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
  • Hi Everyone,

    Just jumping in to see if I can help explain the thinking behind our Ribbon implementation.

    The primary reason to adopt a Ribbon is that it's a familiar design pattern to standardize on.
    If we made 1 application, it would be a different situation, but when you look at a suite of products used together with a mix of Ribbon, Task, and Toolbox approaches - we needed to take a step to increase the common ground.

    A while back I emphasized that we didn't just "do a Ribbon". We added key enhancements which will only be defended once they prove themselves in production workflows.

    In fact, there's a key question I can ask to lead our discussion to explore this deeper...

    "Do you use shift+right click to access view tools?"
    (and yes I realize common view operations are directly mapped to the mouse)

    Best regards,

    Gino



  • Whole problem is basically hidden GUI which is counter productive, I am one of the many who do not have too much time to configure new applications (and that's what this one seems like now). The example you suggest does not make sense to me e.g. Shift (1st action), right click (2nd) then select an miniscule window area icon (3rd) then select an area (4th action) instead of select window area tool form the view toolbar (1st action) then select area 2nd action).

    I don't get it and I don't like it, so glad task navigation was kept as I still find it more productive from a detailing point of view.

    I am sure that if I had the time to spend customizing the UI, so that all the tools I use on a day to basis were on the one tab then I would still think it was awkward in terms of the space occupied by the ribbon. As I have mentioned several times before the task based menu was extremely compact and quick to use.
Reply
  • Whole problem is basically hidden GUI which is counter productive, I am one of the many who do not have too much time to configure new applications (and that's what this one seems like now). The example you suggest does not make sense to me e.g. Shift (1st action), right click (2nd) then select an miniscule window area icon (3rd) then select an area (4th action) instead of select window area tool form the view toolbar (1st action) then select area 2nd action).

    I don't get it and I don't like it, so glad task navigation was kept as I still find it more productive from a detailing point of view.

    I am sure that if I had the time to spend customizing the UI, so that all the tools I use on a day to basis were on the one tab then I would still think it was awkward in terms of the space occupied by the ribbon. As I have mentioned several times before the task based menu was extremely compact and quick to use.
Children
  • And up the side, where there's space to spare on a modern wide screen, instead of disproportionately squeezing the working area vertically. I bet, if Microsoft had made a vertical ribbon technically possible, there'd be far less complaint.
  • Task Panes are still used in Office - more in Word than Excel, but apparently Microsoft sees some benefit to them. In MicroStation, things like the Properties (Element Info) and Level Display dialog boxes lend themselves to being docked like a task pane. And the benefit of a task pane is that it can be set to hide and flyout and even when open, leave a fair amount of screen real estate. Our drawings are now very close to appearing the same shape as our screens. The ribbon shortens the screen in a way that encroaches on that drawing to view ratio and the ribbon controls do not support automatic flyout and hide (at least they did not the last time I checked).

    Charles (Chuck) Rheault
    CADD Manager

    MDOT State Highway Administration

    • MicroStation user since IGDS, InRoads user since TDP.
    • AutoCAD, Land Desktop and Civil 3D, off and on since 1996