The ribbons in Microsoft Office 2010 are awesome!

[nrundy]

I got to use Office 2010 for the first time this week at work. The ribbons sure made creating documents in the Word program a lot easier.

The three big factors that I love are:
1.) minimizing the ribbons saves a lot of vertical space. It creates an uncomplicated minimalist look.

2.) all formatting can be accomplished with easy, efficient keyboard shortcuts. Press ALT and all shortcuts are displayed. It makes it so easy to change the page layout or font--all with just a couple key presses.

3.) it is all customizable.

I sure hope LibreOffice adopts the use of Ribbons in the near future. I'm not a fan of most things Microsoft. But they got Office 2010 right. I wish I could install it in Ubuntu.

[aaaantoine]

The ribbon was designed to replace drop-down menus, correct?

*Looks again at top panel in Unity...*

[nrundy]

I don't know why it was created. But it is easy and intuitive to use. The keyboard shortcut control is superb!

[Spice Weasel]

If LibreOffice adopts the use of Ribbons in the near future, I sure hope you can revert back to the old interface.

[nrundy]

If LibreOffice adopts the use of Ribbons in the near future, I sure hope you can revert back to the old interface.

Why? What does the old interface have that's so great?

[Npl]

The ribbon was designed to replace drop-down menus, correct?

*Looks again at top panel in Unity...*Nope, its supposed to clean up the toolbars by automatically rearranging and adding/removing options. The idea is that most of the options are only used depending on your current focus, so instead of having tons of options that are greyed out (but at a fixed place), or few options and you have to dig through menu for the remaining ones, you have a totally dynamic toolbar that only has the valid options arranged and grouped in useful manner depending on what you actually do.

Its a quite good idea IMHO, but its a pain if you arent used to it. Not all programs would benefit from it, but word processors or image manipulation software with tons of options certainly does.
Thats from my limited experience using it, Im not really in the secretary stuff =)

[wojox]

2010? I've been using them since 2007.

[forrestcupp]

Are they better in 2010 than they are in 2007?

[nrundy]

Are they better in 2010 than they are in 2007?

I've read online that 2010 was refined. And 2010 are more customizable. I have no experience with 2007 though.

[Throne777]

I absolutely hate them. It's like when Windows changed the control panel to the XP version (simply having the list of programs was 'Classic View'), which made it ten times more difficult to find the program you wanted.

Do not want.

[nrundy]

I absolutely hate them. It's like when Windows changed the control panel to the XP version (simply having the list of programs was 'Classic View'), which made it ten times more difficult to find the program you wanted.

Do not want.

What?

What exactly is the problem with the ribbons?

[kostageas]

I love MSOffice Word and Powerpoint 2010. When I got this laptop for my birthday my mum bought me a family pack of MSO and I installed it on Win7 and it was pure awesome. But Ubuntu is more important to me, and I didn't want to dual boot. I sure hope it works in WINE soon... or Libre Office adopt ribbons. :popcorn:

[Throne777]

What?

What exactly is the problem with the ribbons?

As I implied, I just found it made it more difficult to find the thing I wanted. Moving everything around is only intuitive if you happen to think in the way the programmer does, or thinks you might.

[nrundy]

As I implied, I just found it made it more difficult to find the thing I wanted. Moving everything around is only intuitive if you happen to think in the way the programmer does, or thinks you might.

What moves around?

The ribbons and controls/buttons I worked with didn't move.

[LowSky]

Here is why I hate office 2007 and 2010:

They didn't change anything for nearly 20 years, and all of a sudden nothing is where it was. So now every guy in IT departments need to teach the entire workforce what the Ribbon is, and how to run there old macros.

They created a new document extension, except most of the world still relies on PDF and DOC. ODF was supposed to replace DOC, but the geniuses of Microsoft decided to create DOCX and not support ODF. Thanks dudes! Try explain why the DOCX I sent couldn't be opened by the company running Office 2000. Reopen document and resave in old DOC format then re-email and apologize to other company. God forbid it is time sensitive.

I'm sorry but there is no reason a Word processing applications needs to be pretty. All it needs to do is work.

[Throne777]

What moves around?

