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We have seen that office has the ribbon UI since 2007. Now is 2010 and we all feel the great productivity the ribbon has brought to us.

My question is why Visual Studio, now 2010, still not use the ribbon? What do you think? Please share.

Nam G VU
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    thank God for now having such bar in my lovely IDE! – balexandre Oct 12 '10 at 19:10
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    @Nam: It's ridicule stupid for a Developer perspective, I wasted so many years knowing where everything in Visual Studio is so I can catch up with Microsoft as they now release new versions every month, imagine now that just to change the spacing I need to waste 5 minutes searching and going through the Help, then I need to uncheck the wrap lines, more 5 minutes... Nahhhhh, it's nice for users, not developers! – balexandre Oct 15 '10 at 19:00
  • @balexandre: Really have to say that I cannot catch up with what you are trying to say! What is the wrap line, what is the attitute of "first thanking God for having such ribbon, then later saying it is stupid" !? And more, you may have difficulties in using a tool/software - the ribbon will change your mind! – Nam G VU Oct 16 '10 at 09:06
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    @Nam, I think @balexandre meant to write "thank God for *not* having..." but his follow up is just inane rambling. VS is released about once every 2 years and they've made very few changes to the command bar UI so I don't know what he's complaining about. Wow... learning something new. What a burden. – Josh Oct 16 '10 at 17:26
  • This should be on programmers – Preet Sangha May 25 '11 at 02:18
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    -1 to down vote the concept. ribbon on VS? God no! – Samuel Neff May 25 '11 at 02:48
  • @Neff How did you feel it for Office software? A "God yes" I guess? – Nam G VU Jun 24 '11 at 19:16

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Ribbon its a great user interface to organize tools like buttons and some kind of small items. But it doesn't work well, (or at least it's very difficult to achive) when the user interface has to be very personalizable as Visual Studio has to be. And there's also the problem of many windows that are not toolbars, like the solution explorer or the many different designer, they can't be placed very easily.

Whili I'm not saying it's impossible. There is a lot of features that would have to be rebuilt to accomodate a ribbon.

From MSDN Ribbon User Experience Guidelines

Command scale

  • Is there a large number of commands? Would using a ribbon require more than seven core tabs? Would users constantly have to change tabs to perform common tasks? If so, using toolbars (which don't require changing tabs) and palette windows (which may require changing tabs, but there can be several open at a time) might be a more efficient choice.

  • For efficiency and flexibility, do users need to make significant changes to the command presentation contents, location, or size? If so, customizable and extensible toolbars and palette windows are a better choice. Note that some types of toolbars can be undocked to become palette windows, and palette windows can be moved, resized, and customized.

Because of some of this reasons I believe Visual Studio works better in a toolbar-based interface

PS: While I don't believe Visual Studio will implement the ribbon, Autodesk products like AutoCAD are very good examples of very complex ribbon-based application.

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Carlos Muñoz
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    Does Microsoft say the same thing(s) back when Ms Outlook was not upgraded to use ribbon UI? – Nam G VU Oct 15 '10 at 15:06
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    @Nam - Yes they did! They gave all kinds of reasons why the Ribbon wasn't "appropirate" for those products when they could have just come right out and said "we ran out of time" since obviously it was "appropriate" in Office 2010. – Josh Oct 16 '10 at 17:20
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I kind of think Ribbon would be as bad for Visual Studio as those silly button bars. Working quickly in visual studio is all about good navigational keyboard shortcuts, not mouse clicking.

Frank Schwieterman
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    There's no substitute for good shortcuts (I have a Logitech G15 gaming keyboard that I use exclusively for programming because of its 15 macro keys) but where the Ribbon excels is showcasing commands that are not necessarily used frequently but would otherwise be buried under obscure menu hierarchies. – Josh Oct 12 '10 at 05:11
  • For me, I get used to the mouse clicking first, and the hotkeys come later. Though, the Ribbon is all about showing hidden buttons, not just the keyboard. Agree with Josh! – Nam G VU Oct 12 '10 at 08:51
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    How do you discover hotkeys then when using the ribbon in office? – Frank Schwieterman Oct 13 '10 at 16:31
  • What I mean is that before I need a hotkey to do something, you need to get used with the functionary of that first. Only after I use it so much frequently do I deadly need a hotkey! The Ribbon helps to get use to the functionarity easily and quickly for evryone, maybe you are not among those, but hopefully you are. When you need hotkey, just go for help resource. Ribbon can show hotkey in their tooltips. – Nam G VU Oct 15 '10 at 11:55
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I have been using Office 2007 for over a year now. The answer is simple, the ribbon interface is an almost purely cosmetic addition that in fact still slows me down dramatically.

It looks cool, and I like the fact it has more "text" and larger icons from a "Learning" perspective. But after you have "Learned" an interface the ribbon gets in the way. I find the excessively "verbose" text is distracting and causes me to spend more time looking for the desireable command.

Effectively it is just a menu turned inside out and sideways that causes you to have to click far too many times to perform actions. additionally the layout is very unnatural, it begins at the top then switches to the bottom "chunks" then goes into random left to right and top to bottom sections with possible sub menus.

This statement in the original post to me is completely inaccurate.

... Now is 2010 and we all feel the great productivity the ribbon has brought to us ...

I end up putting ALL the commands I normally use on the quick access toolbar and "hide" the ribbon to make up for the screen real estate it steals.

If it was put in VS I would do the same thing, add all the common commands to the quick access toolbar and "Hide" the ribbon.

Darren
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  • Why don't you use classic menu as you love it so much :) We can always turn back http://download.cnet.com/Classic-Menu-for-Office-Enterprise-2010/3000-2351_4-75210924.html – Nam G VU May 25 '11 at 06:29
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    I have actually used it (2007 version), and I do prefer that as well, the only thing about it is how it's really a "Ribbon" segment that is added on and doesn't quite reproduce a menus function. example shortcut keys. and though it effectively replaces the menu really well it doesn't allow you to use toolbars again. I think MS should re-add toolbars and a menu (possibly by purchasing it from this programs originators) as something that is totally optional to use since the implementation would be tiny and should not actually disrupt the existing ribbon interface. – Darren Jun 23 '11 at 15:24
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    I don't see why MS should just annoy half the people when they can enhance the interface as well as supporting what is a pretty simple feature. – Darren Jun 23 '11 at 15:29
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Not really an SO thread, but I think the rationale behind not moving the VS interface to the ribbon was that it is meant for end users, who are typically non-technical. Users of Visual Studio do not fall in that camp (typically ;)) and there would definitely need to be a lot of usability testing and allowing developers to customize the interface to get it to where they're comfortable.

From this MSDN thread, a Microsoft employee marked this as the answer:

I once asked that question too, and the answer was then that the audience for the ribbon are the end-users. Since it uses much space and since the developer is an experienced user, there is no need for ribbon support in Visual Studio.

wkl
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    I guess I don't totally agree with this idea - the fact that we are developers doesn't mean we don't need easy-of-use UI for Visual Studio. – Nam G VU Oct 12 '10 at 08:49
  • With a proper ribbon you can minimise it to a single line so it would not take up space if you did not want it to. – Ben Oct 31 '13 at 17:12
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I agree that they should bring the ribbon to VS because the stacked command bar UI is dated and ugly. I have to look at that garbage for 8-12 hours per day. Let's not even get me started on how frustrating it is when a contextual toolbar grows the height of the toolbar and shoves the top of the text editor down.

But you're unlikely to get anything more than opinion here which is not really the right forum. I'd post it to http://connect.microsoft.com.

Josh
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