6 ms·

> Fifteen years later and I still can't fucking find anything Of course people can't. That ribbon was a shite idea 15 years ago, and still is. A textual menu

> Fifteen years later and I still can't fucking find anything Of course people can't. That ribbon was a shite idea 15 years ago, and still is. A textual menu is, by sheer necessity, hierarchical. Hierarchy imposes order. Text menus also aren't subject to the ever-shifting ideas of design-guru's idea of what X means in the form of a picture, making it, also by necessity, descriptive. Descriptiveness and order mean discoverability.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Visual Studio (not VSCode) is a case study in how to sprawl across different menus and require menu hunts to find what you want.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  VS is an expert tool. Not a word processor for the masses.
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    Not really an excuse to be scatterbrained like that. For either program.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Professional tools can optimize for efficiency at the cost to discoverability and new users. After all, they'll be used for many hours every week by largely the same cohort of expert users.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  I've had to work with VS for the first time in my career recently. I love how they don't have a scrollable tab bar (like the Jetbrains IDEs or even bloody Notepad++), but you can have it spawn row after row of tabs and crowd out the code itself.
benhurmarcel 3y ago
The ribbon is just as hierarchical as a menu. Obviously it's organized in tabs, but in each tab you also have categories.
- usrbinbash 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_(computing)#/media/File:Office2007ribbon.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_(computing)#/media/File... Okay, please show me the categories in this picture, and the logic of their relation to one another. For example, the ribbon in the picture is under the "Home" Top-Level category. It has a subcategory called "Editing". But there is another toplvl category named "Insert". Why is that not under "Editing"? Is inserting something in the document not editing? Why is "Editing" not a toplvl category? What is "Design" (another toplvl), and how does it relate to Editing, Inserting and Drawing? Why is "Find" under "Editing"? Also, the entire Ribbon is RIDDLED with scrollbars and drop down menus. Some buttons are themselves text-labeled, others are not, there are different sizes and layouts. Also, left of the "Home" toplvl is another giant button, that has only a logo, and apparently leads to further functionality. And above the toplvl bar is another bar with what seems to be save, back, forward, and what I can only assume is another dropdown menu. So please, do tell, where and how, and by what principle is this organized?
  - soco 3y ago
    And good luck with all that clutter on the title bar to find that only one pixel-wide point you can grab to drag the window around.
  - agent327 3y ago
    The principle by which this is organized, and mind I'm not saying it's a good one, is available space. Screen space is extremely valuable, so the ribbon contents are constrained in two ways. The first is that the ribbon cannot be so large that it fills up the entire screen, because then you cannot see the thing you are working on. The second is that, once a size for the ribbon was chosen, not using some of those pixels was a crime against usability, so any empty space had to be filled, whether the functions are appropriate in that location or not. This, then, leads to a massive overuse of tabs (because the available space is vastly insufficient), and incomprehensible icons (because they take up less space). Don't worry though: there will be tool tips, like little mini-menus, so eventually you can figure out what all this stuff is. A menu bar doesn't have to deal with any of these problems: it only takes up space while you are actively engaging with it, instead of permanently obscuring your content. It can therefore take as much space as it needs, so functions can have a clear, textual label. It also has a natural hierarchical structure, so things don't need to be placed in non-obvious locations. It's a vastly superior solution to the problem the ribbon tries to solve, with its only flaws being, not being 'hip' and not working well on a phone. Menu bars were the single greatest thing that ever happened to user interfaces: they made functionality discoverable in a way that earlier applications (who relied on countless magic key combos) could only dream of. Before the menu bar, an application needed a manual, and you _had_ to read it. After the menu bar, you could just look in the menu, and it taught you what functions were available, how to access them, and even how to access them from the keyboard if you needed them frequently. Getting rid of it was the stupidest thing designers could have done.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Visual Studio (not VSCode) is a case study in how to sprawl across different menus and require menu hunts to find what you want.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
VS is an expert tool. Not a word processor for the masses.
- Fatnino 3y ago
  Not really an excuse to be scatterbrained like that. For either program.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Professional tools can optimize for efficiency at the cost to discoverability and new users. After all, they'll be used for many hours every week by largely the same cohort of expert users.
hakfoo 3y ago
I've had to work with VS for the first time in my career recently. I love how they don't have a scrollable tab bar (like the Jetbrains IDEs or even bloody Notepad++), but you can have it spawn row after row of tabs and crowd out the code itself.

benhurmarcel 3y ago

The ribbon is just as hierarchical as a menu. Obviously it's organized in tabs, but in each tab you also have categories.

usrbinbash 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_(computing)#/media/File:Office2007ribbon.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_(computing)#/media/File... Okay, please show me the categories in this picture, and the logic of their relation to one another. For example, the ribbon in the picture is under the "Home" Top-Level category. It has a subcategory called "Editing". But there is another toplvl category named "Insert". Why is that not under "Editing"? Is inserting something in the document not editing? Why is "Editing" not a toplvl category? What is "Design" (another toplvl), and how does it relate to Editing, Inserting and Drawing? Why is "Find" under "Editing"? Also, the entire Ribbon is RIDDLED with scrollbars and drop down menus. Some buttons are themselves text-labeled, others are not, there are different sizes and layouts. Also, left of the "Home" toplvl is another giant button, that has only a logo, and apparently leads to further functionality. And above the toplvl bar is another bar with what seems to be save, back, forward, and what I can only assume is another dropdown menu. So please, do tell, where and how, and by what principle is this organized?
- soco 3y ago
  And good luck with all that clutter on the title bar to find that only one pixel-wide point you can grab to drag the window around.
- agent327 3y ago
  The principle by which this is organized, and mind I'm not saying it's a good one, is available space. Screen space is extremely valuable, so the ribbon contents are constrained in two ways. The first is that the ribbon cannot be so large that it fills up the entire screen, because then you cannot see the thing you are working on. The second is that, once a size for the ribbon was chosen, not using some of those pixels was a crime against usability, so any empty space had to be filled, whether the functions are appropriate in that location or not. This, then, leads to a massive overuse of tabs (because the available space is vastly insufficient), and incomprehensible icons (because they take up less space). Don't worry though: there will be tool tips, like little mini-menus, so eventually you can figure out what all this stuff is. A menu bar doesn't have to deal with any of these problems: it only takes up space while you are actively engaging with it, instead of permanently obscuring your content. It can therefore take as much space as it needs, so functions can have a clear, textual label. It also has a natural hierarchical structure, so things don't need to be placed in non-obvious locations. It's a vastly superior solution to the problem the ribbon tries to solve, with its only flaws being, not being 'hip' and not working well on a phone. Menu bars were the single greatest thing that ever happened to user interfaces: they made functionality discoverable in a way that earlier applications (who relied on countless magic key combos) could only dream of. Before the menu bar, an application needed a manual, and you _had_ to read it. After the menu bar, you could just look in the menu, and it taught you what functions were available, how to access them, and even how to access them from the keyboard if you needed them frequently. Getting rid of it was the stupidest thing designers could have done.