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submitted 1 month ago by dch82@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world

Why did UI's turn from practical to form over function?

E.g. Office 2003 vs Microsoft 365

Office 2003

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.

Microsoft 365

Seriously? Big ribbon and massive padding wasting space, as well as the ribbon being clunky to use.

Why did this happen?

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[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

I was a moderator on the Paint.NET forums for a long while in the mid to late 00s. You would be surprised at how many questions we got about when Paint.NET would get "the new ribbon UI!"

The answer was never, incidentally.

[-] interurbain1er@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

I kinda remember those conversations, wasn't there an issue back then that Microsoft had a patent on the ribbon ?

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I don't think so. He just said that he had evaluated it and it wasn't a good fit for the application. I remembered it was in our Popular Feature Requests thread, and I looked back and (crazy enough) it's still there.

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this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
262 points (83.4% liked)

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