Other Software > Developer's Corner
Ribbon UI - is it really THAT good?
phitsc:
Also don't forget that the ribbon is more than just a menu / toolbar replacement, e.g. the Galleries are a new concept, which I think is very powerful.
-phitsc (December 01, 2011, 11:14 AM)
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Yes, the part where you hover the mouse over a font or style selector and the text in your document temporarily assumes that style - that part is awesome. But although it came together with the ribbon, it does not require one. You could just easily have that kind of "live preview" with a menu or a toolbar.
-tranglos (December 01, 2011, 02:15 PM)
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But it's not only the preview when hovering over it, it's also the mini-preview of the style which the ribbon itself is already giving you. And that needs some space.
On the other hand, Office 2007 had these tiny semi-buttons:
(see attachment in previous post)
I wonder how many people ever figured out you can click those. I personally know a few who never have. And these are pretty important buttons - you can't get to Font or Paragraph properties without those. Why not allow users to click the whole lower bar where the "Font" and "Paragraph" labels are? Now that would be intuitive and easy to click. Seems like no-one at Microsoft has ever read Joel Spolsky's essay on affordances - or they have read it and decided to do the opposite out of spite.
And although you can navigate to these tiny thingamajigs with the Tab key, try doing that in Word 2007, it takes at least twice as many keypresses as Alt+F (Open Format menu) and three or four Down Arrow (to navigate to "Paragraph..." or "Font..") used to take. And really, even if you see them, there is no indication of what they do. They seem to still be there in Office 2010.
-tranglos (December 01, 2011, 02:15 PM)
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And that is exactly what I meant with "learning and understanding its concepts". To be honest, I did not notice that tiny arrow myself until I read about it. And as you say, that knowledge is essential when working with ribbons. So I agree, ribbons are not perfect yet. But nevertheless I think they are an improvement over menu / toolbar for Word and Excel.
Josh:
If 80 pixels is a big deal, why not hide the UI automatically? You can set it to auto-appear only on hover or when the ALT key is pressed. This actually takes up less real estate than the standard menu system with toolbars.
JavaJones:
At the end of the day there is 1 and only 1 and exactly 1 consideration that matters: What will make life easier for the people that use the software? Nothing else matters beyond that. Nothing. If a ribbon fits that, then so be it. If not, then that's the answer.
-Renegade (December 01, 2011, 11:05 AM)
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I heartily agree. Now, how can you figure out which is right for a given user base? Polling and surveys? Test groups? Guesses? Extrapolations? Assumptions? Going through the work of creating 2 versions and see which is downloaded or "liked"/+1 more?... I don't see any really good solutions.
I also thought I'd weigh-in with my Ribbon feedback. I personally don't like it, and after reading some feedback from others in this thread who feel similarly, I think I might have figured out why. At the risk of sounding like a braggart, I have always had a knack for learning software and finding things in UIs. More than an occasional "ah hah!" moment, as an IT person I have in fact had countless experiences in my life where someone who uses a piece of software daily comes to me with a question I don't know the answer to, and I am able to figure out how to do it in many cases just by a quick look at the app and menus, without further research.
Often times I think this results from just having a good sense, from seeing many app UIs, of what a developer might have named a particular function and the multiple "normal" (as well as "abnormal") places a dev might have put it. A good example is Options/Settings: first of all you have the two names right there, which both often mean the same thing; accessing options can often be done from a Tools menu, but can also be found under File, and even Edit at times, among other places. These things are not necessarily intuitive, but from a lot of experience with different apps, I've learned where to look and what to look for. Believe it or not this extends even to complicated industry-specific apps like Indesign, where I may need to look for a tool to make a shape editable, and it may be called "Convert object to spline" or something. It helps that I know what a "spline" is, for one thing, but even just the word "convert" gives me an initial tip-off that it might be close to what I want, since I know the basic idea of what the function I need should do.
Ok, I'm getting to my point, hehe. The issue I have with the ribbon is that, for me, it makes things *less* discoverable. I can see and agree with that for many basic, day-to-day uses, it's a faster and more fluid UI, perhaps more intuitive for the average user. But as currently implemented, I never get the sense that I am seeing all possible options, which is important if I'm looking for something that I don't know where to find. In general with a menu-driven app, if I look through all the menus I'll know pretty well that I have seen all the functions and if I don't find what I'm looking for, I will at least know that it's sensible to try to do more research, e.g. a web search. With a ribbon I never had that feeling that I have fully explored it, seen all the options, largely because it tries to be just a bit too "clever". Even if ribbons had a mode where you could force all options visible or something, it would be a big improvement. But I think a menu option alongside or instead of the ribbon is still valuable for advanced users or at least certain users, like myself.
As to the original question, if the only reason you're adding the ribbon is as a marketing tool, then I think you have to ask yourself whether your audience is more marketing-driven or functionality-driven. For small utility apps often the latter is the case. Also remember that you can often get a few users being very vocal and making a particular feature seem *very* important, when the reality is the vast majority of satisfied customers just don't see anything (because they're satisfied), so they are under-represented, but in fact represent a much more significant portion of your user base than the vocal minority. Something to think about. As a casual first-step into the consideration you might want to run a poll on your website or even do a mailing to your users, if you have an existing email relationship with them (e.g. regular newsletter send-out).
- Oshyan
Renegade:
Heheheh~!
Seems like my first comment about the ribbon/menu thing was right. It is a holy war~! ;D
If I may, would anyone mind if I interject with another possibility that will hopefully fuel the ever-burning fires of holiness? :P
The "Opera" or "Firefox" button or the Google wrench, or the IE gear...
Yet another way to work a menu that takes up minimal screen real estate. :D
I think it works well in a browser, though for most software, I doubt it would be an improvement, and most likely, a hindrance.
But whatever works seems good by me.
I think the only holy war I'd like to get into is with anyone who still thinks that the command line should be used for everything and by everyone. :P (Just kidding.)
phitsc:
If 80 pixels is a big deal, why not hide the UI automatically? You can set it to auto-appear only on hover or when the ALT key is pressed. This actually takes up less real estate than the standard menu system with toolbars.
-Josh (December 01, 2011, 04:42 PM)
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And I would not be surprised if the next version of Office would allow you to dock the ribbon to either side, and as such using horizontal instead of vertical space.
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