Was just about to post a message saying much the same thing . . . 
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Changing the UI isnāt just about swapping the toolbar for a ribbon, itās about a ground-up review of every part of the UI to improve discoverability, lessen the learning curve, and smooth out the work flow.
None of that matters to existing users. The benefits are mostly for new users. At the moment new users are having to learn the Windows 95 UI conventions as well as the tool itself.
There is a much more subjective element as well. Itās about the joy and satisfaction to be had from using a really good tool, whether that be a word processor, an oscilloscope, a soldering iron, or a wood chisel. And that applies even when you are competent with the tools youāve got.
UI design is not easy, and like most people I canāt do it myself but I know when Iāve found a good example. I used to use (and teach) the CAD program Solidworks, but I always found it to be clunky despite its extensive functionality. The UI reflected its development history: new features were bolted on here and there until it became a complicated mess. When I left the university I needed a low cost, or free, replacement, and I discovered Siemens Solid Edge. What a contrast! Much the same functionality but a modern UI that eased the learning curve and just, somehow, made it a pleasure to use.
To be clear, Iām not advocating for KiCAD to get a UI overhaul because I know it will never happen. Iām just expressing my opinion.
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I donāt subscribe to conspiracy theories, nor do I assume everyone is motivated purely by greed. And I want to point out that the subscription model for MS Office came well after the ribbon.
The official story, which I believe, is the one I mentioned earlier: customers were raising feature requests for features that already existed. Clearly there was a problem with the UI, so the ribbon was invented to improve ādiscoverabilityā. I think it was successful, but thatās just my opinion.
Office software is a competitive space, so Microsoft has always had to innovate and improve in order to keep or extend its user base and deliver profits to its shareholders. The ribbon UI was part of that process.
Indeed. In fact the opposite has happened - lots of software vendors have adopted it. That doesnāt smell of failure to me.
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Doesnāt mean the adopted āde factoā standard is the best solution . . . remember VHS vs Betamax ?
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Actually I wouldnāt mind a reincarnated Clippy that goes: It looks like you have no idea how to design a circuit. Iām sending you to <any website other than KiCad forum> 
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Once I encountered MS ribbons in my heavily used Ā®Excel in statistical analysis, and also MSĀ®WORD, I found everything shuffled around, and hidden. My trained motor memory was now in for a retraining session.
There was no option to switch the UI style.
Guess if it helped me?
A lot of expletives followed.
The KI team has a lot on their plate to keep up with changing expectations and updating of industry conventions.
I could think of a very long list of improvements to KI that would make people stop paying big bucks for commercial alternatives.
The āpeer groupā for KI is not Autodesk, or MSĀ®.
If KI was the number one choice for schematic capture and PCB layout, the competition would be shaking in their boots. Likely they have staff that are dedicated to undermine competition and keep those annual fees rolling in. Maybe even suggesting dead end āimprovementsā to undermine real progress.
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Pleaseā¦ DONāT!
Kicad UI has enough complexity already. Increasing it even more with hideous pictograms at top of screen (and who will draw them for free?) instead of long known menu items is counter-productive. Also most displays at today has 16:9 or even taller horizontal aspect ratio. What ribbon effectively to on such screens - steal the already shrunken usable work area. I donāt want to lose even more of it.
If somebody want ribbon so badly, let he make his own implementation of Kicad with it.
Exactly! KICAD has more than enough UI complexity already. The whole point of the ribbon is to reduce the complexity by improving the way the functionality is presented to the user.
Exactly, again! The menus are ālong knownā to experienced users, but Microsoft found that there was so much functionality in Word and the other programs in Office that new users really struggled to find these features. I agree with Microsoft: deeply nested menu items, tiny toolbar icons with no text beneath each icon, and keyboard shortcuts that are rarely intuitive, make for a steep and very tedious learning curve.
Also, for a lot of users, there is nothing intuitive about nested menus, because that model requires each item to be āclassifiedā and placed into a hierarchy of classifications. A lot of features could be placed into several places on the menu structure, depending on which mental model the user has of the program. And unfortunately for them, menu and sub-menu items are entirely hidden from view until the user clicks on them in their āpoke and hopeā efforts to learn the program.
Same with toolbars: how does the user know which toolbar contains the (unlabelled) icon which represents renumbering the pages (for example). And how would you represent page renumbering using a piddly little toolbar icon? Remember, your icon has to be obvious to every user! The ribbon also classifies things, but by design it exposes the features far more (discoverability), thus softening the learning curve.
The point is that the āmenusā element of the old WIMP UI model has its limits, and a lot of modern software exceeds those limits. Everything has limits - thereās nothing outrageous about admitting that. The ribbon is an attempt to move past those limits, and I believe it is successful. Not perfect, but it succeeds in its objectives.
Thatās why you can set the ribbon to auto-hide.
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There are a few things to consider for thisā¦
Can it be done? yes. wxWidgets contain the needed method. If this didnāt exist then I am afraid the answer would be a hard no since this would divert Kicad dev effort to away from eCAD development to Widget development.
