New Ribbon interface, what do you think?

Hi people.

Was talking about the Connect interface with and old work mate from previous office.
Looks like both agree. Ribbon interface is a catastrophic decision.

Personally, I've really felt disconnected with Bentley's vision on how MS should evolve, I love MS, SS3 is like a Ferrari tunned for race so don´t think I'm here for Autodesk fanboyism.


I got into MS after Acad swtiched to Ribbon. I loved Bentley systems because its unique approach to engineering soft with supper serious and practical interfaces, super powerfull design environment, great 3d modelling tool, the keyboard shorcuts that allow you to super quickly change tools etc...


I could not believe Bentley would EVER switch to  Ribbon. I'm so dissapointed. What do you people think? you like it?.

Parents
  • I don't care for the ribbon either, but it will grow on me. That has been the Microsoft standard way to interact with windows applications for several years. I knew it had to be an eventuality in MicroStation as it is now the "norm" for the next generation of users.

    Remember that users despised the Task menus when they were first introduced. I know quite a few users who still use the Main Classic toolbox.

    Rod Wing
    Senior Systems Analyst

Reply
  • I don't care for the ribbon either, but it will grow on me. That has been the Microsoft standard way to interact with windows applications for several years. I knew it had to be an eventuality in MicroStation as it is now the "norm" for the next generation of users.

    Remember that users despised the Task menus when they were first introduced. I know quite a few users who still use the Main Classic toolbox.

    Rod Wing
    Senior Systems Analyst

Children
  • At first, I think such discussion is a bit useless and boring, because it's very opinion based. I remember there was a discussion during CONNECT Edition EAP phase about "how to enhance ribbon to be better and what is missing comparing to other CAD software using ribbon", which in situation when Bentley quite clearly expressed the ribbon is the way they will go, seems to be more valuable. And I have to say I was really surprised at that time what big CAD/CAM/CAE packages use ribbon and also what own extensions were implemented to make it more flexible.

    What I heard from my customers is literally everything from "I dislike it very much" over "I will learn it if I have to" or "I don't care" to "I have no problem / I like it". Personally I have no problem with the ribbon itself, because I use popups very much and I also customized ribbon and mouse context menu a bit to better comply my requirements, so my interaction with ribbon itself is quite limited and in such case I use F4 often because I need to find some rarely used tool. I have thought about own screen menus also, but have had not enough time to play with them more.

    But I have to say there are some features that makes ribbon much worse than it really is:

    • To switch from one workflow to another has to be instant, right now the delay is pretty big, it's slow slow slow.
    • Also switching between tabs seems to be laggy sometimes.
    • Customization, which I treat as a crucial tool, is buggy and it crashes or does not work as expected often.
    • There are no features like pull down (hiearachical) menus, drop down dialogs etc. available.

    I am looking forward to the next MicroStation CE version to check what complains will be solved.

    With regards,

     Jan

  • Unknown said:
    I think such discussion is a bit useless and boring, because it's very opinion based

    I couldn't agree more! And we've had this discussion multiple times, I don't think you're going to change Bentley's mind about the ribbon. A ribbon is on everything now, we should be used to it!

    If they improve the responsiveness of the ribbon I wouldn't mind selling this to my clients, but I'll be holding off until at least the first update before I think about implementing it for production anywhere.

  • Going back to IGDS this is probably the 7th overhaul of the UI that I've been thru. This one is really just another superficial reshuffling of icons.