| 12/27/2007 11:38 AM |
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The ribbon interface has not been well received in the circles that I travel (mostly smaller businesses). One of my clients elected to buy up as many additional copies of Office 2003 as they could find locally as shelfware to anticipate future users. For another cilent I found a free plug-in that essentially uses the programmable aspects of the ribbon to replace itdself with an Office 2003 style drop-down interface.
The ribbon interface is so fundamentally different from the tried and true drop-down that has become an industry standard that it requires a mindset change. The ribbon requires relearning how you interact with the software and therefore places a significantly high cost on productivity until such relearning occurs. |
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nehamodgil
Posts:1
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| 01/05/2008 9:47 AM |
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| I have been working on making powerpoint wireframes for quite sometime now...With the ribbon, I am completely stuck...my productivity has dipped down and I spend half my day finding where the function is hidden. Getting into details, I really find it hard to crop pics in ppt...its a 3 step process(choose pic > go to pic tools > select crop function)...earlier it was only a click away...its quite a menace if you ask me!!! |
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john pimentel
Posts:11
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| 01/07/2008 8:33 AM |
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Are you saying it is a menace in trying to document requirements? This sounds more like it's an issue with the tool than the ribbon.
I have had little trouble documenting the ribbon in iRise 5. With the increased functionality in version 6, I expect to be able to fully simulate the hover behavior. The better your tools, the easier the job. I am not trying to sell iRise, or the ribbon.
I have never looked at ease of documenting, or presenting a requirement very relevant to whether or not we should implement a solution. The relevance of the solution in solving the problem seems to me to be far more important.
If it takes too long to show this in Powerpoint, perhaps you could stop trying to do so? I don't pretent to know your environment, just thinking that perhaps this hammer will no longer tighten the nuts you need to tighten.
Is the ribbon providing a good user experience? Is it facilitating use of the application? How are users receiving it? |
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