
Ribbons (2007) - frosted-flakes
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/cmd-ribbons
======
orev
When the ribbons first came out, all the techies I knew groused about them
with all the technical reasons that people have mentioned here (which I feel
are mostly weak arguments and reek of resistance to change). I wasn’t sure
myself.

Until I saw some non-IT people using them for the first time. They LOVED them.
They could easily see and get things done way better than before. The people
who didn’t have the confidence to poke around in traditional menus had no
problem looking through the ribbons and trying things out. In many cases they
started doing things that they had no idea existed. The ribbons really opened
up these tools for the users, which is really the whole point.

In the case of the ribbons, the techies who rail against them are
unequivocally wrong. The arguments against them are the same ones we heard
when going from DOS to Windows. It completely loses sight of the point of IT,
which is to allow the users to be productive (and no, just because it broke
some muscle memory you had, that is not an argument that it broke
productivity, that’s an argument that you don’t like change), not to force
people to remember random incantations because the greybeard says is “the
right way” to do it.

~~~
badsectoracula
> Until I saw some non-IT people using them for the first time.

It shouldn't be surprising that people who hadn't any prior experience would
be fine with ribbons, since it is mainly the people who had experience with
the same applications but without ribbons that saw the decrease in their
productivity.

> and no, just because it broke some muscle memory you had, that is not an
> argument that it broke productivity, that’s an argument that you don’t like
> change

And that is a very good argument, change for the sake of change (or worse, for
something inferior) is a waste of time. Building muscle memory is a _very good
thing_ when it comes to UIs, the _entire point_ of Windows having a
standardized UI in the first place was that people who spent time to learn
some program's UI they could apply the same knowledge on another program's UI
that they hadn't used before.

Ribbon works against that and as a quick example check File Explorer, WordPad,
OneNote (the Windows 10 app) and Windows Paint that all use ribbon-ish
interfaces that come with Windows. They all look different, have different
tabs and even their default state is different. The closest they have in
having a common UI is the File tab and OneNote doesn't even have that.

Ribbon applications not only do not look like other applications but sometimes
they do not look like older versions of themselves, since they had to move
stuff around to make space for new or changed functionality.

And not all ribbon implementations even behave the same - Windows itself
probably comes with 3-4 different implementations that all have little weird
differences and that doesn't count all the 3rd party implementations (i think
there are more ribbon implementations out there than applications actually
using ribbons :-P).

~~~
WorldMaker
On that last point, it sounds like the Fluent Design team is working hard to
merge all the Ribbon implementations. That ongoing effort is interesting to
watch because it is going to move everyone's cheese again soon in Word and
Excel (and PowerPoint), as the modern Fluent control is the "Simplified
Ribbon" control that OneNote today uses (and Outlook optionally; and all the
Word/Excel/PowerPoint web apps that people don't pay attention to). (As the
Fluent design team decided 2D ribbon layouts were too complex both for
implementers and users; the 2007 Office implementations had a ton of work put
into UX testing the 2D flows and basically no other Ribbon implementation
did.)

It feels ironic/iconic that the Simplified Ribbon just looks like a menu bar
and single command bar again, but with the years of insight that "tabs"
instead of "menus" gives people a better sense of "space" than traditional
pull down menus used to.

~~~
badsectoracula
Merge all implementations or have all of their programs use the same
implementation? I find the former a little weird since there is, e.g., an MFC
implementation and then a Win32 implementation (available as a COM object) and
AFAIK those two are completely separate (i think the MFC predates the Win32
one and was made by some external company) and "modern apps" use XAML which is
completely different from the MFC/Win32 stuff.

~~~
WorldMaker
Bit of both, I believe. On the one hand, Office as the first Ribbon adopter
has to maintain a lot of backwards compatibility (especially for add-ins), and
so likely can't move all of its ribbons to a single implementation (though
OneNote supposedly is using the WinRT/XAML control). Plus the React Native for
Web control (Fabric UI) will always have to be a different from platform-
specific implementations.

