To ribbon or not to ribbon? [modified]
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I've seen ribbons contributing positively and negatively to applications. Generally I feel that if you are going to have many menu items ribbons can be great if they are done intuitively. If you only have a handful of options ribbons will do nothing other than look like a desperate attempt to 'be like MS Office'. At first I disliked ribbons, I have now gotten use to them and prefer them. As for screen space, I don't find them too hungry but if I do need ALL the space I minimize the ribbon. Older versions of Great Plains (now part of MS Dynamics) used palettes, basically menus that can be opened in small tool windows, I liked those as you would often do a number of tasks on the same menu and it would stay open for that, MS discontinued the palettes but I believe a 3rd party developer re-introduced them shortly after. In a way the palettes are similar to ribbon groups but you can move them around like a tool window, maybe with a nice docking solution you can do a hybrid of menus, ribbons and dockable tool windows and give the user the maximum customisability, but that also comes with it's own risks for 'some' users (also has potential to increase support call counts)...
____________________________________________________________ Be brave little warrior, be VERY brave
Funny you should mention Dynamics, Dynamics 2011 is one of my samples of a forms app that *does* use the Ribbon, see screenshots here: http://www.concentrix.co.uk/software/crm/crm-software/microsoft-dynamics-crm/screenshots/[^] I never saw the palette thing but I guess the ribbon might be a similar concept. They use it in both the web and desktop interface everywhere.
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It doesn't really consume _that_ much space.. Look here: http://zipdot.net/shared/ribbon_vs_toolbar.png[^] Frontpage 2003 (equal to Word 2003) http://www.filebuzz.com/software_screenshot/full/281287-Microsoft_Office_FrontPage.png[^] 110px on Office 2010 on Win7 90px on LibreOffice Writer on Win7 110px on OpenOffice Writer on Ubuntu 76px on Office 2003 on XP 34px (approx. toolbar height) difference between Office 2010 and Office 2003 - I can live with that (and I do).
Nice screenshots for comparison. The thing is I have always hated double toolbars like that and always hide everything to the point I can get down to one toolbar but I guess I'm in the minority, it seems no one cares about aesthetics as I do because to me it just automatically makes an app look complicated and hard to use when I see that many options. Maybe others think "cool look at all the things I can do". One thing I love about the newest Firefox is that the entire menu is gone completely and is just a single button in the upper left corner to drop it down. I know a browser is a very different beast but still it's nice to have a clean uncluttered UI. I definitely prefer a minimalist approach. All those options and buttons remind me of audio components from the 80's: the cheaper they were the more buttons and lights they had on them, conversely the really super high quality expensive stuff was clean and uncluttered and had as few buttons and knobs as possible.
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Ribbon is suitable for editing a large context. For example, Word, Paint, etc. However, for a screen displaying database detail with 10+ controls, ribbon is not suitable. If you really need a ribbon in this case, you need to move those controls to ribbon as well. So what’s left in the main region of the screen?
Yes many have said this, I thought this as well and Microsoft even guides this way, however they don't follow their own advice as you can see with this Microsoft database forms application: Dynamics 2011 screen shots[^] And I have downloaded and examined many screenshots from Dynamics and it all appears to make sense for them so I'm not sure why that conventional wisdom really exists in the first place.
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John C wrote:
new computer users have no problem with it and find it better and experienced users more used to the old menu system hate it
...and of course you'd buy a car that new drivers liked, but experienced motorists hated.
