Feature Request: Ribbon Menu

Community Feature Request Chat
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In many cases, most of the answers I have read are right, screens are getting wider and the use of space has been replaced on the left and right sides.

In this way, it could be reconsidered that the ribbon menu should be on the left or right side. There are components that allow this to be done, but they are paid for.

The case of Siemens Expeditions is the best example, there are components that are even free like WPF UI component, Visual Studio Community 2022 compatible, or WinUI Essentials, an tools pack to speed up the software development process by complying with the XAML language specifications for structural design and Fluid design, compatible with C++ and .NET 8, Includes a template like DevWinUI Templates for WinUI or Template Studio for WinUI could facilitate performance at the user interface level.

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KiCad is multi-platform, so anything Windows only is useless.

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.net libraries are multiplatform, I believe.
After Javas run anywhere , Microsoft pushed for parity.

Unless theyā€™ve dropped off

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Shut up your mouth if you donā€™t know anything .
MOD (hermit) EDIT: This character string was unnecessary and added nothing to the community.

NET is free and cross-platform, IA-32, x86-64, ARM.
.NET Framework is deprecated.

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The requirement to be multi platform stands. If .NET is, and the license terms are compatible then it is up to the developers to choose to use it (C++ vs C# etc).
No need to be rude, this site is multi national and language needs to be polite.

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66

Ribbons where invented for exactly that reason, to save space in the top region of the monitor.
In a time where rows and rows of icon-only toolbars existed

So the basic idea of the ribbon is to take those toolbars, and instead of displaying them all at once, one below the other, group their icons thematically. Ideally, that grouping follows the logical bigger phases of the work done with the program. Which in Word, Is like the initial writing phase, then inserting images, videos, etc, then layouting, then reviewing everything and then maybe do mass mailings etc.

That idea would dramatically reduce the amount of toolbars on the screen at any given moment by only displaying the tools you currently need, while also avoiding the need to swap the tab-sections* of the ribbon constantly

  • btw, initially, there would not have been tabs on the ribbon, but the ribbon would be scrollable left to right - thats also why it is called a ribbon.

To be fair, i love that idea and I am a great fan of the ribbon. Not only because in uni i studied the design history of it xD

That said, the idea starts to fall apart when there arent these distinct big temporal steps of work, which even can be seen in word, where tabs exist that can be used in all steps of the work, like view. still having them thematically grouped is a good idea, but it can lead to frequent tab swaps

For Kicadā€¦ the major steps would beā€¦ well it would be what is done in separate programs, the drawing of the symbols, then doing the schema, then drawing the footprints and finally doing the layout.
So the ribbon cant really do a lot of space saving, as all the toolbars arent displayed all the time, because they are in different programs

Still, it could replace the main toolbar and the dropdowns. This would still save some space as currently nearly all the tools exist in the menu AND a toolbar

Butā€¦ having vertical iconbars is an established ui design too, and has great benefits. So packing even them into ribbons on top would indead be probably not the best idea.

Soā€¦ rather a combined top ribbon, merging the main toolbar and the dropdowns and presenting the content of the dropdowns in an easier way
Easier? Yes, because a dropdown needs to be opened for each and every single use, a ribbon tab stays open. Just take the ā€œinspectā€ dropdown . You canā€™t tell me anybody uses that, as this would be a horrible experience, opening a dropdown, aiming for the ā€œnext markerā€ tool over and over again - as a ribbon tab, it would have its merits.
Not only would the contents of what is now hidden behind single-shot-dropdowns be better visible, the user also would have the choice of icon only, text only or icon and text as this is the norm in ribbon UIs.

Soā€¦ ribbons could be implemented, could be really helpful if done well (read: sorted well), and still the vertical bars could stay.
Make it a user choice and its win-win

2 Likes
67

I am almost certain that the ribbon in Word and Excel take up more space than the menus which they replaced.

What does that mean? I like a logical grouping. (not to say that the earlier Microsoft menus were particularly logical.) But Themes in the MIcrosoft context seem to be only a matter of style. And probably my biggest complaint about Microsoft is their prioritization of style over substance. When I think of themes otherwise I think of a Disney Theme park. OK for play but not for me using KiCad.

