Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

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> I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon.

Well, yes, but that observation doesn't prove the point you think it does.

People who were highly experienced with previous non-ribbon versions of Office, disliked the ribbon, because the ribbon is essentially a "tutorial mode" for Office.

The ribbon reduces cognitive load on people unfamiliar with Office, by boiling down the use of Office apps to a set of primary user-stories (these becoming the app's ribbon's tabs), and then preferentially exposing the most-commonly-desired features one might want to engage with during each of these user stories, as bigger, friendlier, more self-describing buttons and dropdowns under each of these user-story tabs.

The Ribbon works great as a discovery mechanism for functionality. If an app's toplevel menu is like the index in a reference book, then an app Ribbon is like a set of Getting Started guides.

But a Ribbon does nothing to accelerate the usage of an app for people who've already come to grips with the app, and so already knew where things were in the app's top-level menu, maybe having memorized how to activate those menu items with keyboard accelerators, etc. These people don't need Getting Started guides being shoved in their face! To these people, a Ribbon is just a second index to some random subset of the features they use, that takes longer to navigate than the primary index they're already familiar with; and which, unlike the primary index, isn't organized into categories in a way that's common/systematic among other apps for the OS (and so doesn't respond to expected top-level-menu keyboard accelerators, etc, etc.)

I think apps like Photoshop have since figured out what people really want here: a UI layout ("workspace") selector, offering different UI layouts for new users ("Basic" layout) vs. experienced users ("Full" layout); and even different UI layouts for users with different high-level use-cases such that they have a known set of applicable user-stories. A Ribbon is perfect for the "Basic" layout; but in a "Full" layout, it can probably go away.

This is it. Ultimately the best interfaces are designed for experts, not beginners. "Usability" at some point became confused with "approachability", probably because like in so many other areas, growth was prioritized over retention. It's OK if complex software is hard to use at first if that enables advanced users to work better.

Really, the most efficient interfaces are the old-style pure text mode mainframe forms, where a power user can tab through fields faster than a 3270-style terminal emulator can render them.

But what if most of your users aren't "experts"? I think it's a good thing that computers are usable by a majority of the population today.

So why care about wysiwyg when we have LaTeX?

> I think apps like Photoshop have since figured out what people really want here: a UI layout ("workspace") selector, offering different UI layouts for new users ("Basic" layout) vs. experienced users ("Full" layout); and even different UI layouts for users with different high-level use-cases such that they have a known set of applicable user-stories. A Ribbon is perfect for the "Basic" layout; but in a "Full" layout, it can probably go away.

In the linked case study on Windows 95 they specifically tried this, creating a separate beginner mode for the Windows shell. Their conclusion was that it was a bad idea and scrapped it because it doesn't allow for organic learning and growth of a beginner into a power user on account of the wall between modes. Instead they centralized common tasks into the Start menu. I'm not sure how you would translate that learning to the design of Office or Photoshop though. Maybe something like Ribbon, but as a fixed "press here to do common actions" button in the app? Then next to that "start button" put the full power user index of categorized menu buttons?

I think PrusaSlicer does this in a reasonable way. (Context: this is software for preparing files for 3D printers.)

It has three modes: Simple, Advanced, Expert. They are all the same UI design, all it does is hide some less common settings to not overwhelm users. Each level is also associated with a colour, and next to each setting is a small dot with that colour: this allows you to quickly scan for the more common settings even if you showed all of them at Expert. At Expert there are easily over a thousand different settings organised into a 2-level hierarchy.

Docs on this feature: https://help.prusa3d.com/article/simple-advanced-expert-mode...

I wrote a blog post that has some screenshots from the settings pages (5th image for example): https://vorpal.se/posts/2025/jun/23/3d-printing-with-unconve...

I really like this take! A couple years ago I wrote a throwaway blog about learning curves in user design[0] but the thought has stayed with me a lot since then.

It's especially tricky because things are contextual. I use Helix as an editor which has a steeper learning curve than, say, VSCode, but is way faster once you're up and running with it.

But by contrast, I also really like LazyGit, which is a lot quicker to learn than the git CLI, but since all I do is branch, commit an push, makes my workflow a lot more efficient.

There's such a complex series of trade offs, especially if products want to balance bith. I always feel a little sad how much interfaces have skewed towards user friendliness over power. Sometimes it feels like we've ended up in a world of hurdy-gurdies with no violins.

[0] https://benrutter.codeberg.page/site/posts/learning-curves/

> people who've already come to grips with the app

They would, or should, be using keyboard shortcuts anyway.

I forgot the early release but ribbon seemed to have fuller keyboard shortcut and could be hidden entirely. Leaving power users with more space and faster command triggers isn't it ?

Yes, the ribbon also showed you the appropriate keyboard shortcut. My last job in the Navy involved a lot of converting mail merge-style Word docs to PDF for digital signature and so I became very adept at using keyboard shortcuts in Word and it was all right there in the ribbon.

It was different from Word 2003, but that was about all the bad you could say for it from the 'power user' perspective.

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