I've been using the ribbon UI in Office frequently for years, and still find its usability inferior to the old menu system. Aside from its poor usability, I dislike the visual clutter of having all the functions visible all the time. Personally, I'm less productive thanks to the ribbon UI.

Well, what do I know... I'm just one data point... probably an outlier.

The thing I hate about the ribbon is that it's not linear - you can't scan it like a drop-down menu. It's a lot harder to find something if you don't already know where it is.

You know you can disable the ribbon so it's not shown unless you click the "drop" it like you would a menu, right?

IME there is a strong divide in opinions on the Ribbon interface. Almost all "everyday users" I know came down in favour after getting used to it. Most of the "power users" found it frustrating.

Given that the former group is much, much larger in practice, it's hard to blame Microsoft for making the switch, even if it does invite strong and vocal criticism from some people with legitimate gripes. I suppose this is the inevitable burden of designing some the most widely used business software on the planet.

Honestly, I think MS should've learned from what they did on the desktop: just give me a big searchable menu and the power to pin things onto the bar. Everybody's workflow is different.

And while the groupings of various formatting and editing tools is sensible, their constant mucking with the "File" menu is inscrutable and frustrating.

I used to always make a custom toolbar with the items I frequently used. Then later, when I had to, I would go into the menu to find the other items I needed. It was nice having familiar icons for my most-used functions and then having text-based labels neatly organized in the menu for the other functions.

The way the ribbon had it all (or lots of items I didn't regularly use) always visible irritated me and made it hard to quickly find the things I wanted without wading through the things I didn't. I've gotten used to it somewhat and I no longer keep Office 2003 installed, but I still end up searching for ways to do things now and again.

You can still add a bunch of functions to the "quick access toolbar" which is still open at the top of the screen even if you minimize the ribbon.

This is pretty much my exact reaction to the article. That was the exact line that gave me pause, then I looked up at the byline and saw Dvorak's name.

I do find his pining for the failed WinFS particularly odd, though. It's something that was pretty much intended to back up the kind of anti-desktop model he's complaining about.

I feel so much better now, I did the same thing. It's such a weird list, too. Doesn't he know about putting more than one app on the screen in Windows 8.1?

The new fs is all about putting your data first. The new UI is all about putting apps first.

Wait, how do you go from "result of a lot of actual user testing" (PM who had the new ribbon designed, sold internally and implemented hosts and evaluates "user testing") to treating it as a truth?

My impression is that by the time companies are large enough to have "actual user testing" going on, they have lost the ability to make something truly nice and coherent, the naive "ribbon" being a prime example. I know it's been years, but I haven't gotten my gunslinger muscle memory from the old menu-days back.

The menu system was hardly "coherent". At least functions are nicely sorted into meaningful groups now.

The new Ribbon is basically a menu that is built out of extendable XML parts that can grow and shrink on context.

I don't see why its bad at all frankly. It is most definitely a win from a user-experience perspective. Even more so... its a win from a developer perspective.

A single XML file can serve as a consistent menu across old-style C++ COM programs or even be used in the new .NET / C# programs. You no longer have to worry about resizing icons to the user's screen, Ribbons automatically stretch or shrink as necessary.

Just from an API perspective, they are far more powerful and consistent way to communicate between the user and the program.

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Menus of old can be well designed, but they won't be consistently designed across all programs.

That said, the older menu system of MS Word was well designed. The real issue was that they totally reorganized everything in a feeble attempt to get people to start using the more advanced style options of MS Word.

"Properly" using MS Word involves using it more like LaTeX or HTML: you use semantic markup, and then later style your document. (or use a style that is consistent with the rest of your office).

But people would rather just hit the bold button or italics button. They don't want automatically generated table of contents or figure charts... they want to manually type that stuff in... like a typewritter from the 80s or something.

I don't know, I can agree that the new Ribbon interface makes it harder to do certain things in Word, but that was unfortunately the purpose. People need to learn the semantic-markup style of Word and start using better methodologies to organize their Word Documents. But no one seems to put in the time or effort to learn how to use the programs they use every day.

Anyway, I've put in the effort to learn the "new way" Microsoft wants you to use MS Word. And I personally agree with Microsoft, documents are much more consistent, and much easier to update styles consistently across the whole document when you focus on styles first and foremost. Hiding the Bold and Italics buttons (and several other popular... but "wrong" features) was a wakeup call indeed.

The problem is that most users don't like being told that "they're using the program wrong". Part of it is truth (really, the new way is better). Part of it is business based though (Using a document editor as a fancy typewritter means you're ignoring a lot of useful features... and are probably better off using the much simpler Google Docs, or OSS like Abiword)

I stopped using MS Office entirely with the introduction of the ribbon. Granted, that's about when OpenOffice.org was about on par. I now use LibreOffice which I find, in many ways, superior to Microsoft Office.

And don't even get me started on the complete idiocy of ALL CAPS MENUS. It's demonstrably proven that all caps has a big negative impact on readability. To include ALL CAPS as part of the UI is just asinine.

I know, I am a dinosaur that forgot to die but... you'll take Office 2007 from my cold dead hands. My wife, however, left it because it doesn't open newer Word formats; she uses OpenOffice.

I really still didn't get the "better" on the Ribbon interface.

Is it? Shortcuts are not discoverable anymore, most actios are hidden within tiny icons (or dialogs full of tabs, oppened from actions hidden within tiny icons), often there is no logical grouping of the actions (ok, maybe the old menu wasn't better), ribbons appear and disappear out of nowhere, and there are hiden ribons that take a Google search to get.

I quite like the "ribbon" idea, but the Office's implementation? I see no reason to think that it's more productive, and I certainly do not feel more productive on it even after years of training.

By the way, MS also had lots of actual user testing supporting their decision to take the start menu away and maximizing every window.

CAN WE GET RID OF ALL CAPS IN MENUS?

All caps is yet another poor choice. Microsoft seems to have a knack for deteriorating as many things as it improves in each new version of Office or Windows.