Ribbon Menus

Blisterman

What on earth is the advantage of these?

Nearly every program has these now, and to me, not used to them, they're a massive pain in the ass.
It takes much much longer to find a tool in anything compared to the traditional drop down menus.

I assume there's a reason that programs are putting these in. Are they actually faster when you get used to them?

homer911

I used to hold that opinion, but once you get used to them, they are generally a considerable improvement (it can still be hard to find little used functions)

If you are using Office 2007, then this little download may keep you happy:

http://blogs.howtogeek.com/mysticgeek/2009/03/08/get-office-2003-menus-in-the-office-2007-ribbon/

Naikon

This is why I stick to OpenOffice.

Not as featured as Microsoft Office, but considering the price, it's a
reasonable compromise considering you would have to be a hardcore
office junkie to label it as "crap".

Office 2007 is installed on all the college computers, and the
interface is barely functional. Simplicity = key.

Capt'n Midnight

The thing I don't like about the ribbon is it is difficult to find features you rarely use but really need them then. Some stuff on the print settings menu I still haven't bothered figuring out.

It took me a while to figure out that openoffice used charts instead of graphs and semicolons instead of commas. Which is fair enough considering they might have to be done that way for copyright reasons.

But changing the UI ,
OK it might save time for someone who is using the product a lot on a daily basis , but for many users the time lost in retraining and faffing probably covers that.

Overheal

havent used it much myself. ive probably logged 2 hours to date in front of a ribbon interface. but one thing that is obviously lacking from almost all of these application UIs is a ****ing search bar.

Youd think office 07' would have one, similar to Vista Start.

stevenmu

I love the ribbon in Office 2007, it's made it much easier for me to find what I need. Then again I never really use Office a whole lot anyway, so I wouldn't have known where those same features were in the old menus.

2Scoops

The idea of the ribbon is to make the learning curve easier for novice users, but it is to the considerable inconvenience of experienced users. I 'get' why the ribbon was put in, but not making it optional was seriously uncool.