But the impression I have is that "soon" the MFC/Win32 one and the WPF/XAML
ribbon implementations will both be marked deprecated and developers
encouraged to use the WinRT/UWP/XAML one (which OneNote supposedly will
continue to share moving forward), with Win32 (and WPF) developers expected to
use XAML Islands.

(Where "soon" is some release milestone I'm fully not sure about. WinUI 3.0
General Availability, presumably? I _think_ that's still scheduled for "second
half 2020".)

------
maliker
I confess, I am a ribbon hater. For three main reasons:

1) It kills muscle memory by changing the size and location of the buttons
depending on the window size. And not just the size, but also their shape,
appearance and place in dropdown hierarchies (i.e. top level versus behind a
dropdown). So even after years of using MS Office with the ribbon I still hunt
for commands.

2) It encourages multiple copies of the same command. So instead of learning
the one place font-size (e.g.) shows up, you end up hunting every time through
3 or 4 tabs for the place you saw it last.

3) The UI features it was meant to replace was left in the program further
increasing the number of areas you have to search through. Looking at
Powerpoint as an example, it has the ribbon, formatting panes, traditional
formatting dialogs, and the right click quick options menu. There are features
available on all of them, but there are also options missing on some but not
others. Sometimes I find myself hunting through 3 or 4 of these places for
some obscure (e.g. table padding) option.

This opinion is based on using the ribbon in MS Office, which was the first
and (I would hope, based on the team's resources) best implementation. Maybe
somebody uses the ribbon to its fullest.

I buy their pitch that they studied beginner users and those people had an
easier time with the ribbon. But for advanced users, this interface is a
nightmare. And can't really be avoided.

~~~
JohnFen
I couldn't agree more.

I hate the ribbon so very much. You stated the many problems with it better
than I, but here's why it actively makes me angry:

It takes a lot of space, and seems to always make it very hard to find the
things that I need to use. If I have no option but to use the ribbon, my
productivity using that software plummets because I so often have to take a
lot of time to find the operation that I need. It's incredibly frustrating.

~~~
WorldMaker
Did you know you can scroll through Ribbon tabs on most (every?)
implementation with your scroll wheel? I've been surprised how often that
seems to differentiate between people that think finding things in a ribbon is
hard/slow versus easy/quick.

Beyond that, have you tried navigating a Ribbon via keyboard? It has also
surprised me how many people that liked the old menus because of keyboard
navigation don't realize a lot of the same tricks and navigations work exactly
the same (Alt, arrow keys, Esc, letters, etc).

~~~
JohnFen
> Did you know you can scroll through Ribbon tabs on most (every?)
> implementation with your scroll wheel?

> Beyond that, have you tried navigating a Ribbon via keyboard?

Yes, to both of those things. Scrolling through the ribbon tabs doesn't
address or ease my issue with the ribbon (which is trying to find the
operation I want). The problem isn't how quickly I can scroll through the
ribbon, but that finding things in it is hard. That said, a good UI solution
wouldn't require me to scroll anything like that in the first place.

Keyboard shortcuts let me bypass the ribbon, which is good, but they don't
help me with things that I don't do all the time because I won't remember the
shortcuts. Aside from the waste of screen space, the ribbon doesn't bother me
when doing the routine things.

~~~
WorldMaker
Not just keyboard shortcuts, but keyboard navigation: you can press-and-
release Alt and then "walk" through the Ribbon by keyboard: press arrows to
switch tabs, move through sections of commands, drill into dropdowns, then
Escape to "go back up" a level.

In terms of finding specific things, every version of the Ribbon in Office has
had an accompanying search box (today labeled "Tell me what you want to do",
and since the beginning labelled with a light-bulb icon, the last remnant of
Clippy iconography, RIP). I still think it would be great if search results
had an option like "Show me where to find this on the Ribbon next time", but
the icons in the search results are the same as on the Ribbon and sometimes
just seeing the icon in the search results can help you find it better the
next time.

~~~
JohnFen
> you can press-and-release Alt and then "walk" through the Ribbon by keyboard

Ah, I see. That doesn't really address my issues, though.

> every version of the Ribbon in Office has had an accompanying search box

It does? I can't find anything like that in O365 Word at all (I haven't
checked the other apps). Regardless, that just underscores how bad the ribbon
is -- a search function shouldn't be necessary.

