LibreOffice 4.4 Is Coming Soon With New Features

[plasmasnake]

side bar is the way to go with the 16/9 screen.

One thing I've never understood is why Microsoft hasn't allowed moving the ribbon to the side. But in any case, I think the sidebar is an improvement over the current toolbar configuration, basically for reasons similar to why I like the ribbon. The text labels and dividing the functions into smaller groups really helps with finding what you're looking for.

I suppose that those who have used Office for a really long time and have basically memorized where all the settings are, the change might not be as useful. But I don't use it as much as I used to, which makes it more difficult for me to find stuff, so the improvements are welcome. I've only been using Linux for 2 years now, and Office is probably what I miss the most.

[TumultuousUnicorn]

Thank god that I don't have to work with this UI abomination which goes by the name "ribbons"...

And there are people who pay for this ! They are crazy.

[brosis]

The ribbon is the single best improvement to the Office UI since Office 97, imo. It makes it so much easier to find stuff, instead of searching through those tiny icons and having to mouse over them and read the tooltip to find out what they are supposed to do. I honestly don't understand how anybody could view it as a regression, after using it for a couple of weeks. I've yet to meet a person in real life who has disagreed.

That being said, the ribbon UI is patented, so LibreOffice would have to wait 20 years before they would be allowed to implement it! It's a royalty-free patent, but Microsoft disallows its use in competing products.

Good that its patented. Take this abomination and Metro, add kerosene and burn it.
WTF "easy to find stuff"? This is buttons on drugs and nothing more.
So instead of using buttons as shortcuts to most used functions and menu hierarchy for full functionality, it just makes buttons much more complex and menu non-present.

"read the tooltip to find out what they are supposed to do"
Good for you! You discovered what tooltips are for!

I have yet to meet a person in real life who likes ribbons! They must be small (micro) and stupid (soft).

[xeekei]

I agree that a vertical toolbar would improve LibreOffice a lot. At least for Writer.

[GreatEmerald]

Note that if you really want ribbons, you can have them: http://wps-community.org/
(not FOSS, but at least it does exist)

[schmidtbag]

Good that its patented. Take this abomination and Metro, add kerosene and burn it.
WTF "easy to find stuff"? This is buttons on drugs and nothing more.
So instead of using buttons as shortcuts to most used functions and menu hierarchy for full functionality, it just makes buttons much more complex and menu non-present.

"read the tooltip to find out what they are supposed to do"
Good for you! You discovered what tooltips are for!

I have yet to meet a person in real life who likes ribbons! They must be small (micro) and stupid (soft).

I see you're the type who doesn't deal with change easily, and somewhat closed-minded. I'm not a fan of MS by any means but there's a good reason MS Office is their most successful product (in terms of # of users, profit, and reliability) and an industry standard. The original ribbon bar in Office 2007 was pretty bad and I despised it, but the newer ones are very much improved. It isn't just "buttons on drugs", they're well-organized and direct shortcuts to a slew of features that the old fashioned toolbar either can't do or does in a very slower manner. Modern ribbon bars are good enough that you almost never have to have a drop-down menu or dialog window for anything. There are less things to click on and scroll through but there are more options. That is pretty good for such a slim interface. Today, I prefer the ribbon bar - it is FAR more practical, faster, and easier to use. I just wish it were vertically aligned. A ribbon bar isn't good for everything though. I thought it was incredibly stupid they introduced it to the new Explorer.

Also, metro in Windows 8.1 isn't that bad either. I don't prefer it and there is room for improvement, but I really don't see what's so bad about it aside from it being different. What I don't like are the metro-based apps - those tend to be pretty crappy and in Windows 8.0 were very confusing to utilize compared with regular desktop applications. I personally only use Windows for gaming and nothing else, so the metro interface is pretty comfortable to me.

[plasmasnake]

I have yet to meet a person in real life who likes ribbons! They must be small (micro) and stupid (soft).

Well, I hope that's not how you talk to people in real life. Good day to you too...

[brosis]

Well, I hope that's not how you talk to people in real life. Good day to you too...

Thats how I talk to people, whose input results in perversification of the software I use daily. Like they perversified gthumb, pavolume and simplescan - all thanks to Gnome3. Now there is this offer to fsck up the interface that was pretty awesome since Word 95. You like it? Make it optional. Beside, there is still your favorite MSO - who don't give a damn about people who actually use it, in a matter similar to Gnome3.

[brosis]

I see you're the type who doesn't deal with change easily, and somewhat closed-minded. I'm not a fan of MS by any means but there's a good reason MS Office is their most successful product (in terms of # of users, profit, and reliability) and an industry standard. The original ribbon bar in Office 2007 was pretty bad and I despised it, but the newer ones are very much improved. It isn't just "buttons on drugs", they're well-organized and direct shortcuts to a slew of features that the old fashioned toolbar either can't do or does in a very slower manner. Modern ribbon bars are good enough that you almost never have to have a drop-down menu or dialog window for anything. There are less things to click on and scroll through but there are more options. That is pretty good for such a slim interface. Today, I prefer the ribbon bar - it is FAR more practical, faster, and easier to use. I just wish it were vertically aligned. A ribbon bar isn't good for everything though. I thought it was incredibly stupid they introduced it to the new Explorer.

Also, metro in Windows 8.1 isn't that bad either. I don't prefer it and there is room for improvement, but I really don't see what's so bad about it aside from it being different. What I don't like are the metro-based apps - those tend to be pretty crappy and in Windows 8.0 were very confusing to utilize compared with regular desktop applications. I personally only use Windows for gaming and nothing else, so the metro interface is pretty comfortable to me.

My first real text editor was Lexicon under MSDOS 5.0, and I adapt pretty quickly IF the solution is fantastic and makes sense. For example, I am strong supporter of systemd, btrfs and pulse.
All my x86 systems are Linux. Zero Windows since ~10 years. I don't care, I don't bother, stuff works as it should.

Well, "well organized" my *** I have worked with MSO 10 for 1 hour, which gave me enough motivation to seek for a plug-in that adds "classic interface". After that, I simply got portable LibreOffice, which was capable to do MUCH more than MSO altogether. It did not fsck up formating, it allowed precise control over PDF export DPI and type, it made logical sense when problems arouse with formating the text itself.

From my observation, its not different - its an effort to fit the entire menu hierarchy into graphical shortcut layout ("buttons") which is an absolute fail. One just needs to make an analysis in regard how much time one spends with formating of text for both "classic" approach vs "ribbon", with user who has good amount of experience in both.

[monraaf]

Ribbons are tabs, can tabs be patented?

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog
Office 97 was the version that made people think Office was "bloated" because the user interface had begun to feel bloated. Until Office 2007, the top-level menu structure of Word hasn't changed since 1989. It's not that menus and toolbars are bad or that the people who created them weren't smart. The problem is that Office has outgrown them. There's a point beyond which menus and toolbars cease to scale well. A flat menu with 8 well-organized commands on it works just great; a three-level hierarchical menu containing 35 loosely-related commands can be a bit of a disaster. The number of features using all UI mechanisms goes up virtually every version. Keep in mind that every toolbar includes between 10 and 50 commands, often presented only as 16x16 unlabeled icons.