Submitted 2 months ago by dch82@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world
Why did UI’s turn from practical to form over function?
E.g. Office 2003 vs Microsoft 365
It’s easy to remember where everything is with a toolbar and menu bar, which allows access to any option in one click and hold move.
Seriously? Big ribbon and massive padding wasting space, as well as the ribbon being clunky to use.
Why did this happen?
Ohhh I have a feeling you will enjoy this video:
It’s about a dofferent piece of software, but still highly relevant.
30 seconds in and subbed because “man rants about DAW UI/UX” is a genre of video that I never knew existed but suddenly can’t live without.
Funniest thing is, this video series ultimately landed him the job as lead UX designer for Musescore, lol
I bet it’s capitalism.
The answer for enshittification of the entire reality seems to always be
capitalism.
You can use OpenOffice which hasn’t adopted any new UI since 1998.
Yeaaah, don’t use open office, it hasn’t had any code updates in like 15 years. Use and suggest libre office instead.
Except that OpenOffice has been forked into Libreoffice in like 2010 and has since gotten an optional ribbon UI.
Everyone wanted to compete with Apple
Yea, I agree that Office 2003 was the pinnacle of Office UI design. And I’d go so far as to say that about Windows 2000.
Having controls in predictable shapes and locations really contributed to “ease of use”. One of my pet peeves is the more recent trend where clickable elements aren’t obviously so. Such as a string of text that one has to hover across and see the cursor change shape to know that it’s clickable.
As others have said, I think a significant part of why the UIs have changed since then is to accommodate touch screens and “webification”.
'Glad to see your posting. I thought I was just being curmudgeonly :)
Not sure I follow, even in the example above there’s many icons that are interactive but aren’t enclosed in a button, do you have any other examples?
To me, buttons and icons provide the visual cue that “clicking here does something”, without having to mouse over them to discover that they’re clickable.
It’s the unadorned text strings that aren’t as obvious.
Probably so since jackass in a suit could double his annual bonus.
Isn’t there a way to just his the ribbon?
There’s been a trend towards simplicity/minimalism in UX for a long time. Sometimes it works really well. Other times it makes it difficult to find things like setting preferences (or they just don’t implement them because the assholes think they know better than you).
For me, MS is a mixed bag. Some of the UX changes are good, some of it is horrible.
But I love a well done minimalist UX. Obsidian and Reaper are two examples that come to mind.
“Designers” desperate to stay relevant and make their worthless degrees seem worthwhile.
designers are absolutely worth their degrees, the only problem is that they’re only really “useful” for the early UI design; they’re less necessary over time
I miss 07 jfc…
I always hated the ribbon context menu system. It ruins the way I learn watch involves where something is just as much as what it’s called, kinda like remember where on a physical page something is even if you don’t remember the page.
Static, nested menus are superior.
Related: youtu.be/HdozqSVF-VM
xlash123@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I would like to see them add something like the VSCode command pallette. That way if I know the name of the tool but can’t remember or don’t want to go click for it, I just just type the name and fuzzy find it.
JustARaccoon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Doesn’t office already have a very powerful search bar?