~~~
MikusR
The search box is at the very top and in the middle of Word. With the text
"Search".

------
frosted-flakes
I stumbled across this page when I was in early high school, and for someone
new to computers in general it was a fascinating read. It taught me that user
interface design is something that people actually do for a job and that when
done well is delightful to use. Oh, and it set an example of clear,
instructive writing with illustrations done right that I think influenced me
quite a lot.

Some people don't like the Ribbon, but I love it. As a new user back in the
day and a "power user" today, I think it's loads better than the semi-random
arrangement of cryptic menus and toolbars we had before.

In my opinion, Microsoft Word 2007 did it best. Later iterations did away with
the app button and menu in favour of the obstructive "backstage" menu, and I
don't think the flat design does it any favours.

~~~
blackandblue
> I think it's loads better than the semi-random arrangement of cryptic menus
> and toolbars we had before.

we had meaningful, sensibly grouped, sets of standard icons, but graphics
designers got bored and thought those should be updated.

i like the ribbon but i think standard icons are better.

~~~
franga2000
> sensibly grouped

That joke seriously made my day! Where is the global settings/properties menu
for Firefox? Photoshop? Eclipse? Premiere Pro? Android Studio?

Between those 5 apps, some of the same category or even same vendor, you can
find that one very ubiquitous entry under: Tools, File, Window, Edit, File but
there's 4 of them.

~~~
eska
So instead of replacing the entire menu paradigm with ribbons, how about just
grouping things better, wouldn't that solve the problem?

On Mac OS for example the "Preferences" item is always in the same location
and has the same shortcut, throughout first party and third party apps.

~~~
wtallis
Yeah, I think at least half the problem is that among those 5 cross-platform
applications, only some of them try to respect the native UI standards on all
platforms.

------
NotTheDr01ds
I was always surprised at the hatred that many (most) "power users" expressed
toward the Ribbon design.

To me, the greatest thing about it was that it exposed every Ribbon action
with an easily discoverable and repeatable key-sequence. Just hit the Alt key
once, and every top level category's hotkey showed up as a hover. Hit that
key, and the commands on the ribbon (or next level dropdown) were displayed.
"Paste Special", a very common action, became Alt+H+V+S. And you didn't have
to do finger twisters like Ctrl+Alt+V (all held down together) to achieve it.

And again, almost EVERY command was available in this way.

Sure, you could create your own hotkeys in versions of Office before this, but
the Ribbon brought almost every command within easy reach of those that hate
removing their fingers from the keyboard. It wasn't quite VIM (no command
mode), but it was a far sight better than anything than had existed before in
Office, where most of the advanced UI had been buried away in difficult-to-
automate AND navigate (either by keyboard or mouse) modal dialogs.

And by exposing most of the UI to the keyboard, it also enabled easier
automation via utilities like AutoHotkey.

All-in-all, it was a power user's dream, but I definitely see how it was
harder for a mouse user to develop the muscle memory on the Ribbon vs an icon
bar. That, however, I believe is simply a matter of having nearly 100% of the
UI be available via the Ribbon, vs. the 20% (or less) of icon bars. The always
present trade-off between power and ease-of-use, at least for the mouse user.

~~~
jkaptur
FYI, that was how the menus worked in previous versions (Alt-f for the file
menu, etc.), so ribbons didn’t expose any new functionality in that regard. In
fact, Microsoft bent over backwards to ensure that _every_ old pattern people
had used would continue to work exactly the same way.

~~~
NotTheDr01ds
I thought about mentioning this, but Menus still had a tendency to dead-end
into modal dialogs more often than not. A Ribbon command could still end up in
a modal, but often times the Ribbon design allowed more functionality to be
present in a non-modal way.