The ribbons and controls/buttons I worked with didn't move.

Oh I don't mean they move around in that sense. I mean that everything is shuffled around in comparison to older versions of Office (like 2003, for example).

[nrundy]

Here is why I hate office 2007 and 2010:

They created a new document extension, except most of the world still relies on PDF and DOC. ODF was supposed to replace DOC, but the geniuses of Microsoft decided to create DOCX and not support ODF. Thanks dudes! Try explain why the DOCX I sent couldn't be opened by the company running Office 2000. Reopen document and resave in old DOC format then re-email and apologize to other company. God forbid it is time sensitive.

I'm sorry but there is no reason a Word processing applications needs to be pretty. All it needs to do is work.

These are valid criticisms. But they have nothing to do with the great design of the ribbons.




They didn't change anything for nearly 20 years, and all of a sudden nothing is where it was. So now every guy in IT departments need to teach the entire workforce what the Ribbon is, and how to run there old macros.


I figured out how to use the ribbons right away. No training courses needed.

I'd wager that the average person will intuitively figure out ribbon use before they'd figure out how to use the cryptic buttons and Application Menus that plague the current version of LibreOffice. Personally, I struggled learning how to find settings in OpenOffice. I had to search online for simple things. No such problems with Office 2010.

[nrundy]

Oh I don't mean they move around in that sense. I mean that everything is shuffled around in comparison to older versions of Office (like 2003, for example).

Come on, man. That's what you're complaining about? That everything isn't in the exact same place as a previous release? So learn the new placement, maybe there was a good reason it was changed.

[azangru]

If LibreOffice adopts the use of Ribbons in the near future, I sure hope you can revert back to the old interface.


I absolutely hate them.

I agree. I haven't used Office 2007 (or 2010) much since I migrated to Linux, and whenever I get to computers with these newer versions of MS Office, I find the ribbon interface harder to navigate than the classical one. Sure, if I absolutely had to work on Office 2007/2010 or if LibreOffice changed its interface to the ribbon one, I would learn it eventually, it's no rocket science, but why bother? The one we have is good enough.

[Throne777]

Come on, man. That's what you're complaining about? That everything isn't in the exact same place as a previous release? So learn the new placement, maybe there was a good reason it was changed.

Yeah, the reason was Microsoft needed to justify making users pay for a shiny new program when the old one worked just fine.

It's a program you use to write blocks of text. Why do I need shiny graphics and odd placements of things on a 'ribbon', when a simple menu does exactly everything you need in a simple list format?

[nrundy]

I agree. I haven't used Office 2007 (or 2010) much since I migrated to Linux, and whenever I get to computers with these newer versions of MS Office, I find the ribbon interface harder to navigate than the classical one. Sure, if I absolutely had to work on Office 2007/2010 or if LibreOffice changed its interface to the ribbon one, I would learn it eventually, it's no rocket science, but why bother? The one we have is good enough.

I don't think it is good enough. Yeah, you can write a document for the most part, but the design and use of an enormous amount of buttons and other design decisions hurt overall usability.

LibreOffice also lacks the ease and efficient use of keyboard shortcuts that exist in 2010. This is huge because people are typing documents, ie, not using the mouse. The keyboard shortcuts conserve focus, time, and energy. LibreOffice can't be used as efficiently and intuitively as Office 2010, ie, more time and training is needed to not only write a document but also to learn your way around the settings and formatting options.

[joozzt]

Keyboard Shortcuts are good, great.
Locations that change functionality are bad. A person looks for functionality on the place where he/she expects it to be.
A person looks for functionality all the time.
It's easier to remember things if they remain at the same spot, throughout the daily life-cycle of a piece of software.
This is not old-fashioned or conservative, this is very effective.

Not all things new are great, open your mind, be objective. Many new things are great.
Ribbons, in my opinion, are not.
Unity, in my opinion, partly great.

[pookiebear]

I don't know why it was created. But it is easy and intuitive to use. The keyboard shortcut control is superb!


three extra steps to get the options. 2 extra to do many other tasks.... bleh.
there are addons to put it back to classic. I will use them.

[Bart_D]

I got to use Office 2010 for the first time this week at work. The ribbons sure made creating documents in the Word program a lot easier.