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I'm looking at designing the shell for a new application and the menu system is the topic of the day. I had looked at the ribbon UI years ago when it was new and my initial impression was that it was ugly, took up too much screen space and appeared to be more complicated to use and un-intuitive. I just looked at it again and I still feel the same way 4 years later. Yet it *is* being adopted and used quite widely in MS stuff and supposedly Open Office is looking at something similar as well. While it's goals are worthy it just still seems wrong to me. I can see where it avoids clicks and improves feature discovery but was that really ever a problem worth trading off for such an ugly space eating UI? On the other hand traditional menus and toolbars seem increasingly stale and outdated as well. I'm thinking of looking more towards smart phone navigation / menu systems for inspiration as people are increasingly more familiar with them and one thing they excel at is limiting screen real estate. Also finding every possible way to eliminate menu items where possible might be a good idea as well if I can find a way to do it. I notice Microsoft Dynamics uses an outlook style for all navigation and nothing navigation related on the ribbon bar, something to consider splitting navigation away from commands perhaps. Thoughts on the ribbon or anything else menu nav related and interesting that you might have seen lately? UPDATE Here's some info on the ribbon worth reading that I found after I made this post: A good critical post on the ribbon: http://interactiveasp.net/blogs/spgilmore/archive/2010/03/25/to-ribbon-or-not-to-ribbon-considering-the-microsoft-fluent-interface.aspx[^] A study of the user acceptance of the ribbon: http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/Faro/DNCOCO/DNCOCO-25.pdf[^]
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modified on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 2:40 PM
You can usually Minimize the Ribbon - in which case it behaves a little more like a traditional menu, click on a tab and the options drop down - which helps with the screen real estate issue. My company went with a Ribbon so it looks "modern" and "cutting edge" - but haven't had complaints from customers, and sales seems to like it. Quick Access toolbar is a nice feature (although it can also be implemented with traditional menus).
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You can usually Minimize the Ribbon - in which case it behaves a little more like a traditional menu, click on a tab and the options drop down - which helps with the screen real estate issue. My company went with a Ribbon so it looks "modern" and "cutting edge" - but haven't had complaints from customers, and sales seems to like it. Quick Access toolbar is a nice feature (although it can also be implemented with traditional menus).
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Yes many have said this, I thought this as well and Microsoft even guides this way, however they don't follow their own advice as you can see with this Microsoft database forms application: Dynamics 2011 screen shots[^] And I have downloaded and examined many screenshots from Dynamics and it all appears to make sense for them so I'm not sure why that conventional wisdom really exists in the first place.
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See the “Save” button in ribbon? Microsoft still suggests you save files to floppy disks.
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See the “Save” button in ribbon? Microsoft still suggests you save files to floppy disks.
In the Dynamics screenshots I linked to I think they just mean to save the record to the database. We use a similar icon for a similar purpose in our app. The diskette icon is synonymous with the concept of persistence in people's minds so there's nothing wrong with using it in this context. I can't imagine what you could replace it with visually at this point.
There is no failure only feedback
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I'm looking at designing the shell for a new application and the menu system is the topic of the day. I had looked at the ribbon UI years ago when it was new and my initial impression was that it was ugly, took up too much screen space and appeared to be more complicated to use and un-intuitive. I just looked at it again and I still feel the same way 4 years later. Yet it *is* being adopted and used quite widely in MS stuff and supposedly Open Office is looking at something similar as well. While it's goals are worthy it just still seems wrong to me. I can see where it avoids clicks and improves feature discovery but was that really ever a problem worth trading off for such an ugly space eating UI? On the other hand traditional menus and toolbars seem increasingly stale and outdated as well. I'm thinking of looking more towards smart phone navigation / menu systems for inspiration as people are increasingly more familiar with them and one thing they excel at is limiting screen real estate. Also finding every possible way to eliminate menu items where possible might be a good idea as well if I can find a way to do it. I notice Microsoft Dynamics uses an outlook style for all navigation and nothing navigation related on the ribbon bar, something to consider splitting navigation away from commands perhaps. Thoughts on the ribbon or anything else menu nav related and interesting that you might have seen lately? UPDATE Here's some info on the ribbon worth reading that I found after I made this post: A good critical post on the ribbon: http://interactiveasp.net/blogs/spgilmore/archive/2010/03/25/to-ribbon-or-not-to-ribbon-considering-the-microsoft-fluent-interface.aspx[^] A study of the user acceptance of the ribbon: http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/Faro/DNCOCO/DNCOCO-25.pdf[^]
There is no failure only feedback
modified on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 2:40 PM
At first i was iffy on the ribbon, but the more i used it i started thinking boy would this be great for my app. Now i tend to use it quite exclusively. Currently i use the ComponentFactory Krypton Suite and it has a great and easy to use Ribbon Control. as for the screen space it takes, yeah it can seem to be space hungry on lower resolutions, but minimizing the ribbon works in those cases quite well. Once minimized a properly developed ribbon will act allot like a Normal Menu.