I worked for Lotus/IBM when Word Pro was being developed, and they came up
with the concept of a non-modal floating property bar (they called it the
"Info Bar") that pretty much eliminated modals entirely. While I don't recall
whether or not it was very keyboard friendly (I was still a mouse user at the
time), it definitely showed me that there was a better way than "modal dialogs
everywhere".

When I moved on from IBM and had to use Office, I remember how grating it was
every time I ended up in a modal dialog, so this was one more reason I was
excited to see the Ribbon come along (more than a decade after Word Pro's Info
Bar).

I've never looked to see, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of the MS
developers for Office 2007 came from Lotus/IBM, since it was a few years
earlier that IBM had really given up the Office Suite fight for good.

------
thrower123
I still despise the ribbon. I really would rather just have the old Office
2003 and previous configurable toolbars, that took up a quarter or a third of
the vertical space.

The only thing that I hate more than the Ribbon is the way that newer versions
of Office products will flash you to a full-screen page when you click on the
File menu. All I ever want to do there is do a Save As, and they have shitted
up the simple job of popping a save file dialog with all kinds of OneDrive and
Sharepoint nonsense.

~~~
MikusR
[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/archive/blogs/jensenh/the-s...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/archive/blogs/jensenh/the-size-of-things)

Word 2007 document area: 1007 x 573 pixels Word 97 document area: 979 x 573
pixels

Excel 97 document area: 1004 x 581 pixels Excel 2007 document area: 1008 x 534
pixels

~~~
thrower123
With all of the images broken/missing (they appear to be linked to a domain
that is owned by some domain squatter that is trying to get me to install a
skeezy Chrome extension), it's hard to actually compare, and tell what
toolbars are enabled on the old version.

But in Word 2003, everything that I ever had on the toolbar would fit into a
single row, and Word 2016's ribbon uses the same icons, and is three rows
high.

~~~
frosted-flakes
You can collapse the ribbon. Then pin all your commonly-used buttons to the
Quick Access _Toolbar_.

------
jwcacces
I look at the change to ribbons through the lens of: "Would they have done it
if they had viable competitors?", and I have to think that there's no way MS
would have. Everyone would have laughed their way right over to Word Perfect.

Perhaps it makes things easier for new users, but only without competitors
where they able to shoe-horn it in for everybody.

Now I use it on a Mac where there are still menus on the top and I can get
stuff done. I wish there was an option to enable the menus (and fine, leave
the ribbon if you must) on Windows.

------
vintagedave
When the ribbon was introduced, Microsoft asserted patent rights and asked for
a license in order to use it. In fact, you were not allowed to use ribbons in
your app without a license.

You can read about that here:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100719112606/http://blogs.msdn...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100719112606/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2006/11/21/licensing-
the-2007-microsoft-office-user-interface.aspx)

Since then, license text has mostly disappeared from Microsoft's site. The
license page no longer exists. You can't apply for one. I personally last saw
text referring to a license requirement in the ribbon MFC samples distributed
with Visual Studio. But the question if Microsoft requires a license or
asserts patent rights seems to still be open - there has been no statement
from Microsoft, and a quick google shows lots of people asking the same
question.

* [https://office-watch.com/2018/can-microsoft-office-ribbon-us...](https://office-watch.com/2018/can-microsoft-office-ribbon-used-developers/)

* [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/563312/is-the-ms-ribbon-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/563312/is-the-ms-ribbon-office-ui-license-worth-worrying-about)

* [https://www.infoq.com/news/2018/02/Ribbon-UI/](https://www.infoq.com/news/2018/02/Ribbon-UI/)

* and me: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095662](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095662)