The three big factors that I love are:
1.) minimizing the ribbons saves a lot of vertical space. It creates an uncomplicated minimalist look.

2.) all formatting can be accomplished with easy, efficient keyboard shortcuts. Press ALT and all shortcuts are displayed. It makes it so easy to change the page layout or font--all with just a couple key presses.

3.) it is all customizable.

I sure hope LibreOffice adopts the use of Ribbons in the near future. I'm not a fan of most things Microsoft. But they got Office 2010 right. I wish I could install it in Ubuntu.

Agreed 100%.

Sorry, but Microsoft Office is leaps and bounds ahead of Open Office or Libre Office. It is by far the best office suite and the main reason why I can't get rid of windows.

Take that "Open" Office!

[Copper Bezel]

I guess I should have fairly low expectations for a word processor after getting used to deciding between OpenOffice, OpenOffice with a hat, and OpenOffice with a different icon. (And, occasionally, Softmaker Office, AbiWord, etc.) Correspondingly, I actually have some appreciation for MS Word 2007 and 2010. However, the realtime formatting changes and the lovely context toolbars that appear when you need them and then really, actually, legitimately get out of the way are the main reasons why.

I don't really care for the tabbed toolbar, because the way it's sorted is just as arbitrary as the menus or slightly moreso and harder for me to memorize. I like the auto-hide feature, but that rather expresses my feelings about the ribbon in general. If 2010 allows the user to define the toolbars completely, with only the widgets desired sorted as desired, I could get into that.

I don't think either app has an advantage in the keyboard department. I didn't realize that the ribbon could be navigated that way, but it sounds as clumsy as hitting Alt and using the arrow keys (which I sometimes do if I don't have an accelerator for something, honestly, so that I don't have to move my hands.)

My real favorite thing about MS Word is that they now support .odt, though. = D

[Throne777]

My real favorite thing about MS Word is that they now support .odt, though. = D

Took them long enough.

[Copper Bezel]

Yes, quite.

[tgalati4]

It's not like MS had to reverse engineer the ODT format. I prefer emacs (or vi) and LaTex for my documents. MS Office is overkill for 90% of the stuff that gets created.

Abiword and gnumeric handle that 90% just fine. For that last 10%, there's LaTex.

[uRock]

Why? What does the old interface have that's so great?
Some people just don't like change. I do though. I never use OpenOffice anymore. It is too slow to start and still has compatibility issues with MS Office. I use the Office function in Hotmail to create and edit documents.

[uRock]

I'm sorry but there is no reason a Word processing applications needs to be pretty. All it needs to do is work.
That is the truth. If it weren't for people at my school wanting documents in docx, then I'd probably be using Google Docs. I have taken a liking to some of the cloud applications.

[Spr0k3t]

I could argue against the ribbon-face until my debating opponent was blue in the face. The point behind the ribbon... it all comes down to personal preference, nothing else. I hate the ribbon. It's commonly called the "Face-Roll" with those who I work with as you have to roll your face across the keyboard trying to figure out the variances between the old keyboard shortcuts and the new ones. Thank god for Open/LibreOffice... makes it easier to support the questions that come through.

So, if the new ribbon-face comes to LibreOffice, fine... just make an easy to find option for people like me who hate it to go back to the "old-layout".

[Copper Bezel]

I'm sorry but there is no reason a Word processing applications needs to be pretty. All it needs to do is work.

I missed this one somehow, but that's absurd. I spend as much time in OOo and AbiWord as I do in a browser. Of course, my definition of "pretty" is well met enough by AbiWord with the toolbars turned off.

[weasel fierce]

We've been using Office 2010 for a while at work, and I must say I prefer the older version.

I'll take openoffice or koffice over 2010, though I'll put them equal with older versions of Office.

But then, I'll put either of them all equal to Final Writer on my amiga, so who knows.

[3rdalbum]

The ribbon itself might be good, but the rest of Word (2007) is terrible. It tries to write and do some of the formatting for you, with the end result of you wrestling with it so you can actually make things look the way you typed them or the way you wanted them to look.

Word has been a little bit like this for years, but 2007 is truly dreadful. And I don't have much hope that 2010 will be any better on this front.

