Mousing a collapsed Ribbon

, , ,

Remember me talking about the new MS Office interface, especially the Ribbon, and how it could work for Opera? Now, while checking my feeds after getting back from vacation, this video demo (3.3 MB) really made me drool smile

For those not clicking: it shows a Ribbon handling mode where it acts as a cross between menu and toolbars: taking minimal space while collapsed like an old-fashioned menu, only showing options when clicked - but then, it shows all options in the typical Ribbon manner.

This is not something you can 'just' add to Quick (our cross platform interface layer), but I'd sure like to see this in Opera! Without having actually used it, I'd dare say it would improve usability quite a bit, giving that we want to both present a simple interface and give the user easy access to powerful features. No way to come even close with a customized toolbar this time, alas.

Vive la FranceOpera's fans

Comments

Eddie LopezEddie_Lopez Monday, August 14, 2006 5:50:52 PM

Oh my... that is nice. I like!

FataL Monday, August 14, 2006 6:58:50 PM

I like new MS Office interface too. I'm actually not too scary to say that is pretty revolutionary in text editors interface. up
Last big improvemement in application interface design was contextual panels, but they was implemented mostly in graphic and web design applications.

Alexey Feldgendlerfeldgendler Tuesday, August 15, 2006 2:40:13 AM

I like the way it LOOKS, but I have no idea whether it will be usable in real life. Here is what comes to my head:

1. What has happened to regular dropdown menus? Is this thing INSTEAD of them? Can a user have them back if he wants? If he gets them back, will he have access to the Ribbon?

2. Can the Ribbon contents be customized? Given their irregular layout, I'm afraid no. Of course, complete customization is not required, but sometimes adding one frequently used function is all the user wants.

3. Is it keyboard-accessible? Does it allow keyboard traversal? With regular menus, I can press Alt-letter, then another letter, and that's all. Is it possible with the Ribbon?

4. What happens to the Ribbon in a narrow window?

FataL Tuesday, August 15, 2006 3:37:29 AM

@feldgendler: 2, 3 - yes.
You can find all answers on your other questions there: An Office User Interface Blog
I use Office beta on my home desktop PC and it works perfect so far.

jimjjewett Tuesday, August 15, 2006 2:10:45 PM

I hate to sound stupid, but why is this something you couldn't add to the cross-platform layer? As nearly as I can tell, the differences are that

(1) selecting a menu opens something a fancier widget than a menu selection

(2) There choice of what subwigdets to include may depend on the current selection.

These are both nice, but I don't think they're beyond the cababilities of QT, are they?

Rijk Tuesday, August 15, 2006 4:39:15 PM

Opera isn't using Qt much actually, and then only in the Linuxy versions.

The Ribbon is very dynamic (adapts smartly to window width), has excellent keyboard accessibilty, etc. It is a completely new kind of widgets, not just a toolbar.

Of course it can be imitated by programmers, programmers can do magic after all, but this is not a trivial addition.

Aux Wednesday, August 16, 2006 12:02:55 PM

Yeah, Ribbon is superb! But I don't need it in Opera. Khm, and I don't use menu too (: It is always hidden. Not that I'm keyboard-addicted, but while browsing I work with two hands: one on mouse and one on keyboard. Mouse for clicking on links and keyboard for everything else.

Ofcourse proper implementation of such technology for Opera would be just great!

Write a comment

New comments have been disabled for this post.