~~~
WorldMaker
The impression I have is that Microsoft let the patent expire at the basic 7
year mark (~2014) as they deemed their UX R&D investment had given them enough
lead over competitors in the Office suite space (the primary applications that
required a paid license and were not allowed the free license). Around that
time Microsoft added Ribbons to Win32 and WPF as freely available controls
with no additional license. Fluent Design also seems working to add Ribbon
controls to all UI control toolkits with no mention of licensing or patent
rights (and seems to be working to move even Office to shared controls).

~~~
vintagedave
I hope you are right. I know that the ribbon control in Visual Studio 2017
still refers to needing a license.

------
frosted-flakes
I've changed the title to reflect that this was originally published around
2007 and I don't think it has changed significantly since. The date 2007 isn't
shown on the page, but I first read it around 2008 and it was published for
Microsoft Office 2007.

Edit: it may have been published in 2008, since at least one of the linked
pages has that date.

------
olav
I think ribbons are one of the great UX failures of the Microsoft Office
suite.

An alternative arrangement of functions are property palettes like they are
used in CAD tools, Adobe Photoshop, Open Office, or Apple Pages. There,
functions are not globally aranged in ribbons like "Start", "References", but
are presented in the context of a selected object.

For example, if I have selected an image, the topmost palette shows properties
applicable to an image. In addition, I get tabs with options for the placement
of the image in a text frame, and for the page the text frame is located on.
Very neat, not at all arbitrary, but reflecting the hierarchy of the objects I
am working with.

~~~
MikusR
That's how it works in Office. In if you select an image (might require
doubleclick) it shows stuff to do with that image.

------
pojntfx
I'm so happy new interface don't use ribbons but just CSD headerbars now. What
a terrible UX this stuff was.

~~~
matsemann
> What a terrible UX this stuff was.

Based on what? I see a lot of strong comments here, but little reasoning.

UX is more than feelings.

~~~
laumars
The below is my experiences based on menus+toolbars vs ribbon bar. Some detail
will be subjective but I've tried to add enough detail that can explain why
people considered it to be a "bad" UX:

Things were more discoverable in menus and the written title in the menu is
often more descriptive than an icon glyph (granted some items in the ribbon
bar does also have labels). You then also had the glyphs on the toolbars for
power users.

It meant that super frequent tasks you'd learn shortcut keys for. moderately
frequent tasks you'd learn the toolbar icon. And infrequent tasks you could
still find through the menus.

The idea of the ribbon bar was to make things more discoverable but the issue
is having everything presented in one workflow where icons are different
sized, some with or without labels and some hidden behind popup menus on the
ribbon bar, you make it harder for people to systematically search for
something specific that they can't recall where the option is.

Another benefit with the toolbar was customizability. That was great for
people to morph the UI around their requirements. This isn't possible with the
ribbon bar -- it's a one size fits all approach so for some people it will
work well but there are so many people that don't fit well.

~~~
frosted-flakes
> granted some items in the ribbon bar does also have labels

Nearly _all_ ribbon buttons have labels. That's part of the point of ribbons
(there's no room for labels on traditional toolbars). The only buttons that
don't have labels are well-known ones, all of which I think are on the Home
tab.

> Another benefit with the toolbar was customizability.

The ribbon (at least in Office) is _far_ more customisable than traditional
menubar+toolbars. Every part of the ribbon can be customised, and the Quick
Access Toolbar exists so that the common buttons that _you_ use can be
accessible even when the ribbon is collapsed.

I don't know why you dis-like the ribbon, because none of your arguments make
sense.

~~~
mcswell
"Every part of the ribbon can be customised" Afaik, that is not true. I tried
to do that just today with Outlook; I cannot remove the ribbons (ribbon
groups??) that I don't ever use, Send/Receive for example. (When you're
connected on a high speed connection, what's the point of that? But you can't
get rid of it.) Likewise, in Word I'm pretty sure you can't remove things like
the Mailings ribbon. (Mail Merge? How 1980s...)

Also, if I'm not mistaken you can't add commands to any of the existing
ribbons; you have to create a new one, even if you only want to add one
command.

It's been a long time since I've used a version of Office with menus
(sigh...), but IIRC you could change every part of it.

So on the contrary, if my memory serves, the menu was far more customizable
than the Office ribbon. (I don't know about toolbars, I never used them.)

------
UweSchmidt
A stunning disregard to millions, maybe billions of human hours spent learning
a menu-based UI of incredibly powerful and feature rich office applications,
where ultimately there is no obvious place for an option, feature or toggle;
at least offer consistency to make the learning worthwhile.

