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Comment by slyfox125 | Hacker News Reader

It looks great using Plasma. If the comparison and "problem" is the lack of a "ribbon" menu, etc., then you are missing the whole point of Office alternatives: they are free, open source, but most importantly, they are usable. That is, they do not eschew usability and function for the sake of change, pure aesthetics, or a company's latest foray into some new gimmick.

Ultimately, the "classic" approach taken is because many users feel that the classic style is more usable and makes them more productive irrespective of their learned habits of the past 20-30 years.

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LibreOffice also has a ribbon toolbars mode, it's 5 seconds to switch if you prefer it under View > User interface.

Microsoft did usability studies on real people to determine the ribbon interface is better. This is back in the days when software companies cared about objectively verifiable results.

Only no, it’s not and everyone reviled it when it came out but we’ve been stuck with it ever since.

MS may have done usability studies earlier (say, when they cared about dethroning Lotus 123 and WordPerfect) but that war was long won when the ribbon UI came out, by then they only cared about milking the cash cow.

No, they did not (or if they did, they didn't publish it). If I'm wrong, please give me some links because I'd genuinely love to see it.

Microsoft did those usability studies on the versions of Office that were current before the ribbon. The ribbon followed those studies as their attempt at a solution.

A few times over the years I've tried to search for usability studies of the ribbon interface because I've never got on with it myself. I find plenty of others asking the same thing online, and everybody points them to those same earlier studies from before the ribbon, while wrongly telling them it's a study of the ribbon.

Those studies are unable to tell us whether or not MS's attempt at a solution actually fixed the problems.

I believe the ribbon was a downgrade in usability terms (but people expect it in office suites, purely because it's seen as looking more modern). And I'd love to see real intensive research to tell me whether my belief is right or wrong.

The studies I can't point you to, but there were lots of blogs by the lead Office UX person at the time, Jensen Harris.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jensenh/

Unfortunately those blog entries have been destroyed because the images are no longer there.

I read all of them, they were at least 6-7 and quite detailed and I remember thinking that the thought process behind the ribbon was very solid.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jensenh/the-...

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jensenh/ye-o...

etc - you can find all of them there plus many other related blog entries.

Yeah, that's exactly it - there were all those history blogposts, full of very interesting stuff, but all about before the ribbon was in active use. (Pity about the image rot.) No usability studies of the ribbon itself.

Parts of those blog posts were unintentionally revealing of the groupthink of an enclosed bubble of people who couldn't see the wood for the trees. A great example is this piece about moving menu entries around so you couldn't build muscle memory, and had to take the time to look for what you wanted:

> First, remember that we're analyzing this with 20/20 hindsight... there was a lot of excitement (not just at Microsoft) about "auto-customization"... to present exactly the right UI for the person at hand. Now, it's easy to say that today people are generally against this idea... but we know that mainly through trying... the adaptive UI in Office 2000

As I recall it, the vast majority at the time - users, reviewers, UI/UX writers - considered its downsides to be completely obvious and were firmly against it. Its designers were apparently the only ones who needed 20/20 hindsight to see that.

> I remember thinking that the thought process behind the ribbon was very solid

I agree, the historical research, and the work on identifying the problems, was very solid. But the massive criticisms of the ribbon suggest it was not an entirely successful attempt at a solution.

I've seen it said that there's no way Microsoft would have neglected to carry out major usability studies on such a major UI change, and that the fact that nothing's been published, after all the blogposts and talks beforehand, suggests they chose to bury a bad result. No idea whether there's any truth in that of course, but it does sound plausible.

As a techie with no horse in this race I've always found the ribbon very usable. It has a layered shortcut system that is much logical than the legacy one, it still supports the legacy shortcuts (Alt-d, f, f forever!) and the number of commands now easily accessible for sure is higher than with the old menus.

It looks awful and undiscoverable on a standard Mint/Cinnamon install.

Anyway, the point is surely that if LibreOffice really wants to attract users from Microsoft Office, then it should do everything possible to optimise that transition?

Offering the option of a UI mimicking the familiar MS Office layout is not a difficult engineering problem. And if it makes users significantly more likely to switch, it should be a high priority to implement.

Honestly, at this stage, thinking of Gimp, FreeCAD, LibreOffice, and Blender, it’s as though there’s a weird group psychology deliberately against offering even decent (let along best-in-class) UIs in the open source world. These are all apps with excellent fundamental underlying engines/tech which are handicapped hugely by their UI/UX. (Yes I know some of these have improved in recent years, but only after far longer without improvements.)

>Offering the option of a UI mimicking the familiar MS Office layout is not a difficult engineering problem. And if it makes users significantly more likely to switch, it should be a high priority to implement.

It's already there. It really feels like such criticisms are from people who haven't used it in 10+ years.

Well, if that's the case, I take (that part of) it back and I'll fire up Mint later to explore. Thanks. It wasn't an obvious option when I tried LibreOffice a few weeks ago, but maybe I should have explored further.

My experience is less than two years old. I have the impression that those who defend it have a UI taste that is stuck in the 2000s. The same people who also point at UIs that are barely usable and ugly from a modern perspective like Windows 2000 and say "this was the pinnacle of UI".

The "Notebookbar" ribbon interface has been there since 2017, and was available even in Debian Stable since 2019.

It's not quite identical to MSOffice due to Microsoft's patents, but is pretty close. Perhaps you just didn't spot it in the UI preferences?

> UI taste that is stuck in the 2000s

> UIs that are barely usable... like Windows 2000

Words fail me.

Perhaps it's that well-known psychological effect where people self-report higher productivity when using an interface they find more visually appealing, whereas studying them proves the opposite is true.

Just a few examples of what makes Windows 2000 barely usable for me (and pretty much anyone who grew up with later UIs):

No central place to search for software, files, or settings. You have to dig through layers of menu trees like an idiot.

No visual preview to find the right open window. You have to alt-tab through a list of windows like an idiot.

No way of separating windows into work spaces / desktops (whatever you might call them). You have to either constantly kill windows or work your way through layers of them. The point above doesn't help with that.

This one has less to do with Windows 2000 but was part of the state of the art of the time for software: Walls of icons and buttons and not even a way to group them. Sometimes the entire window is just one wall of tiles sometimes there's the tool bar of doom at the top.

On top of lacking usability, Windows 2000 is ugly. Mostly because all main UI elements like buttons are visually thrust into your face by faux 3d elevation. This had it's place at the time when most of your users would not have had experience with computer UIs in the first place. With those users UI designers back then felt they needed to overemphasize visual cues from the real world. Nowadays you can show the user just a box or something that looks like a link (because people are used to browsers now). Maybe give a cue by changing the emphasis on hover.

The other reason that comes to mind why Windows 2000 is so ugly is colors. Again, this is due to its time and the capabilities of graphics cards back then that mostly didn't allow more subtle color differences.

I'm just using Windows 2000 as pars pro toto here. Pretty much all graphical UIs back then were lacking modern usability features and UI sensibilities, regardless of OS.

> Perhaps it's that well-known psychological effect where people self-report higher productivity when using an interface they find more visually appealing, whereas studying them proves the opposite is true.

You have your slightly condescending explanation for why we disagree and I have mine. Let me give you a hint quoting Douglas Adams:

"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

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