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I'm looking at designing the shell for a new application and the menu system is the topic of the day. I had looked at the ribbon UI years ago when it was new and my initial impression was that it was ugly, took up too much screen space and appeared to be more complicated to use and un-intuitive. I just looked at it again and I still feel the same way 4 years later. Yet it *is* being adopted and used quite widely in MS stuff and supposedly Open Office is looking at something similar as well. While it's goals are worthy it just still seems wrong to me. I can see where it avoids clicks and improves feature discovery but was that really ever a problem worth trading off for such an ugly space eating UI? On the other hand traditional menus and toolbars seem increasingly stale and outdated as well. I'm thinking of looking more towards smart phone navigation / menu systems for inspiration as people are increasingly more familiar with them and one thing they excel at is limiting screen real estate. Also finding every possible way to eliminate menu items where possible might be a good idea as well if I can find a way to do it. I notice Microsoft Dynamics uses an outlook style for all navigation and nothing navigation related on the ribbon bar, something to consider splitting navigation away from commands perhaps. Thoughts on the ribbon or anything else menu nav related and interesting that you might have seen lately? UPDATE Here's some info on the ribbon worth reading that I found after I made this post: A good critical post on the ribbon: http://interactiveasp.net/blogs/spgilmore/archive/2010/03/25/to-ribbon-or-not-to-ribbon-considering-the-microsoft-fluent-interface.aspx[^] A study of the user acceptance of the ribbon: http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/Faro/DNCOCO/DNCOCO-25.pdf[^]
There is no failure only feedback
modified on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 2:40 PM
I agree, I wish they at least made it so you could toggle the ribbon to use the traditional menu - only because everyone knows it, and it does take up much less real estate not to mention memory - ugh.
Know way too many languages... master of none! I'm just another artist navigating the technical shark infested waters trying to find digital serenity!
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I'm pretty sure you don't have to do that anymore. This thread and some comments at: Stack Overflow - How to implement “Mega Menus” in WPF?[^] inspired me to download the MSI from Microsoft Ribbon for WPF October 2010[^] which when run, first pops up the license agreement, which after some careful perusal appears to grant you the right to use the control without any special licenses. I am not a lawyer, though. Edit: Via the Office UI Licensing page[^]: There are currently three primary categories of ways for a software developer to implement the Office UI in their own application or component. Use the Microsoft Windows 7 Scenic Ribbon implementation Details about the Scenic Ribbon can be found on the MSDN Code Gallery[^]. Use of the Scenic Ribbon implementation is governed by the Microsoft Windows SDK EULA and does not require a developer to accept the terms of the Office UI license on this site. Use the Microsoft Ribbon for WPF Implementation Details about the Microsoft Ribbon for WPF Implementation (delivered via MS Downloads[^]) can be found in the MSDN Library[^]. Use of the Microsoft Ribbon for WPF is governed by a EULA similar to that of the .NET Framework. This release does not require developers to a
Either way, it is worth reading that page regarding the pending infringement suit regarding the ribbon's dialog launcher function.
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I'm looking at designing the shell for a new application and the menu system is the topic of the day. I had looked at the ribbon UI years ago when it was new and my initial impression was that it was ugly, took up too much screen space and appeared to be more complicated to use and un-intuitive. I just looked at it again and I still feel the same way 4 years later. Yet it *is* being adopted and used quite widely in MS stuff and supposedly Open Office is looking at something similar as well. While it's goals are worthy it just still seems wrong to me. I can see where it avoids clicks and improves feature discovery but was that really ever a problem worth trading off for such an ugly space eating UI? On the other hand traditional menus and toolbars seem increasingly stale and outdated as well. I'm thinking of looking more towards smart phone navigation / menu systems for inspiration as people are increasingly more familiar with them and one thing they excel at is limiting screen real estate. Also finding every possible way to eliminate menu items where possible might be a good idea as well if I can find a way to do it. I notice Microsoft Dynamics uses an outlook style for all navigation and nothing navigation related on the ribbon bar, something to consider splitting navigation away from commands perhaps. Thoughts on the ribbon or anything else menu nav related and interesting that you might have seen lately? UPDATE Here's some info on the ribbon worth reading that I found after I made this post: A good critical post on the ribbon: http://interactiveasp.net/blogs/spgilmore/archive/2010/03/25/to-ribbon-or-not-to-ribbon-considering-the-microsoft-fluent-interface.aspx[^] A study of the user acceptance of the ribbon: http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/Faro/DNCOCO/DNCOCO-25.pdf[^]
There is no failure only feedback
modified on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 2:40 PM
I hate it. What then would then make me want to put one in? It is all about the sophistication of the users. If the people who are going to use this application are the 'great unwashed' then I'd be more inclined to use the ribbon. If on the other hand my users were going to be power users, such as the ones who use photoshop and other advanced graphic software, I'd skip the "fisher-price" aspect to the UI and go with tight menus. I think if the user is going to be expected to put in a lot of time to learn the tool they are going to end up preferring a less-real-estate mode menu, and more of the traditional type. Other reasons to consider going one way or the other; if the screen real-estate is a particular complaint with a competitor product or is a known feature of the user-base. If the user-base is geriatric as a norm.
