I hope it is configurable
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| theboomboomcars Aug 06, 2009 4:43 PM EDT |
My biggest complaint with the ribbon interface, other than it is not organized how I would do it, is that it occupies way too much screen space. Maybe an autohide feature or something. |
| Steven_Rosenber Aug 06, 2009 4:51 PM EDT |
Right now I don't care about the interface anywhere near as much as I do about the future of the project now that Oracle owns Sun. |
| tracyanne Aug 06, 2009 5:08 PM EDT |
NO NO NO NO NO F'ing NO. Why did they have to copy that piece of excrement that masquerades as a User Interface. I have to work with that Piece of Puss every day. It's stupid, it's difficult to find things Why must we copy the worst of Microsoft's Shite. A big selling point I've had "selling" Open Office.og has been that interface. Now some stupid, stupid idiotic stand in for a rectum wants to copy Microsoft's Ribbon menu. How stupid are some people? |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 06, 2009 5:39 PM EDT |
I agree with TracyAnne 100%. The ribbon is awful and occupies far too much space. Boomboom's suggestion of autohide would be even more awful. If there is one thing I hate more that screen space hungry UI features then it's screen space hungy UI features that jump at you when you don't need them. For me as well, one of the biggest selling points of OOo to Windows users has been the lack of that horror ribbon. |
| caitlyn Aug 06, 2009 7:18 PM EDT |
Configurable is good. So long as I can turn the stupid thing off and have the "classic" OO UI I'll be happy. Any other sort of configurability won't be good enough for me. |
| bigg Aug 06, 2009 7:32 PM EDT |
I have used MS Office periodically for a few months now. I think that the user interface on LyX is far superior. Not only is it easy to customize so that you see only what you want to see, the buttons don't take up so much space. LyX doesn't have the "tabbed" interface, because it's not needed. |
| TxtEdMacs Aug 06, 2009 8:07 PM EDT |
[serious - really] I had heard good things about Word 2007 and I blithely assumed that included the ribbon interface. However, in an actual encounter trying to help an insane individual* I found that a simple issue such as printing a document was so well hidden I ran across it by accident. Earlier I had diverted this individual by showing how easy I could open an emailed docx format document and print it using a 2.0.x version of OO.o if I was bent on wasting my time. That experience made me think the current interface for OO.o is a feature not a bug that should not be discarded hastily. [end serious - seriously, I think] YBT * Not me (this time). |
| NoCaDrummer Aug 06, 2009 11:46 PM EDT |
I agree with the general postings. The majority of the office productivity world has gotten used to (for better or worse) the arrangement of tools in the Microsoft Office suite, whether Word, Excel, or Powerpoint. One of the things I hear most at the office when our IT manager changes someone's Windows PC to MS Office 2007 is that people can't find the functions that they've been using for years. You just don't do major paradigm shifts on people - productivity goes WAY down when the learning curve goes way up.
I find the ribbons to be annoying, as the constantly shifting functions may not be what I'm interested in doing at the moment.. The first time I was presented with Office 2007 was 10 minutes before a presentation that I was supposed to do. Thank god they kept the F5 "play" function in PowerPoint, but I was unable to make any last-minute changes in the presentation. I was FURIOUS that someone had taken the presentation PC and changed the program without telling me.
That's not to say that someone completely new to an office productivity program wouldn't pick up (or maybe even prefer) the ribbons, but even the kids that are learning these programs in school AREN'T using 2007 w/ribbons, but something significantly older.
If they want to "experiment" with the ribbons, it's okay. But don't take the older interface completely away. Far too many people know it and are comfortable with it. |
| jezuch Aug 07, 2009 2:22 AM EDT |
Quoting:the user interface on LyX is far superior The whole *concept* of LyX is far superior to both MS Office and OpenOffice. Yay for TeX!! :) |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 07, 2009 3:32 AM EDT |
You know what I'd really love? A native ODF editor that works like LyX. Something that focuses on the structure instead of the presentation. |
| bigg Aug 07, 2009 6:58 AM EDT |
@Sander: It's not a native ODF editor, but you can export your LyX documents to ODF. http://wiki.lyx.org/Tools/LyX2OpenOffice |
| bigg Aug 07, 2009 7:02 AM EDT |
> Yay for TeX!! What always amazes me about TeX is that Knuth was writing TAOCP, one of the greatest book series of all time, still used heavily decades later, and as a side project created TeX because he was not satisfied with existing publishing technology. That's superhuman. |
| tracyanne Aug 07, 2009 7:47 AM EDT |
I grabbed the prototype demo. Basically they moved all the stuff that is available from right click context menus, and floating toolbar/windows, and plonked the lot into this ribbon thing. Like the Microsoft ribbon thing it's bulky and unwieldy, instead of having individual functionality wrapped up together in a context menu and/or a floating tool window, the whole lot, in loosely similar categories has to be scanned/scrolled through to find what you want. It's precisely that, that I find so damned annoying about the Microsoft Ribbon. I know what I want ,but it's never immediately obvious which icon I need. You get used to it after a while and start finding things automatically, but it's still horrible, and the function like save print, the file menu stuff is all hidden behind the Microsoft office logo thing, took me ages to find that. I think copying this bit of Microsoft stupidity is a big mistake, and anyone who even considers it should have their head read. |
| theboomboomcars Aug 07, 2009 9:20 AM EDT |
If Oracle wants to kill OO, this will definitely help. |
| jacog Aug 07, 2009 9:25 AM EDT |
Forking time? :) |
| caitlyn Aug 07, 2009 9:55 PM EDT |
Quoting:Forking time? :) ...or perhaps time to stick a fork in it. Maybe it's done. The problem with that is that there is no good alternative to OpenOffice for Linux. |
| tracyanne Aug 07, 2009 11:52 PM EDT |
I think there are many more important things that the OO.o folk could be doing, but it seems that wasting time copying a bit Microsoft frippery is deemed more important. |
| tracyanne Aug 08, 2009 6:16 AM EDT |
If you download the prototype demo, there is a user response form that you can fill out, I did. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 08, 2009 10:28 AM EDT |
Quoting:The problem with that is that there is no good alternative to OpenOffice for Linux. KOffice 2 is shaping up quite nicely. I also love Gnome Office (AbiWord and Gnumeric) but it lacks a presentation package. They're very fast. AbiWord starts even faster than Gedit :-) There are also several commercial Office suites that run on Linux such as EIOffice and SoftMaker Office. At Officeshots.org we now have a database of 47 different ODF supporting office applications. So there's plenty to choose from. |
| jhansonxi Aug 08, 2009 6:54 PM EDT |
I tried the ribbon in AutoCAD 2009 LT for a few hours. It took that long to figure out how to switch to classic mode. The ribbon makes some things easier to find but makes everything else harder. There are about a dozen other things I hate about AutoCAD than just the ribbon so it's insignificant by comparison. |
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