???

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I use that. That is used for such things as ERC and DRC which are not used much before the end of the design process. I think it is logically placed.

Do you mean let the users choose between the ribbon or the present menus? That sounds OK, but it does sound like a bit more bloat.

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Sorry i hate picking apart a text with quotes, so i answer in one go

  • it doesnt. against a single line of icon only icons, sure its bigger. but not even against the default toolbars in word6 (two rows, only a fraction of the tools available through the ribbon).

if your interested, search the video ā€œthe story of the ribbonā€ from jensen harris.
he mentioned that the ribbon replaced the up to 32 toolbars they had in previous versions of word.

-that thematically grouping icons mean? i thought i explained that: that one tab of the ribbon only contains icons of tools that are needed during one phase of the work. like in word all the tools that deal with citations, references, sources etc are in ā€œreferencesā€, stuff for reviewing the work of others (comments, track document changes etc) are in ā€œreviewā€.
imunsure where you got the ā€œthemesā€ and your ramblings about theme parks

  • xD is a emoticon meaning the same as laughing

  • temporal steps is the same as i described during the thematically grouping part. you group icons into what people need at a certain time during what they create with the program. i explained already that for kicad the big steps would be symbol creation, schematic drawing, footstep creation and pcb layout.

  • but you would not use the ā€œnext markerā€ entry from the menu

  • of course i mean the choice between ribbon and present menues.

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The big problem of ribbon menus is also itā€™s strength: itā€™s great for learning a tool bad bad for daily use, because it requires more clicks and mouse movement to get to the same result. Yes, it can be more visually helpful if done right (I would argue it seldom is done right and especially is really bad in MS tools) but thatā€™s nothing I need in my professional use of KiCad. So making it optional would be an option yes, but there are much more pressing matters the KiCad development needs to focus on.

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I think that is completely wrong. In my experience the click count is similar or less thanks to the context awareness of the ribbon - something that cannot be said of the menus and toolbars.

The biggest crime against mouse mileage has nothing to do with ribbons, itā€™s Microsoftā€™s current design language which is basically a half-baked touch-orientated UI foisted on mouse and keyboard users. Everything is at least twice as big as it used to be, and I hate it.

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AutoCad also does the ribbon and its horribleā€¦ you have to wait for tooltips to pop up to figure out what is what also.

Also you could argue that MS Paint is an early form of ā€œribbonā€ and KiCad already has that kind of thing with the toolbars.

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Iā€™m going to post this link again:

https://youtu.be/Tl9kD693ie4

Itā€™s a fascinating account of the development of the ribbon, the failure of the menus/toolbars model once the functionality exceeds a certain level, and the remarkably rigorous development process of the new UI. It must have cost Microsoft some serious money.

I think all the anti-ribbon gang in this forum should watch it, because at least your comments will be informed and not based on anti-Microsoft prejudice (yawn) or resistance to change.

Unfortunately it is split into ten 10-minute videos, which is infuriating, but I found it a really interesting watch.

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Iā€™ve watched itā€¦ its nonsense propaganda by and large. Ribbons are bad for infrequently used items because you have to hunt for them without aid of the menu structure.

A combination of menus for infrequently used items in week organized locations and toolbars for frequently used itemsā€¦ is what kicad already does.

FreeCAD is what you do not wantā€¦ its basically a bunch of ribbons which they call workspaces and it hard to use because you canā€™t find anything.

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Part of the difficulty here is that I cannot easily go back to a pre-ribbon version of Microsoft Office for the sake of comparison. And Microsoft Orifice is the only ribbon-using software that I have. I do think that the pre-ribbon menus gave me all of the commands that I needed.

The other thingā€¦I really ā€œcut my teethā€ using Microsoft Works, probably (Was it Win 2.1 which launched from DOS?) before Microsoft Officeā€¦ Those pre-ribbon menus taught me keystroke commands for the more common commands. I think that ā€œALT+1 or 2 lettersā€ sequences are hard to beat for speed and ease invoking common commands. Perhaps it is my fault (these things are harder to learn as we get older) but Microsoft ā€œbrickedā€ some of the keystroke commands I had learned (quite frustrating) and I did not learn replacements from the ribbon. I am not certain that those ribbon commands all have keystroke command replacements. But the older menus were good at teaching me the keystroke commands.