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I'm looking at designing the shell for a new application and the menu system is the topic of the day. I had looked at the ribbon UI years ago when it was new and my initial impression was that it was ugly, took up too much screen space and appeared to be more complicated to use and un-intuitive. I just looked at it again and I still feel the same way 4 years later. Yet it *is* being adopted and used quite widely in MS stuff and supposedly Open Office is looking at something similar as well. While it's goals are worthy it just still seems wrong to me. I can see where it avoids clicks and improves feature discovery but was that really ever a problem worth trading off for such an ugly space eating UI? On the other hand traditional menus and toolbars seem increasingly stale and outdated as well. I'm thinking of looking more towards smart phone navigation / menu systems for inspiration as people are increasingly more familiar with them and one thing they excel at is limiting screen real estate. Also finding every possible way to eliminate menu items where possible might be a good idea as well if I can find a way to do it. I notice Microsoft Dynamics uses an outlook style for all navigation and nothing navigation related on the ribbon bar, something to consider splitting navigation away from commands perhaps. Thoughts on the ribbon or anything else menu nav related and interesting that you might have seen lately? UPDATE Here's some info on the ribbon worth reading that I found after I made this post: A good critical post on the ribbon: http://interactiveasp.net/blogs/spgilmore/archive/2010/03/25/to-ribbon-or-not-to-ribbon-considering-the-microsoft-fluent-interface.aspx[^] A study of the user acceptance of the ribbon: http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/Faro/DNCOCO/DNCOCO-25.pdf[^]
There is no failure only feedback
modified on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 2:40 PM
I love the Ribbon and one of my favorite things is that I can minimize it making more room for UI than with traditional menu, while keeping the menu items within easy reach.
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Funny you should mention Dynamics, Dynamics 2011 is one of my samples of a forms app that *does* use the Ribbon, see screenshots here: http://www.concentrix.co.uk/software/crm/crm-software/microsoft-dynamics-crm/screenshots/[^] I never saw the palette thing but I guess the ribbon might be a similar concept. They use it in both the web and desktop interface everywhere.
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Just on a point of clarity, MS Dynamics came from 4 different ERP solutions MS bought, and they added CRM themselves (correct me if I'm wrong here), I have a background in MS Dynamics - GP (one of the ERP's). I have only ever seen the palettes in Dynamics GP and I think they were last used in version 6 (about 4 or 5 years ago if I remember correctly). They were very similar to undocking a dockable toolbox etc in Visual Studio, only difference is that they would contain the same items as a menu and obviously execute the same code as the menu items would. Interestingly when I started with Dynamics GP you got 2 flavors of it, 'Great Plains' for enterprise size customers, and 'Dynamics' for smaller customers. Built with the same technology but scaled down. One of the first things MS did when they bought it was to drop the name 'Dynamics' (I think they had a suffix for the smaller package 'Great Plains ___') and soon after they named the 4 ERP's together Dynamics, not sure if they had a change of heart or if that was the plan fr=om the start :)
____________________________________________________________ Be brave little warrior, be VERY brave
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I disliked it at first, but have grown to like it as I've used it more.
Same here. Yes,the Ribbon does consume more real estate when the tab groups are expanded. However, when you double click on the tab groups and they are hidden, real estate space taken is very comparable to conventional menus. We just implemented a major GIS application using the Ribbon and our customers like it.
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John C wrote:
I just looked at it again and I still feel the same way 4 years later.
I agree!
John C wrote:
Thoughts on the ribbon or anything else menu nav related and interesting that you might have seen lately?
It depends... on if you want to annoy the hell out of 90% of the users or not. No one I know likes the ribbon bar, and a lot of the people I know find the traditional menu much easier to use.
