Agreed. However, the ribbon was about a lot more than saving screen space - menus and toolbars fall apart when the feature set gets too rich regardless of screen resolution. A 4k screen doesn’t make KiCAD any more “discoverable”.
First, I gotta ask, how many non-geeks are using KiCad…?
Second, for complex software, I find a vertical list of text much faster to scan than a horizontal bar of text mixed with icons, and also I don’t have to move my mouse around as far around the screen to do anything. Since I have some issues with RSI, I can feel the difference in my wrist.
Third, I am sure that my opinion of the ribbon is colored by the fact that it is attached to Microsoft Word, which is a terrible piece of bloatware that still can’t consistently and simply handle numbered items in any coherent way, especially equations, after more than three decades of existence.
John
CONTEXT! (What is a geek?)
When it comes to Microsoft Office, I am certainly NOT a power user. I have seen others whip out memos, using various shortcuts, that make me feel like a snail.
My thing is circuit design. Even with KiCad I do not consider myself a power user. I look at my electrical outlet if I want to see a plug-in, and a python is a snake which is incapable of handwriting (script.) But I really appreciate KiCad.
Ribbons aren’t discoverable… thats the problem. They are less discoverable than menus.
Menus also typically let you know what the shortcuts were for things… again not happening on ribbons.
Thanks for confirming what I was thinking.
I think there are simply different peoples on the world.
I didn’t sow that video and I have no time for it (it is 21:30 here and I’m still at work).
Since I was young boy when I have collected set of some germanium transistors stored in order I knew where I have each of them. Nowadays when my son moves some of my things to another place (for example screwdrivers, pliers, or other tools) it always annoys me when I can’t find something that I know where it should be.
So hearing of UI being dinamic makes me to not even wanted to see it.
I have never used any program with such menu.
I told my brother that I have seen here the info about ribbon UI. He said that he sow something like that. Very rarely he uses Paint to capture screen shot (I am using IrfanView for this). He said that it is very hard for him to do anything with it what was very simple in past.
YES!!
Do you use Snipping tool? When I was contracting recently my Win10 computer had snip&sketch. I liked that better. But I also use IRFANVIEW & Paint for editing and not for capturing.
Comments like this confirm what I’ve begun to suspect: that most of the people slagging off the ribbon have barely used it.
Here’s a tip for you: press the Alt key.
Ah! So you have access to a usability lab that rivals Microsoft’s, have you? How interesting that its findings are diametrically opposite to those of Microsoft.
Watch the video. The first quarter to a third is a Microsoft employee slagging off Microsoft’s own rubbish attempts to improve Word’s UI. Microsoft had to admit it had driven into a cul-de-sac with its pre-ribbon efforts, and that was based on millions of data points from real users.
Of course you’ll know this already, what with having your own data sources and usability labs.
I don’t know what it is and what it is for.
I don’t understand this sentence. You use them both for editing or you (also) use them both, but only Paint for editing.
I use IrfanView for capturing (Shift+PrtScreen in any application and Ctrl+V in IrfanView) and editing (in sense adding some lines, circles, arrow).
In not private tasks to not break IrfnView rules I use Gimp.
In past (years ago) I have also used IrfanView for serial screen capture. I used it to capture 200dpi scanned topgraphical 1:25000 maps and then merged a serie of such captures to get single map.
As I didn’t know (and don’t know) how to get directly the source of such maps I have written a program that merged them together based on 3x3 pixel rectangles being identical.
I realise I’m hogging this thread and it’s probably of no real interest to KiCAD users or coders, so feel I should stop about here - I’ve already pushed my luck with our host’s hospitality, banging on about stuff of no relevance to KiCAD because a UI redesign is never going to happen.
I’ve reached a conclusion: that the dislike of the ribbon amongst so many on this thread is primarily due to three factors: an instinctive resistance to change which prevents an open-minded evaluation of the ribbon; a lack of familiarity with the ribbon due to a resistance to using it; and an anti-Microsoft prejudice which leads to thinking everything they do is automatically crap.