Could it work? why notā¦ (almost) Every classic menu entry already has an icon and thus it is a coding-layout issue more than anything rather than delving into artwork (that was previously done).
A well grouped ribbon can work well, especially IF all the options are exposed and looking at the menu entries they are not too long nor nested meaning a ribbon tab for Route,Inspect, Tools, Place, View, Edit is viable and would not suffer from what occurs with Excel where it isnāt visible and no visible way to show a (previous) menu entryā¦ Visio is WORSE for this as there are some capabilities that are just chucked somewhere to find an illogical home (the dark side of Ribbonā¦ and why it isnāt always teh right solutionā¦)
One real issue is comparing WINDOWS ribbon implementation and expecting the same for wxWidgets/Kicadā¦ MSOffice-Outlook ribbon is ok and I have it on Simplified to regain screen real-estate while benefiting from a ribbon, the Full is just large.
WxWidgets do not have this capability so it would be the FULL and also the tab text padding is larger than on windows win32 api and thus is more expensive and also might not look as nice as a windows UI variant (essencially a ribbon for FOSS toolboxes is a tab UI element with hooks into the backend menu system)
Wxwidgets. Simple application using wxribbon and wxauinotebook. | imron02
Finally someone needs todo it and want todo itā¦ FOSS is referred to as hurding cats for a reason since you canāt actually make any contributor do something they donāt want to so if there isnāt someone that wants to then guess what? it isnāt going to get done. Then its a matter of priorityā¦ Would I prefer a ribbon interface or FEM ā¦ FEM wins.
Finallyā¦ the trend to 16x9 monitors has actually resulted in a LOWER screen area compared to the same 4x3 and the worst-dimension to abuse is the vertical, which is now has a higher premium (this is why a python tool I developed and maintain for $werk is going through a refactoring to put a pseudo-ribbon on the right-side NOT the horizontal )
Indeed, yes. To repeat: Iām not trying to persuade anyone to overhaul the UI of KiCAD - I know it would be a waste of time because no-one wants it apart from me, and nobody wants to do it. Rather, Iām just expressing my opinion.
Unfortunately, clunky and old fashioned user interfaces are the norm for an awful lot of FOSS, not least because so much of it dates back to the last century. Also, most software geeks donāt know how to design a good UI - itās a fundamentally different skill set from coding.
As an aside that is why I have repeatedly failed in my attempts to switch to Linux, despite the technical advantages. Far too many Linux programs are clunky and ugly, and exceedingly old-fashioned. No doubt because the great majority of Linux apps are FOSS. Personally Iām willing to pay for an app that looks and feels modern and has a really well thought through UI.
I could save money and drive around in a 1990s old banger, but I donāt because I want a car which is efficient, attractive (to me), and gives me pleasure from driving it.
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We do agree on that, yes. 16:9 is OK for watching movies (though you still get the black lines most of the time), but pretty rubbish for productivity apps. I mourn the passing of 4:3 screens. Your idea of a vertical version of the ribbon sounds interesting.
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There was a suggestion to put it in Gitlab as a feature request. I think this is a good suggestion, and folks can vote on it there.
I personally find the ribbon to require many more mouse clicks to get to things. This makes Word in particular incredibly tedious for all but the simplest needs. My experience is that many of the advanced features are still not used by many users based on the majority of documents I edit, collaborate on, or review. Nor are they particular discoverable. I frequently have to google āhow to do xyz in Wordā to find out how to do something that is not obvious in the ribbon, so I disagree with the discoverability aspect. On top of that, many features in Word partially overlap with others, are inconsistent, and many of them are broken or fragile. Ironically, I have the newest Word on a relatively new computer, and I can outtype it even though I am a slow typist. Where do I click on the ribbon to fix that? This is also a human interface issue - basic software features should work and work well. Putting them on a ribbon is a waste of resources if they donāt work.
Finally, itās PCB CAD. Thereās a bajillion features. What does it mean if you discover a new feature you hadnāt heard about? It means you go and learn what that feature is, how is it fabricated, can my company afford to do it, will it save money, what are the standards, how do I come up with the design rules, etc., etc. The software is not going to teach you how to do PCB design, and the CAD tool is but a part of it. In my humble opinion, most of the new features are spot on to increase the usability of KiCad for real-world PCB design.
John
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I never said āpurelyā. But why do automobile manufacturers keep tweaking the vehicle appearance every few years? Many of those changes offer no functional advantage. It is sales and marketing. I think the same forces drive commercial software development.
The people employed there have to somehow prove that they are needed.
For me KiCad is a kind of software where you have right hand on mouse and left on keyboard to press hot-keys. You use the menu rather rarely, so discussing the menu makes only so-so sense.
I remember some of the hot keys which I use more often. For those I use less often I tend to use the menu.
Can I please have a 150 gram hamburger with sliced tomato and cooked onion?
you know itās coming soon, right?
This. Screens are getting wider and wider, so for PCB work, where X and Y are of equal importance, the top and bottom are precious real estate.This is unlike word processing and spreadsheets, which tend to focus on a few rows at a time
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