See if you can crack this: b749f6c269a746243debc6488046e33f
So far, no one seems to have cracked this!The unofficial awesome history of Code Project's Bob! "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
I've become a ribbon convert. When I first used Microsoft Word with ribbons, I didn't like them because I knew Word's menu system and knew what menu to scan for a function I wanted to perform. But once I learned my way around ribbons, I like them better. I think there easier to find things then the menu/tool bar system. As to "space eating UI": You can collapse the ribbon vertically to just a line of ribbon tabs. Controls within a ribbon can change depending on the horizontal space available down to just a button per group. This you cannot do with tool bars. I wrote an application using ribbons and wound up putting more stuff in the ribbons then I ever could with menus. I think this is a positive thing: it makes my interface more consistent. From a developer's point of view, ribbons take more work because they are more flexible but then you can do more with them. How ugly or pretty they look will depend upon how well you design them. Menu/toolbars just are: you don't have any artistic design decisions.
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I'm looking at designing the shell for a new application and the menu system is the topic of the day. I had looked at the ribbon UI years ago when it was new and my initial impression was that it was ugly, took up too much screen space and appeared to be more complicated to use and un-intuitive. I just looked at it again and I still feel the same way 4 years later. Yet it *is* being adopted and used quite widely in MS stuff and supposedly Open Office is looking at something similar as well. While it's goals are worthy it just still seems wrong to me. I can see where it avoids clicks and improves feature discovery but was that really ever a problem worth trading off for such an ugly space eating UI? On the other hand traditional menus and toolbars seem increasingly stale and outdated as well. I'm thinking of looking more towards smart phone navigation / menu systems for inspiration as people are increasingly more familiar with them and one thing they excel at is limiting screen real estate. Also finding every possible way to eliminate menu items where possible might be a good idea as well if I can find a way to do it. I notice Microsoft Dynamics uses an outlook style for all navigation and nothing navigation related on the ribbon bar, something to consider splitting navigation away from commands perhaps. Thoughts on the ribbon or anything else menu nav related and interesting that you might have seen lately? UPDATE Here's some info on the ribbon worth reading that I found after I made this post: A good critical post on the ribbon: http://interactiveasp.net/blogs/spgilmore/archive/2010/03/25/to-ribbon-or-not-to-ribbon-considering-the-microsoft-fluent-interface.aspx[^] A study of the user acceptance of the ribbon: http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/Faro/DNCOCO/DNCOCO-25.pdf[^]
There is no failure only feedback
modified on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 2:40 PM
What irks me about the whole RIBBON vs Traditional Menu/Buttons is that Microsoft projects the idea that only a very tiny weeny few users prefer the traditional Menu & Buttons interface and that the remaining 99.9% of users just love, absolutely adorn the new RIBBON and could not imagine living this life without it. When a corporation goes to this extent, expends this level of resources to sell the idea of something new, that alone is enough to proceed with caution. This does not guarantee that there is a problem only that its a sign that you should read/review with caution and not just buy into whatever is said. I was one of the anti-Ribbon users out there and that’s because I am experienced in using Office and have been for many years/revisions and found the Ribbon to be a time killer and frustrating. I was further ticked off by the idea and over all push by Microsoft and pro-Ribbon people that anyone who did not love the Ribbon was either some old dog who needed to be put down or was just stupid. The majority of anti-ribbon users did not have the mindset that the Ribbon should be banned and the old menu & buttons returned but that the user, the one who pays for the software should be allowed to choose which interface they wish to use. I’ve gotten to where I can tolerate the Ribbon but still found it less efficient to use. I still maintain that the push to the Ribbon was more about marketing/sales then product improvement. The new Ribbon gave the program a very different look making it easier to sell the idea of an upgrade to a suite that was just about as complete as you can get. I believe the Ribbon was used to pad the Office upgrade to make it look like you were getting more in the upgrade then you otherwise would have. No matter what the software vendor, Microsoft ion this case, made a huge mistake in how it treated its long time user base in blowing off their desire to not be forced to a new interface and in how it treated users overall who did not like the Ribbon. I would note too that the supposed “perfect” interface of the new Ribbon (as called perfect by those pushing the ribbon on various Office users forums) was changed in Office from 2007 and 2010 and so I guess it wasn’t as “perfect” as the pro-Ribbon crowd claimed.