Feel free to call me a Microsoft fanboi, or whatever! 
2 Likes
I suggest you give Word’s rivals a thorough evaluation. I’ve tried them all: the more modern ones lack features I want*, the older ones are just as bloated as Word, but with crappier UIs.
*For example, most don’t even implement the full set of selection functions:
select-and-extend by character
select-and-extend by word
select-and-extend by sentence
select-and-extend by paragraph
select-and-extend by line
You won’t find any rival that implements all five. (At least I haven’t, and I’ve looked hard.)
Its almost as if there are different UI elements and methodologies and the correct choice is a UX consideration…
Ribbon is gud because it is new and menus are bad because they are olde really doesn’t help discussions like this.
For me there is really only two real considerations
- what is the correct UI/UX strategy
- is it consistent across all platforms.
For #1 … maybe, maybe not. Kicad has gone for an approach of icon’s around the 3 edges and then a classic menu approach as well… How many commands can only be accessed via the menu? unsure but for the main workload pretty much every icon is easily visible and easily accessible leaving the menu’s for the infrequency activities.
Now consistency … this is an issue 
wxWidget’s “ribbon menu” is fugly and it is inconsistent across all platforms and thus it was be a MAJOR step backwards if it was to be implemented using wxWidgets …
Could Kicad build their own widget out of tab-widget and packing icon-bottons? sure but it would still be fugly…
The only ribbon I actually enjoy using is actually Matlabs… and the reason I like using it is because it doesn’t get in my way and their UX designers know what users what todo … Simulate and that is why the Simulate cluster is visible on (almost) every ribbon tab because they got it that ribbons CAN be bad, especially if you are looking for visual queues as to what your #1 task is (execute simulation) and it isn’t infront of you… because like it or not ribbon’s have a discoverability issue and poorly packed ribbons are horrendous (looking at you Visio, less so Outlook…)
And as someone that spends ~50% of their engineering time in Simulink (then Juypter and Kicad/Xpedition), this is FANTASTIC and their UX designers get it, they get what the #1 task is of someone using Simulink.
So… lets entertain Ribbons being used in Kicad…
#1 the toolkit would need to be looked into … Mathworks had a custom widget set written in Java and have almost converted to a html5 based toolkit… Kicad is written in wxwidgets so either something that doesn’t look like a 50’s architecture would need to be derived in wxwidgets or a full conversion to qt6 and heavily leveraging QML would be needed.
THEN a similar concept to what Simulink did… whatever RIBBON was selected, there would need to be a common cluster to accomodate everything on the right icon bar because 90% of all eeschema interactions is the right icon and 90% of all pcbnew interactions is the right icon bar.
1 Like
I did this with just snipping tool. I think that to do it with Paint or IRFANVIEW I would need to printscreen and then paste into Paint, select an area, and then copy-paste here.
1 Like
Of course it will . . . given the passage of sufficient time it will happen . . . for now I think there are other things that users need more than a revised UI.
I think the ‘Snipping Tool’ Is awesome and I don’t know what a ‘Ribbon’ is beyond the reference to an ‘old oak tree’ so I will have to check it out. Fascinating thread mind you 
but I think it maybe done 
Visio and also Outlook are both applications that need vertical space, in my opinion the ribbons steal too much on a laptop screen.
Even I don’t know it I suppose it is of no real help to me. The only what I make screen-shots in last few years are KiCad to have it for forum or for bug report. But I have KiCad on another PC than I write so in each such case I have to get a file (png) to copy it by pendrive to be able to use here. Even if it can save me few seconds the rest is the most time of the whole process.
As you say I guess we all work differently. I use snipping tool almost daily. On average probably more than that.
Sometimes if I printscreen then the first pasted image is inconveniently large. Snipping tool avoids that step.
I cannot think of an application which does not.