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LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

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Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#411

Post by frosted-flakes »

int_19h wrote: post #375
agumonkey wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, maybe old menus had some trivial adequate nature for most users and ribbon, even with all its worth doesn't tap into that. Personally I'm still incapable of deciding.. because I hated nested menus (too deep, too adhoc) but the ribbon is a bit less easy to remember than I'd hope. That said it's a good step toward keyboard shortcut memorizing.

One thing about the old menus is that they were extremely configurable. Like, you could not just hide or reorder items, but reorganize the hierarchy if you wanted. People mostly used that for toolbars, but Office menus are technically a kind of toolbar. Some of that still lives on in Visual Studio, where it is even extended to context menus: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/how-to-cus...

The ribbon is also extremely configurable. You can move or remove anything you want. There's usually no reason to, but it's an option.

There's also the Quick Access Toolbar, which is exactly like the toolbars of old if you pin it below the ribbon (not in the titlebar).

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#412

Post by ubercow13 »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #315
ubercow13 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>making UI/UX an easier software problem (HTML, CSS, JS) automatically attracts more designers yielding better UX/UI I find this a bit questionable. What are some examples of this good UX and UI? Many HTML-ish UIs I can think of are not good. Slack, Discord, modern Windows apps such as the new settings app for example. They tend to suffer from poor reimplementations of native widget functionality, poor implementation…

The products you mention are all hugely successful, often against the backdrop of existing OSS with similar features (IRC, for example). Maybe there's some abstract notion of "good UI" that is distinct from "people like to use it". Or maybe people are stupid. But on a purely empirical basis there is absolutely no evidence for the supremacy of the old UI paradigms you champion.

Many of the things I'm talking about aren't even debatable they are simply bugs. For example infinite scrolling areas jumping around as they load content and the interface having variable and high latency in response to user input. 'Poor reimplementations' could be stuff like copy and paste being bugged out in a text box.

In any case you're right, I think there isn't enough study into these things.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#413

Post by ModernMech »

gmueckl wrote: post #401
ModernMech wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recollect the location of features by their spacial location, I recollect them by their place in a hierarchical ordering. The exact path to a function is always preserved, as the keyboard shortcut for that item is defined by that path.

Ribbons (in Office, at least) change that very hierarchy depending on window width. For example, take the Home bar in Word: the "Editing" and "Style" groups collapse to buttons with submenus before the width of the window is reduced to half screen width on my computer. This affects keyboard navigation in the ribbon bar, too, of course.

This doesn’t actually change the hierarchy of commands, as evidenced by the fact the keyboard shortcuts stay constant. I appreciate hiding these first before Font, since I use Font more than Styles or Editing.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#414

Post by ModernMech »

coliveira wrote: post #399
ModernMech wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the Mac, for example, menus are discoverable because you can go to "help->seach" and type what you're looking for. This cannot be easily done with the ribbon." I can't speak to the Mac version, but on Windows there is a search box at the top that returns a result for whatever you want. "A menu you can read from top to bottom, but a ribbon you need to scan from left to right and top to bottom, making it much harde…

No way, searching items in a ribbon is much harder than on a simple menu, even if you have subitems. It is the difference between reading text (fast) and trying to decipher pictures, specially when they are not well organized. Most people have trouble with the ribbon, I am not the only one who noticed this.

Again, “much” harder is quite the exaggeration. I mean, maybe for you, sure, but I’ve had plenty of time in the past 13 years to figure out where things are. If I’m ever genuinely searching for something I don’t scan the ribbon option by option, I use the search bar.

As far as “deciphering” pictures, there’s an association that builds over time. When I see the picture I make the association automatically. There’s research that shows people recognize pictures faster than they read words, since words all look visually similar and pictures have more cues to differentiate between them.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#415

Post by sergeykish »

jodrellblank wrote: post #260
jodrellblank wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “ I also question the basic premise that the tabbed interface is somehow more intuitive for new users. Like many UI related assertions, absolutely no concrete evidence is being provided to support this point. ” Uh, yeah there was? Go dig through the wayback machine for Jensen Harris’s blogpost series about the design of the ribbon, or watch his MIX08 talk on it; he was the design team lead for the change, and the r…

"There's absolutely no evidence for this" "yes there was, here's what to look for" "downvote". HN.txt. Top level menus full by Word 95. Office 97 added command bars. Nested menus and toolbars full by Office 2000. Office XP added Task panes, full of features by Office 2003. " the Task Pane was the last attempt to find a way to scale old-style UI to programs as full-featured as Office. Although it was a successful stop…

I see a problem - target user group.

I'm watching MIX08 The Story of the Ribbon [1] and trying to be objective. He is optimizing for 50% who paste with mouse. Essentially it is Microsoft Bob 2.0.

Office was done, "good enough" but some people complained, there was bad press. Microsoft added intellimenus, task pane - acknowledged mistake. Then ribbon. It could work for new users. Not for me. Now I better understand why.

The menu / toolbar / shortcut UI provides progression - from least often to muscle memory. Menu is hidden, fallback, toolbar provides customization, no need File > Save or Edit / Clipboard once I know shortcuts.

