Prototype OpenOffice.org gets ribboned

The new prototype UI of OpenOffice.org.

(Credit: Sun)

I am possibly the only one among my co-workers who hasn't moved to Office 2007. I just can't stand the ribbon toolbar, which makes working with documents require a lot of mouse clicking. The traditional menus have been working just fine and I prefer being able to move around with keyboard shortcuts.

It's sad that together with Windows 7, Microsoft is forcing this new user interface on all of us. Applications that come with the new operating system, such as Write or Paint, are also using the ribbon toolbar instead of menus.

And it seems Sun is doing the same thing with its popular OpenOffice.org suite, which offers free alternatives to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

According to a blog from Frank Loehman, a developer of OpenOffice.org, Sun is working on creating a new user interface for the open-source office suite. And from the screenshot, the new UI seems very much like the ribbons found in Office 2007.

However, fortunately, the menu bar is still there. Hopefully this means the suite will still offer the menu UI in addition to the ribbon bar.

According to Loehman, the new UI is still in the testing phase and the content of the toolbars and the group labeling are subject to change. Sun is looking for user feedback on the new UI and my feedback is this: just get rid of the ribbon or offer people the option to pick between the two of them.

[bonesbautista]

I am a Mac user, but also dive into XP about half of the time. If I can make a buck, I'll use whatever OS works.

When it comes to using Office, the interface and options for 2003 (Win)/2004 (Mac) were about perfect. Now, I'll boot into my Mac partition every time so I don't have to use the Ribbon interface. The Ribbon is one of the worst interface implementations. Ever.

Advice to OO - stop. Today. The Ribbon interface is poison-ivy-rash bad - ugly, irritating, and a PITA to deal with.

[monkeyfun14]

The drop down menu wasn't much better....

Searching through drop down menus hoping you find what your looking for.

[kelmon]

I agree with the opinion about the Ribbon - it is very pretty looking but ultimately I find it slows me down rather than makes me more productive (this after 2-years of daily use). However, I am quite willing to concede that some people like it and that it is probably better for new users. Given this, if there is a choice of "Classic" and "Ribbon" interfaces then I'd be happy with that. If it is choice of one or the other then my vote certainly stays with "Classic".

[Maccess]

Yuck. Don't fix what isn't broken. Many MS Office users are stuck at 2003 because it doesn't have the Ribbon!

[monkeyfun14]

Many != All

The vast majority have no problem with ribbon.

[rrod182]

@monkey that's because the vast majority are idiots.

[soulkamikaze]

the old menu interface is the only reason I'm using Open Office rather than Office 2007.

[El_Segfaulto]

While I will say the old way was better, I can admit that once I got past the learning curve, ribbons aren't all that bad. In reality the menu system sucked for new users. We liked it because we knew where everything was (and probably don't remember the time it took hunting for commands to acquire that knowledge). Monkeyfun is right, for users just jumping in to Office the ribbon system is easy to understand. I like it because it is based around workflow, a bit like Photoshop CS4 (which I hated at first as well). YMMV

[kelmon]

@monkeyfun14

"The vast majority have no problem with ribbon."

Can you substantiate that? Mind you, the same applies to statements like "The vast majority hate the Ribbon". Any statements that suggest that the author knows what other users like/dislikes is based on pure personal opinion rather than fact unless they have conducted, or can cite, research on the subject.

If you do have research to support this then please link to it and we'll be happy to read it.

[Lennron]

the vast majority really don't have a problem with the ribbon. i've worked with the IT departments with many companies and organizations and saw the same thing everywhere. people saw the ribbon and HATED it at first and demanded their office 2003 back. obviously 2003 wasn't given back and they got used to the ribbon and are all now in love with it. the company i'm with now uses half 2003 and half 2007 and the people with 2003 are green with envy.
the fact that open office is going the way of the ribbon goes to show that the vast majority of users who actually use the ribbon really like it. now open office has to keep up with the flow. that's all.

[pendevous27]

@rrod182 - In my eyes, the idiot one is the one who rants and rants without seeing that he himself sounds like an idiot. ;)

@monkey - I don't know where you got "vast majority" but I don't have a problem with ribbon

[cary1]

Hehehe.... copycats!

I might download it one day if it can work like MS Office

[kieranmullen]

The free suite has many of the same functions as Office does and more functions than most people will use anyway.

[michael_j_x]

@kieranmullen
But compared to MS Office its a really ugly child and the documents it produces are nowhere near to what you can get with MS Office and a nice template

[kelmon]

I thought the whole point of OpenOffice was that it was a free copy of MS Office. Saying that they are copying MS Office is surely akin to stating that the sky is blue.

