LibreOffice hits back at critics, says its UI is better than Microsoft Office's | Hacker News Reader

LibreOffice hits back at critics, says its UI is better than Microsoft Office's

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24 pointsbundie16 comments

Having discussed this with people who use MS Office, I can say the key point is this:

Libreoffices UI is DIFFERENT to Microsoft Office.

Thats the real impediment. I have applied "make it more like that" changes including font uploads. It's good. But it doesn't get over the user "principle of least astonishment" which is what drives the resistance.

There is a similar problem with the UI differences on OSX. otherwise rational people find the experience of moving to Office on OSX too hard.

(happy MS Office user on OSX, tolerably happy Libreoffice user on OSX and other platforms)

Exactly this. I would like to use it, and maybe I'll give it a try, but then is what has been holding me back.

How good is the Excel formula language equivalent these days? Does it have LET and LAMBDA?

I have been a Linux fiend for 20 years but OnlyOffice immdiately impressed me. Guess I'm shallow.

Not at all! I sometimes think if these stick in the muds gave it 6 weeks they'd be converts. One gave it 45 minutes.

> Libreoffices UI is DIFFERENT

The difference is that in Libreoffice, you don't have to search for a "ribbon item" every fscking time. Ribbon sucks. Yes, I know Libreoffice also has a ribbon, but it gives you a choice.

LibreOffice is more similar to 97-03 MSoft Office which I felt was the superior program anyway. Everything since than has been interface fuckery and templates... And getting rid of Clippy.

I prefer the classic Microsoft Office toolbar/menu interface to the ribbon, but I grew up on Office 97. A thought that dawned on me is that the ribbon has existed for nearly 20 years; it debuted in Microsoft Office 2007. There is now an entire generation of computer users who have never used pre-ribbon versions of Microsoft Office.

I don't know what it's like using modern Microsoft Office with no experience using toolbars and menus and then switching to LibreOffice, which still uses traditional toolbars and menus.

I prefer traditional toolbars and menus, but I remember Microsoft doing user studies when developing the original Office 2007 ribbon. It showed that the ribbon was more productive for beginners and casual users. Given that many office suite users are casual users who use word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation tools, Microsoft Office may be more productive for them than LibreOffice. It would be good if LibreOffice did user studies.

The irony is I remember the ribbon interface was universally hated on launch. It buried a ton of previously single click options behind tabs and dropdown menus.

You also couldn't modify it. I had previously customized Word to suit my needs. When the ribbon version came out I had a new laptop with that version of Word and was just starting grad school. I lasted a semester before it drove me mad just trying to write papers and I switched to OpenOffice (and I now use LibreOffice). I had some compatibility issues back then when sharing documents but I could write without getting angry. I'm thankful for the ribbon though, since it prompted that change and got me started using open source software.

“Better” is entirely subjective, complexity can provide improved power for advanced users but make it more difficult for new / average users by compartmenting the “happy path” regular actions into multiple composable disconnected features.

For example, LibreOffice doesn’t have the “Format as Table” feature from Excel, which in a single action combines adding sorting arrows along with a color scheme on a selected range of grouped cells. The range of grouped cells and the background colors in the Excel version auto-expand as new columns or rows are added. Sure, I could press 3-4 different hotkeys and manually update all of this in a sequence for LibreOffice Calc each time I modify the group of cells, but ideally the software would have some single unified action to not make me need to do that without resorting to creating custom possibly flaky macros.

I tried OnlyOffice once (because I was trying MS Office alts) and I really liked it. That's what I've been using it for the last 3-4 years. Although I don't use these tools a lot.

True.

It's just as good

Arrogant. End users decide by deciding what they want to use. Thats all there is to it.

Eh, except that a huge number of Office users are there because their employers make them use it, and then use it at home because it's what they know. Not sure it's much of a choice for a lot of them.

Moreover, students are indoctrinated in MS Office from a young age, given the extent to which it's been baked into official curricula. The books that a lot of Indian students use are available online [1] and MS' stranglehold is very evident.

[1] https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/leca102.pdf

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