Ribbon is always expanded menu represented like task pane. They display text when icon is not enough. And group name ... because something. Information density is extremely low. Actual toolbar moved on the title bar.

Layout demo looks good. But as writer tool it is awful, clutter is still here, just behind a tab. Could be fixed with Firefox-like customization menu, not with their spaceship like-control.

I can see how he applied design tenets but in very specific meaning:

* a person's focus should be on their content - constantly changing UI, "content" is styling

* reduce the number of choices - no way to customize toolbar, select one of the tabs

* increase efficiency - of those who struggle with discoverability

* embrace consistency - among office, not OS

* give features a permanent home - even universally known

* straightforward is better than clever - no hidden controls, more visual clutter

* design tenets has to be religion - stick to decision, do not listen to users

Same tenets produce my layout, which is opposite.

[1] https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09

[2] http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#416

Post by coliveira »

ModernMech wrote: post #414
coliveira wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way, searching items in a ribbon is much harder than on a simple menu, even if you have subitems. It is the difference between reading text (fast) and trying to decipher pictures, specially when they are not well organized. Most people have trouble with the ribbon, I am not the only one who noticed this.

Again, “much” harder is quite the exaggeration. I mean, maybe for you, sure, but I’ve had plenty of time in the past 13 years to figure out where things are. If I’m ever genuinely searching for something I don’t scan the ribbon option by option, I use the search bar. As far as “deciphering” pictures, there’s an association that builds over time. When I see the picture I make the association automatically. There’s res…

You are talking about the experience of someone who has learned the ribbon for a long time. Of course, if you always use the ribbon, it will be more familiar to you. Just like if you were taught Mandarin as a child it will be easier than speaking English. It has nothing to do with how easy it is to use these two different alternatives.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#417

Post by nicoburns »

ptx wrote: post #246
nicoburns wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand I found it instantly more productive, even right after it was introduced. No longer did I have to remember which menu an option was in. It was all right there.

It's not all right there - some things are under another ribbon tab, which doesn't seem all that different from putting things in a collection of menus. (Except that visually it's now a jumbled mess instead of a clean and easy-to-scan linear list.)

> Except that visually it's now a jumbled mess instead of a clean and easy-to-scan linear list

I think I find the "jumbled mess" easier to scan because my memory is visual, and the items are visually distinct. On the other hand, with a list I actually have to read every item.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#418

Post by mburns »

macspoofing wrote: post #289
pfranz wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I imagine the amount of money the US government already spends on MS Office could fund development of something as good or better than Office, while giving it away free to the rest of society improving productivity. Although, I wouldn't bet on the management of that project playing out like that.

>I imagine the amount of money the US government already spends on MS Office could fund development of something as good or better than Office No, it can't. Microsoft lives and breaths Office 365 because that is a core part of their business. There is zero chance that a government will care as much about this as Microsoft does, or the 10,000 other companies that are trying to supplant incumbents. Add to that the fact…

Yes, it can.

We have federally-funded national Research labs that regularly take on nuanced, technical challenges like this, and they work great. It's not like a federal bureaucracy designed and built multiple mars rovers, engineers did.

>Add to that the fact that funding will be uneven, because if the tool achieves a 'good enough' status, why keep funding it

If it is good enough, sure, it doesn't need the same amount of funding required to get it to that point. That is a good thing.

The federal government isn't the only potential source of government funding.

>In fact, this is guaranteed to not be the case, because who is to say that funding a word processor is a productive application of capital when you're not responding to market forces.

I don't follow. Because we can spend less money building a thing once than renting it annually for decades and decades, which is a response to market forces.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#419

Post by ModernMech »

coliveira wrote: post #416
ModernMech wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, “much” harder is quite the exaggeration. I mean, maybe for you, sure, but I’ve had plenty of time in the past 13 years to figure out where things are. If I’m ever genuinely searching for something I don’t scan the ribbon option by option, I use the search bar. As far as “deciphering” pictures, there’s an association that builds over time. When I see the picture I make the association automatically. There’s res…

You are talking about the experience of someone who has learned the ribbon for a long time. Of course, if you always use the ribbon, it will be more familiar to you. Just like if you were taught Mandarin as a child it will be easier than speaking English. It has nothing to do with how easy it is to use these two different alternatives.

I didn’t have a hard time learning the ribbon. Going back to my original post, I just don’t see how it’s so inscrutable as others in these comments claim. Could it be that all these claims of the ribbon being a “much” harder are overblown? It honestly doesn’t seem so much different than a menu system to me, and again there are pros and cons for both. I think if you’re going to continue making this claim you should attempt to quantify it.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#420

Post by Spooky23 »

slavik81 wrote: post #397
ghaff wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine a lot of big law offices still have computers with WordPerfect on them so they can read old files if necessary.

WordPerfect is still maintained by Corel. The most recent release was in May. They also maintain PaintShop Pro, WinDVD, and WinZip. I think they're running a retirement home for distinguished software products.

Corel is the Microfocus of client software!

The thing is I get why people hang on to COBOL or Attachmate. The company licensing WinZip is the puzzler to me! :)

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