[mjconver]

N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!!!!!!! Not the ribbon!!!!!!!

[leemathews]

If you really prefer working with keyboard shortcuts, Dong, then why don't you just minimize the ribbon and use your shortcuts? That way you're not wasting real estate on menus you don't need anyway.

As for "forcing a new UI on us all," well...Clearly they're not. You haven't upgraded from 2003 yet. If you don't want the new UI, you don't have to upgrade, do you?

[mjconver]

Because MS totally screwed up the shortcuts when they ribboned everything. When I have 9 Excel spreadsheets (or 9 word docs or 9 Access objects) open, it used to take Alt-W + a number to switch objects. Now, with the @#$@#$ ribbon, it's Alt-W, plus another W, then the number, and there's a noticeable lag during the first Alt-W gets to the screen.

We're just talking muscle memory, we're talking time. I'm a busy man, every second lost is billable time to my clients.

And with @#$@#$ Access 2007, Alt-W doesn't work at all.

@$@#$@# the ribbon, it's for noobs and feebs.

Jay Converse
Fairfax, VA

[Sir_Sid]

I think alot of the issues with the ribbon is that people are unfamiliar with it. It took me a few weeks but now that i know how it works I have to say its much nicer than menus. I mean keyboard shortcuts are still the greatest but that ribbon is great.
MS does do research on this kinda stuff to minimize number of clicks to get to the most used features. People need to stop whining so much when things change. Get to know it first

(Btw this is coming from a linux lover)

[rbrown653]

same here

[lordmorgul]

The ribbon is still not the best approach to take to get best productivity. I tend to think the toolbox method would have been much better. Deep sub-menu trees are bad, clicking around looking for something on a ribbon is bad. Worse yet... a ribbon takes up precious space at the top of the document when we have LOTS of widescreen format computer screens with limited vertical space. Its just not a good design.

[NuckChorris]

I agree with Sir Sid. The Ribbon is much better than a series of menus. Menubars were invented for the Apple Lisa, as I understand, and they haven't changed much since, except in bit depth and styles. I was used to the Office 2003 -style toolbars and menus too, and I could do great things with them, but with the Ribbon, everything I want to do is so much easier. The moment I saw the ribbon, I realized it was a massive improvement on the interface, and I knew it would used a lot. Yes, it changed our Keyboard Shortcuts, but they've improved the keyboard shortcuts. Try pressing alt in Office 2007. Near every button with a keyboard shortcut a letter will appear. If you open the Office menu via a shortcut, it hides the shortcut info that was displayed before, and shows it for the Office Menu. OpenOffice.org's lack of the Ribbon, or something similar, is the main reason I'm not using it. If it gets a ribbon-like UI, I'll gladly switch. Also, I have a Widescreen laptop, and I must say that the Ribbon actually saves space for me. Before, I would have to have a bunch of toolbars open at the top, and I'd have another floating one, and some at the bottom, plus I'd always have the side thing open for one reason or another. Now, I have a ribbon, which although it takes up slightly more vertical space, it saves me the need for any bottom toolbars, and allows me to easily get the sidebar that I need opened, so I don't leave it showing. Also, not only are screens getting wider, but the screens are getting bigger, in both height and width (whether the ratio is 16:9 or 4:3). Why not use that to build better interfaces?

[rbrown653]

O please. Youre just not used to it. I hated it at first too but now I realize how intuitive it is. Im 16 and everyone at my school loves how much nicer it looks and how much faster it is to use.

And does anyone else think thats a really crappy ribbon! The Microsoft one is so polished and sleek while that looks like something out of windows 95!

[rollcage]

It's not as polished probably just because it's a prototype. I'd like to see a concept of what they want the finished product to look like (hopefully it's better!). The ribbon does take some adjustment, but common tasks become much easier once you know where to look.

[NuckChorris]

I agree with rollcage. Looking at how they managed to polish the column/row headers for OpenOffice3's Spreadsheet app, they'll probably make this look pretty too.

[Akash1NY]

Two words: ThinkFree Mobile

http://product.thinkfree.com/mobile

Not as Robust by any means. but works amazingly on my netbook, and very light on resources.

[sanenazok]

As someone who has actually used Word 2007 I gotta say that the OO ribbon lacks any of the presentation and design that makes the Word 2007 ribbon actually easier to use than the stack of menus. The ribbon might add one or two clicks on some occasions, but it saves a lot of clicks in others. Add a section break in Word 2003. It's a pain. Now add one in Word 2007 - there it is on the "Page Layout" tab with one click. My favorite is line numbers - nearly impossible in Word 2003 - but right THERE on the same tab in Word 2007. Anyone who's in technology who doesn't like change is in the wrong field!

