Microsoft Ribbon UI Debate

For me, the ribbon interface makes it difficult to find things, unless they happen to be on the default ribbon.The classical menu is a tree structure. The first level is horizontal in the menu bar, every other level is vertical and opens when you click the previous level. You can easily go inspect the entire structure if you are looking for something that you use rarely and don't remember where it is.Also, the items are ordered by topic ("file-related things here, editing-related

The ribbon bar is much more directed at discoverability for beginners, while the old design corresponds to features hidden behind menus under menus. So you being a sporadic user would (should) fare better with the Ribbon bar, it’s just probably that you remember the older version and change is painful.

I think it is simply whether you are used to them only. My first time using Office is Offline 2007, the first Office with ribbons. When I want to use "old" UI in Office 2003 or LibreOffice(turning off ribbon), I also have problem finding the feature I want.

Here are my observations, fwiw: A few of my clients choose the same route: Turn off the newer Windows XP Start Menu of two columns and go back to Classic Win98 single column. I honor their choices and leave their systems the way they want them.But after forcing myself to use the newer version, I have found I can get to programs faster from the Start Menu by having Printers, Control Panel, My Computer, Network Neighborhood, etc. on the Start Menu, and keep my Desktop less cluttered.Likewis

Interesting it’s possible that we have different priorities, but I’m not bothered by UI inconsistencies. I use chrome, office, adobe suite, a trading application, games, VSCode, they all have different interfaces that I know how to navigate. I agree that the settings can be tough. Half the time you are in “new” stuff and half the time you’re pulling up the screens from XP. I just google what I need to do though, and never have trouble getting it done.

The tabs in explorer seems good. Hopefully they’re keyboard shortcut friendlyI don’t see anything about addressing the UI paradigm/look chaos though? That would help with usability. Since 10 I can’t find anything in settings anymore and googling it is becoming less effective too with each change

None of modern UIs are built the way I’d like to work with tool apps as an amateur, nonpro, jack of all trades master of none. I only use a small subset of functions. Old programs which had programmable toolbars in 98/2k+ era were the most useful in that regard. I just set these toolbars (and key bindings) up for frequent functions and was fine with it up until when it disappeared. It reappeared in windows start menu, but that’s it. Configurable UIs are obsolete and over, so we have to expl

It feels like you jumped past something that I remember being a big deal - The Ribbon. I remember when Office introduced it, and people hated it. It goes against your comment on using words instead of icons. But it seems like a useful solution for programs as feature lists grow and menus (and even sub-menus) become unwieldy so I've made my peace.Personally, I think the Windows OS itself is one of the most problematic offenders. How can you expect better from third party developers, when

This is awesome. The current system doesn't work so well since menu items don't fit well into separate categories. In fact, nothing does. One example is the quite arbitrary division into 'File, Edit, View etc'. A discussion I hear quite often between people sitting together in front of word is -'Try that menu. Oh, that one then? No? Let me have a look'.Another example is the windows control panel, who didn't switch to flat view straight away? And grouping on the start menu into categories of pro

Because of issues like this I miss the start menu of windows.