Learning to Love Ribbons

"Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

When Saint Francis of Assisi said these words in 1220-something its almost like he saw the coming of Ribbon panels. Saint Isidore of Seville is widely thought of as the patron saint of all things computing, but I'm declaring Francis the patron saint of Ribbons.

I am trying so hard to learn to love ribbons, honestly. Change is good. Technology drives my livelihood. I preach the gospel of embracing new technology everyday. But it's just frustrating to relearn interfaces that use ribbons. My intuition to hit certain menus is totally thrown off. Since graphical user interfaces hit the scene in the 1980's one thing we could always count on were the standard "File" "Edit" "View" "Insert" menus. Mac OS's, Linux and until now, Windows have been fairly standard in the location and functionality of menus and toolbars.

The biggest problem I have with Ribbon interfaces is the lack of consistency between applications. Word 2007, Snagit 9 and of course AutoCAD 2009 are all ribbon based - these are just the ones I use on a day-to-day basis. Some have a full menu browser (like AutoCAD) and some just have what you'd expect to find in the File menu (like Snagit and Word). All of the Ribboned applications have a Quick Access Toolbar (which I lovingly call the "quat"). Most quats are customizable, but vary in the behavior of the default commands.

The way I see the future going, there is no escaping ribbons. We need to get used to them, pronto. Our collective productivity may take a hit while we adjust, but ribbons are here to stay.

May Saint Francis grant you the courage to change your CUI as needed.