[NuckChorris]

Thank you! I agree entirely. The ribbon adds clicks occasionally, but most things are much easier. Section breaks are a GREAT example, because inserting any breaks in Office 2003 was a pain, but Office 2007 has them all easy to access.

[jsbono]

Microsoft has been losing market share on certain products for years. Office is next. The days of the monopoly are soon over. Open source software is the future. I've been a staunch MS supporter and PC user since the 386 days, my next computer is a mac. Partly because I can't stand Vista and its instability, I detest office 07 but mostly because the alternatives are now better and get this...FREE! In an economy like this, using open source software would save users and buisnesses serious $$.

[monkeyfun14]

Vista is far from instable...


2 years of use only one crash.

[SaneMind]

I am using Vista for 2+ year ... never had a glitch

As far as free alternatives for expensive Office ... am all for it ... alas they are stable enough. OO is not good enough to be adopted at the organizational level ... and MS-Office is preety darn good. In fact one of the best and useful software products of all time.

[tm_anon]

I used XP for 2 years, no crashes and no glitches. That doesn't mean it was stable. I actually spent the better part of today repairing my neighbors installation of XP. Took it from barely running to as close to new as possible.

Does that speak for the OS or for the person who did the repair work?

I'm sure I could run Vista for 2 years with zero crashes, still doesn't make it stable. It certainly doesn't make it free or even cheap.

I've been using Linux for the past 6 months, hasn't crashed ever.

@SaneMind

Rather than just making a comment such as "OO is not good enough to be adopted at the organizational level", it would be a better idea to give reasons why it's not.

For example, OOo is not good enough to be adopted at the organizational level because.....

As for claiming that MS Office is one of the best and (most) useful products of all time, it's far from the first Office Suite, it's far from being the only Office Suite. It's one of the most expensive and it's only made for one platform. OOo is free and made for Windows, OS X and Linux. That means if your office is doing business with another office which happens to have a different OS, the files still transfer with no problems.

OOo will also open files in the native format of their respective Office Suites with no problems with any but .docx (Office 2003 also has problems opening those files). It will save into the formats of most Office Suites, if not all, and will even save files into PDF, just to be safe. Makes MS Office pretty much obsolete.

[El_Segfaulto]

I was with you tm_anon until the bit about the platform. I'm certainly no Microsoft apologist, but to set the record straight you can purchase Office for the Mac and everything but Outlook runs fine on my Linux box using Wine. I agree wholeheartedly about it being overpriced, but I do have to give credit where it is due.

[NuckChorris]

I have had vista for under a few months now, and it has has major issues. The interface is beautiful, but it really is unstable. I have had trouble getting it to delete a single small file, where it takes forever, and I eventually try to cancel it, but it just goes into endless "cancelling" mode. Also, it has consistent issues with network handling, specifically with shared folders on a network. I will also say that it has recently been detecting that it only has "Local" access on my own WLAN, even though I still have full internet access. Not to mention the countless total freeze-ups. I've been forced to hard-boot my laptop twice, and I've only had it for a few months! I'm just glad that I bought it while MS was offering a free upgrade to Windows 7 with any Vista-based computers, because that means I'll get Windows 7 as soon as it comes out. I hear Windows 7 is free of major roadblock bugs, unlike Vista, the OS of a thousand glitches, known upon release, many of which have yet to be fixed.

[explodingzebras]

Do Not Want. i really hope it is just optional.

[VenuVedam]

Maybe I belong to a minority but I love the ribbon interface of Office 2007 (and more so 2010 TP) - It would be lovely to have this on Open Office as well. Yet another reason to not spend 75$ on Office Home and Student edition. :)

[qtnetmexico]

You can hide all those ribbons and customise your shortcuts on Office 2007, FYI

[SaneMind]

Thats correct ... but sadly not many people know about the freedom that Office provides.

[kelmon]

Sorry, did you just use the terms "freedom" and "[Microsoft] Office" in the same sentence? Office provides many things but freedom certainly isn't one of them. Just try migrating from Outlook to something else and see how much fun it is to get your information out of the PST file format.

[SW_A]

By all means, give users the choice of using traditional menus with no ribbon or ribbon with no menus. Don't force the ribbon on users, either by itself or by requiring it to waste space in addition to menus.