At the very least preserve the option to keep the old menu. But no, the
boardroom was convinced by a shiny presentation. Out with the old, in with the
new.

Now, trivial features are easier to find, advanced features are..somewhere
else. So you can't discover the advanced features next to the more common
ones.

The ribbon was the time when you could start to tell when websites or software
products had a new generation of product people taking over and changing
things around. You could feel the touch of a designer who hasn't loved or
really used the product much. All workflows have become weaker, dumbed down.
The important "save as..." icon, where I quickly place the thing somewhere
else before I proceed with my fleeting thought, is sabotaged by the delay on
the click on "File", the confusion why a menu opens slowly from the left, the
hunt downwards to my all-important click. Then, force me into a discussion
where to save the file. "Maybe in the cloud as that is what we're selling?"
Just no.

Now I won't ever go the extra mile and learn every last feature of an
application. Learn it, become fluent, yes. But my learning can only be
invested in permanent knowledge. Be it BASH or programming fundamentals. But
your UI, no thanks.

~~~
EdSharkey
I always thought Jobs was prescient to mandate that the menu bar appear as
part of the OS chrome on MacOS and not an individual application's chrome like
it was on Windows. Always-on menu prevented bored UX folks from EVER removing
the menu from the screen. Always active menu has felt clunky on Mac since the
advent of multiscreens and very wide screens, but I still appreciate this UX
design tenet.

The discoverability heavyweight champ always was and always will be the menu.

I wonder if Jobs ever discussed Always-on menu publicly and contrasted it with
Windows' approach.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Great point, makes me admire Jobs even more.

------
kirstenbirgit
Looking at this, it's clear a LOT of thought went into this, and it looks
great.

Computer geeks that hated this didn't realize how good it was because they
were familiar with the previous generations and don't like change.

The Word/Office 2007 UX design is probably some of Microsoft's best design
work ever.

~~~
JohnFen
Can we dispense with the "you hate it because you don't like change" argument
yet? It's an easy way to write off other people's opinions and often it's not
even close to being true.

It's particularly unlikely to be the reason when we're talking about something
that was introduced about 20 years ago because it's not "change" anymore.
Everyone is used to it now, and those that still dislike it don't dislike it
because "it's new".

~~~
kirstenbirgit
It's still new for some of these geeks that were already very experienced with
computers around the time when Ribbon was introduced. They've just kept hating
it since.

------
jerome-jh
I remember spending 1/2 hour (really!) with my wife looking for the "print"
menu entry after installing Office xyz, that first had "ribbons", on her
computer.

That's the kind of change that makes you hate computers, and computer
programmers.

------
specialist
The explicit goal of the ribbon design effort was to better manage the
complexity. Rather than simplify the underlying products.

Such is the conceit of Microsoft.

I watched the "The Story of the Ribbon". Twice. Just to be sure I properly
understood what happened.
[https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09](https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09)

It's a great example of a series of rational decisions yielding a terrible end
result.

Because they started with the wrong question.

IIRC, Jensen Harris said Office (or maybe just Word?) had something like 2,000
(or 20,000?) individual operations (commands plus modifiers). Their initial
premise was to better organize and present that dizzying number. Create the
perfect visual language taxonomy.

Instead of first trying to figure how to reduce that number.

\--

It's been a long, long time since I've used Microsoft products. I used to be
quite the Word buff. But you'll get the gist of this example:

Embedding an image within a body of text is a common task. With Word, it just
fucking sucks. There's an option for every little thing. Dozens of settings to
tweak. And predicting where that image lands, especially with reflow, is more
launch and pray than anything rational or deterministic.

But really, there's just 4, maybe 6. different ways any sane person would want
that image to be anchored. Just show a preview of those options and let the
user pick the result.

If someone needs something more fancy, they should opt to use a desktop
publishing app, which is actually built for this kind of work.

But no.

Word has to be all things to all people. So consequently becomes nothing for
anyone.

\--

TLDR: Microsoft hates their customers.

~~~
fowl2
as simple as possible _but no simpler_