[Copper Bezel]

The ribbon itself might be good, but the rest of Word (2007) is terrible. It tries to write and do some of the formatting for you, with the end result of you wrestling with it so you can actually make things look the way you typed them or the way you wanted them to look.

Agreed, but OpenOffice is no better on this point. I honestly wish someone would fork AbiWord and work in some basic, sensible features like a GUI method for changing the default save format, support for the system Recent Documents list, and support for .odt and .doc(x) markup and comments; as it is, it seems like the ideal interface for a word processor wrapped around a core application that refuses to play nicely with others, as it were.

[3rdalbum]

Agreed, but OpenOffice is no better on this point.

Go-OO and Libreoffice are definitely better than Word 2007 in this context, although about the same level of annoyance as the version of Word before that. It could be improved.

[Copper Bezel]

Honestly, I guess I just haven't used 2007 or 2010 enough to get a sense of the difference from 2003. Point conceded.

Even in OO, I have the feeling that the only "aid" I need is the spell check underlines (because typos happen and can be easy to miss.) I want a big button to turn off the rest. But it's also the only writing aid that AbiWord has (at least enabled by default), and AbiWord is also, like, actually GTK; thus my frustration with the very basic things it can't do.

[nrundy]

I've been messing around with LibreOffice Writer and I'm pretty impressed. So much so that I have to retract the praise I leveled onto Microsoft Office 2010. I gotta admit I posted my praise of Office 2010 prematurely. One of the coolest things I've discovered in LibreOffice is the ability to access Formatting options from the Right-Click (Context) menu. This is AWESOME!

One of the major things I liked about the Ribbons in Office 2010 was the vertical space saving and the keyboard shortcuts. BUT I can achieve the same results with LibreOffice now that I've explored it:

1.) LibreOffice will support Global Menus natively with Unity in the future (currently you have to install the lo-menubar). This = vertical space saving.
2.) users can customize the toolbars and icons of LibreOffice to display only what they need. This = vertical space saving.
3.) keyboard shortcuts get you to just what you need using the ALT key and the Context Menu. This = ribbon keyboard shortcuts not necessary.

I have to say, I can achieve the same awesomeness with LibreOffice that I can with Microsoft Office 2010 :popcorn:

Microsoft Office 2010 isn't as great as I initially thought. LibreOffice FTW!

[doorknob60]

Some people just don't like change. I do though. I never use OpenOffice anymore. It is too slow to start and still has compatibility issues with MS Office. I use the Office function in Hotmail to create and edit documents.
I have't tried that, but I do use Google Docs for the same reasons. It's good enough for everything I need (including making Powerpoints and stuff), and then I don't have to install a bloated office suite, and as a nice bonus all my documents are available in the same place, whether I'm at home, school, or anywhere else. Also, DocsToGo for my iPod Touch supports Google Docs, so I can type stuff up on there when I need to.

[alaukikyo]

http://th02.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2011/016/f/7/libre_office_mockup_2_unity_by_usrnametaken-d37byef.png this is much better if implemented .

[HoKaze]

I'm normally somebody who adapts fairly well to change and tends to almost enjoy exploring the interfaces of a new, unknown program...so long as the design isn't too poor to cause great frustration. I'm not saying the ribbon is a poor design, but it's certainly not something that has ever "clicked" with me back when I had to use Office 2007 for everything for a while and to do this day I still don't see what the fuss is about.

Of course, some of my frustration was more to do with MS Office 2007 in general rather than the ribbon interface and some of the points previously mentioned such as wrestling with the program over control and file formats were certainly reasons to avoid the newer versions of Office.
I've had quite a few people with Office 2007 or 2010 ending up being shown to OpenOffice or LibreOffice and every business, school, etc I know of locally is using Office 2003 at the very latest. Don't fix what isn't broken. Menus make some degree of sense so long as the items are placed under the right menu and the names are obvious even to someone with almost no experience using computers and they've been used in GUIs for years. To try and go against that seems illogical.


tl;dr: Ribbons don't do it for me, Office 2007 and 2010 seem to mostly be poorly-received, don't fix what isn't broken.