Some years ago I tried a privately developed replacement for Wang Imaging (a utility under Win3.1) which became Kodak Imaging but that was eventually killedā€¦probably with XP. I had found Kodak Imaging to be great for marking up .pdf schematics and such. It could lay vector markings on top of a .bmp image. Anyway this privately developed attempted-replacement had all unique keystroke commands for this niche software product. I complained that it needed to use common keystroke commands, and that I was not going to learn unique commands for niche software. I dropped it. Learning keystroke commands takes me a lot of time, repetition, and patience!

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ā€œNonsense propagandaā€! :rofl: :joy: Ah well, some people are a lost cause. I donā€™t believe for a microsecond that you watched it with an open mind.

Nonsense yourself! The ribbon DOES have the equivalent of a menu structure.

File - Insert - Draw - Design - Layout - References - View - Help

Do they look like menu headings to you? They do to me. They are the ribbon headings in Word.

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I am watching this video. Yes it is interestingā€¦but I never remember seeing more than 2 toolbars. And, as I remember I think I was able to slide one next to the other so that it required only one row, unlike what we see in the video.

By the way I am able to clearly understand this presenter when playing the video at 1.5x speed. (recommendation.)

They show a 800 x 600 resolution monitor. I suppose that some people had that, but as an engineer I got a 1024 x 768 Epson monitor around 1990. Who would ever need more resolution than that?? :grimacing:

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Why would I? Iā€™ve used menus since I was about 5 and ribbons for the last 20 years ā€¦ ribbons suck.

Also 800x600? I am pretty sure kicad does not even support that or does so just barely. I typically run Kicad at either 1080p or 3440x1440p.

Thats exactly the problem with the ribbon is low densityā€¦ its NOT equivalent.

The ribbon was make work for software engineers that need job security IMO.

Toolbars / Menus = good
Ribbons = bad

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You are right: the toolbars could be placed next to each other so they look quite like one long toolbar, or on separate rows, or gapped - it was all quite flexible.

Because there wasnā€™t room for all the toolbars without losing loads of space, the challenge for the user was knowing what toolbars existed as most of them were hidden by default. Then, when a toolbar was activated the user had to squint at these miniature icons and guess what each stood for.

I think there are two major problems with toolbars. Firstly the icons are 16 by 16, so the pictures are tiny and they have no text underneath. This makes it challenging to see at a glance what they represent (and it makes it challenging for the designer to come up with a hundred or more individual pictures, all easily distinguished and all embodying the function in a visually obvious way).

Secondly, toolbars are static. They do not respond to context, unlike the ribbon. Plus, as you will see in the video, it isnā€™t just about the ribbon - thereā€™s the context-aware previews, etc.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT, I totally acknowledge that any program, no matter how crap the UI, can be learned, and once it is learned the user can work fast and competently.

The problem is that the millions of non-geeks out there donā€™t have the luxury of immersing themselves in a program like Word - with its vast feature set - and learning it inside out. Thatā€™s why ā€œdiscoverabilityā€ is important, and the ribbon helps with that.

I love using the ribbon UI - its open and dynamic nature makes the program feel so much more pleasing to use: modern, sophisticated, slick. When I go back to a menu/toolbar program like KiCAD its like going back to a black-and-white telly: perfectly watchable but somehow lacking and strangely joyless.

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You donā€™t seriously think Bill Gates would waste money like that, do you?

You havenā€™t watched the video, have you? The ribbon was invented because the scope of the feature set in Word blew the menu/toolbar model wide open - it worked well for simpler programs, but fell apart for something as feature-rich as Word.

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Try to be a bit fair. This video was discussing developments pre 2007. I think that many office workers were still using CRT monitors back then. I may have had a 1600 x 1200 CRT monitor at that point, but that was an elephant on my desk. This video was not representing what a CAD user might have.

1 Like