LibreOffice Announces "MUFFIN" User Interface

[Holograph]

2 comments:

1) All ribbon stuff better be optional now and forever because I've been using MS Office regularly since the early or mid 90s and I can say for a fact that even having used it for several years now, the ribbon bar has only been a constant hindrance in my ability to quickly use and find features to use. It is far less logically organized and while it's an easier interface for a tablet, why the heck are you writing documents on a tablet in the first place? Come on. Having the ability to write documents on a tablet in a pinch is fine but there is no reason to plan your UI around a device that can never provide a good experience for office applications. The image provided shows several configurations and I assume that means it IS configurable (I've no interest in trying it myself at this time) and if so, that's fine, but I still think ribbon support is pointless.

2) Muffin? Really? Not only is that very hard to take seriously, but Muffin is already the name of Cinnamon's fork of GNOME's Mutter. Why is it that open source developers feel the need to name things stupidly, and why do they insist on using the same names that other developers already use, and which are already commonly used words that only serve to confuse search engines?

[GraysonPeddie]

Before the new UI concept, going from Microsoft Office 2007/2010 to LibreOffice is like switching from Office 2007/2010 to Office 2003. It's what I refer to downgrade. By switching from Office 2007+ to LibreOffice, I am downgrading from Office 2007+ to LibreOffice, yet LibreOffice and Office 2007+ are apples and oranges; these are two different products developed by different companies.

For the new UI concept, there's no Quick Access bar in the menu bar. The Quick Access bar would hold the Save, Paste, Undo, and Redo buttons that took up space in the Muffin UI. And there are no tabs at all. The use of tabs would negate searching through the menus to get the functionality I want. When looking through the menus, I'd rather read left to right similar to what Office 2007+ allows me to do. The Bold, Italic, Underline, Left, Center, and Right buttons (no "Justified") should be relegated as icons without text. The "Insert" area should have it's own tab.

That's one of the biggest reasons why I would rather stay with Office 2007 and later.

So yes...

• There are people who hate Office 2007 and later versions because it has a ribbon interface...
• And there are people who would OUTRIGHT DISMISS LibreOffice because the way I see it, the look of LibreOffice is too old. Too ancient. A throwback to Office 2003 and earlier versions who simply have trouble finding functionality by looking through the menus and yet, can't find what they are looking for. People want a well-laid-out user interface and Microsoft Office 2007 and later provides the best UI that people would ever need, right there at their fingertips through tabs.

As for me, even though I am a huge supporter of open source, even though LibreOffice is free to use, I would outright dismiss it as well. Different strokes for different people.

[Mavman]

I hope Calligra Words gets something like this too

No need! Calligra's UI is just fine the way it is!!! It's just missing features.

How about fixing the utterly sluggish and slow LibreOffice Calc performance ?

What benefit do I have by using new MUFFIN and fancy icons, if the underlaying programm sucks donkey balls and performs totally sluggish with 10.000 data rows x 5 data columns and a handful (5) charts ?

What's truly missing in LibreOffice is Mozilla's e10s!!! It's code is from the past century (literally!!!). Unfortunately we don't have anything better. Calligra is still missing too many features!!!

Perhaps a vertical ribbon option would help or autohiding the ribbon when its not in use.

Hum... i think the side bar is actually already good enough for that purpose... It's actually the best thing that came to LibreOffice recently (even if i believe that, for everyone coming from M$ office, this new UI will be a very big PLUS)

[ua=42]

Ummm... to the people freaking out about the gui...
Did you miss the part that said it is OPTIONAL?
That you can select which of the 4 options you want and switch between them?

This way you can have whichever gui suits you best.

[Candy]

Did you miss the part that said it is OPTIONAL?

I am still searching the OPTION to have an performance boost inside Calc

[ElectricPrism]

I'm pretty sure "Ribbon" is also called "Tabs" or maybe even Tabbed Toolbox.

Sorry @all, Tabbed Dialog Boxes and Tool areas have been around in Photoshop and other apps for at least a decade.

Also Apple didn't invent the Dock, and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have a notorious history of stealing good ideas from others.

It's a weapon that the smart use against the stupid when they tell them they need to reinvent the wheel and can't copy good ideas.

[Ronshere]

Based on some of the comments here from MS Office users, I cannot see how its pretty icons have helped them since their grammar , spelling, syntax and idiomatic expressions are the pits.

[starshipeleven]

I've had a discussion with someone recently with the standpoint that libreoffice is completely unusable because it is clunky and functionality is impossible to find. Even with a half hearted ribbon copy I think office remains one of the most controverse piece of software out there....

Nah, that's a standard-issue idiot. If you can't recognize that it's not the program's fault but it's because you still have to learn how to use it...

[starshipeleven]

I am still searching the OPTION to have an performance boost inside Calc

I am still searching for the MONEY you pay for features you need.

[oooverclocker]

I hope that there won't be many screen shots of the ribbon crap because it might cost extreme amounts of new users who wouldn't recognize the superiority of LibreOffice over MS Office anymore when they believe that this epic fail would be default in LO as well.