Hacker News Reader

Comment by qayxc | Hacker News Reader

It's a a double-edged sword really.

On the one hand it's a much more approachable and user-friendly design (especially the preview feature), on the other hand it blocks valuable screen real-estate; this is especially an issue ever since the 16:9 trend took over the mainstream laptop and monitor markets.

The issue most users had at the time (and some still do to this day) was that they felt it unnecessary and obtrusive. Personally, I welcomed the change since the old menus weren't as discoverable and obvious to me.

Since the shortcut keys stayed compatible (I think?) and the ribbons could (and still can) be hidden by default, I never really understood the bad reception of this feature by many (old-school & power-)users.

View on HN

I generally like the ribbon, the only thing that bothers me is the occasional little arrow in the lower right corner because it's kinda hard to spot.

I've never used MS Office for more than a few minutes at a time, but I always thought the ribbon was great design for discoverability. The part that seems like a fail to me is that it takes up a lot of vertical space and came out at a time when the screens many users had were getting shorter. A 14" 16:9 laptop needs every bit of vertical space optimized.

On a 9:16 or 10:16 portrait display, it would be perfect, but an element like that should probably be on the side for a newer laptop. A very quick google image search suggests that isn't a configuration option.

AFAIK, when collapsed the ribbon interface should take up no more vertical space than a conventional menu. This is mostly a user education issue -- I think if they shipped products where the ribbon was collapsed by default, people wouldn't get used to using it as quickly, but they also don't loudly call out the fact that it's collapsible, and maybe they should.

You can collapse the Ribbon, you know. Then it works similar to a standard menu and auto-closes after you click away. Just double-click a Ribbon tab, or click the expand/pin button on the right-hand side.

The problem I always had with it is that the little symbols are inscrutable, and mouse-over for a description is inconsistent. Because of this I found the ribbon far less discoverable than text based menus.

If you're referring to Microsoft Office, very few of the options are unlabeled. The only icon-only buttons are on the Home tab, and those are all frequently-used options. Most of them are obvious, and the ones that aren't are easily discoverable with ToolTips.

ToolTips also work very consistently. Hover, and a box appears, in most cases containing a full description and keyboard shortcut(s), and sometimes even helpful graphics.

I think you just don't like it because it's different to what you were used to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com