Please, not every change is an improvement. Witness the ugly folder icons and lame "tree view" in Vista's Windows Explorer -- aesthetically a giant step back from the perfectly good graphics in Win XP. It was nothing but change for the sake of change.

[kelmon]

Oh, good, I'm not the only person who thinks that then. However, I'll see your "Vista Folder Icons" and raise you a "Vista Control Panel".

[msjonker]

I know, I'm still pissed Microsoft made us move from DOS to Windows... Change happens.

There is a slight learning curve of a couple days, but then you are good to go. I thought I would hate it too, but everything you want just seems to be right there. Even things you used to have to dig a few dialog windows in to find; they just seem to be right there when you need them.

That being said, this just makes OpenOffice look fuglier (I didn't know that was possible). Couple that with the fact that its Java and I'll continue to steer clear of OpenOffice.

[benjwah]

Yeh, whoever did the design on the UI obviously thought that "beauty's on the inside" - And then palmed it off to a Java developer who thought "beauty is only skin-deep".

[kelmon]

"There is a slight learning curve of a couple days, but then you are good to go."

I was good to go before, thanks. Change certainly happens but not all changes are for the best and the Ribbon is certainly one of them. You will note, for example, that Office:mac 2008 does not have the Ribbon. Some bigwig from Microsoft used that as a reason why Windows is better than the Mac in an interview (with CNet, if I recall) but the truth is that the Ribbon was simply rejected by users following experience with Office 2007. As the comments here show, not everyone likes it, even after using it for years.

As the old adage goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it...

[sanenazok]

@kelmon: if you don't want to learn it, and you're happy with what you're using, then keep using it. Is anyone forcing you off of Office 2003 or OO 3? Stop the wining and do something productive.

[jbcahill]

NO! SAY IT AIN'T SO!! STOP NOW AND PROCEED NO FURTHER!!!

I have to use MS Office 2007 at work and I AM used to the ribbon and I think it sucks. The only thing I want OO to do that MS Office does is to read and write compatible files...work on that. Come on Sun...make a BETTER office, don't just copy Microsoft.

[Jack K1]

I also hate the ribbons. If 2007 implements macros the way the last four versions did, then you can create/remap your own shortcuts all you want. I've got my own set of shortcuts that I set up back when I was using Windows 3.11, and I'm still using them with Office 2003.

Someone tell me I can still do my own keyboard mapping and macros in Office 2007...

[sanenazok]

Sure you can. Oh you hate the ribbon but never used it. Nice.

[lordmorgul]

Copying failure is not good. For over a decade now MS has been doing the copying of success... now we have open source developers copying failure? Please no, this cannot be happening.

[cgguy]

What a number of ribbon proponents are missing is that they are mandatory in 2007. At least OO gives you the option to use the menus if that suits you. I own 2007 but uninstalled it and reinstalled 2003 because I found that it took too much time for me to visually scan across multiple pages when I was learning it. What were they thinking? That they could force me to use the ribbon? I heard there was software that I could buy for $30 that would add the menu back, but that seemed insane. Microsoft gets many many UX approaches wrong. Not everything -- managing files and folders is much more refined and consistent than OSX and the task bar in Windows 7 is better than the dock/expose. But not the ribbon. I understand if you like it and find it more productive. I'm glad. I don't.

[LaraineMae]

Yep. I'd like to know if Microsoft usability tested the changes with people that have used MSOffice for over 10 years and don't want to learn new shortcuts. It's not like they introduced a new technology like the change from word processors to a 'new' technology like desktop publishing as in Ventura Publisher 1.0 (many moons ago). This change is rather superficial. I am trying a trial version of MSOffice 2007 and do not like it enough to buy it, unless I absolutely had to for work.

I like and use OO.

[benjwah]

"It's sad that together with Windows 7, Microsoft is forcing this new user interface on all of us."

Uhh... Forcing? No one's forcing you to do anything. You don't like the ribbon? Stay with Office 2003, Win XP & Visicalc. Or use OpenOffice. Microsoft doesn't force you to do anything, and the only thing that's "sad" is that a supposed technology journalist can't get his head around it.

If Microsoft was worried that you'd ACTUALLY go to OpenOffice because you like menus, they'd make it an option, but the last time I looked, they still don't care because most people like 2007 and the whingers who don't like it will either work it out, or stop writing. They're not going anywhere else, because OO hongs dong, and Google Docs isn't any better.

Sometimes upgrading means new features. It's not the end of the world, even if you lose some old ones.

For everyone else, there's Windows 3.11 w/ Word 6.