What do I think of the Ribbon?

What do I think of the Ribbon?

I’m curious. What do you think I think about the Ribbon, particularly in AutoCAD? Do you think I’m a hater, a lover, indifferent, or what? Now, on what evidence do you base that view? Feel free to quote back to me anything I’ve written on this blog or any other public place to support your opinion. If you can’t find anything that gives you any clues one way or the other, feel free to mention that, too.

9 Comments

  1. Now I know that you can turn the context sensentivity off under options or changing the setting ribboncontextselect to 0 i am beginning to turn a bit as the ribbon frees up more desktop and stops updating all the time.
    Still love the commandline.

    Justin

  2. Stephen

    Well, I quite like the context sensitivity of the ribbon. It is still way too slow to display tabs on an initial load of AutoCAD, however, once loaded its nice and fast.
    I ported all my toolbars over to the ribbon, so now only have 1 toolbar active, all my customisation is on the ribbon. Helps having a 24″ widescreen so my ribbon spans the entire width with everything active at once. I dont use the ribbon to issue AutoCAD commands at all, instead using the commandline and shortcuts and pull-down menus. Old school…..lets dig out the old screen menu…

  3. asdf

    the ribbon is actually at a disadvantage when you are using a ws monitor, as it gives you less vertical space. in the old setup you could move (almost) all the stuff to the side.

  4. I think you look at the ribbon much as I do. It has potential, but isn’t yet anywhere near what it could be.

    I wish the ribbon was faster. It should also be complete – there are commands I use VERY often that aren’t on there at all. And I wish it was either easier to customize or better yet, self-customizing.

    Right now my single biggest gripe is “context”. It seemed a great idea at first, but I figure that about 2/3 of the time, I just want to copy/move/scale/etc. So I have to go to the Home tab first.

    We’re even talking about ways to turn the context feature off, or limit it, just to avoid that extra click! And isn’t that a baby & bathwater move! Context menus should also display the “Modify” panel.

    And then again maybe the “Modify” panel should never be hidden at all! A smarter ribbon might check each time it’s content changes, and try to keep a few user-selectable panels up ALL the time if there’s room. Especially on that nice 24″ widescreen…

    Geez, sometimes the “comment” gets to be a post of it’s own! Steve, what would your feeling be if a reader comment was a link to the reader’s own blog? This instance would be quite iffy, and a comment that was just “go here to see what I think” outright lame. But I can see where sometimes a few screen-caps could help get a point across, and it makes sense to do it then. Almost a sort of multi-site discussion forum.

  5. Tim and Earl, thanks for actually reading my question!

    Earl, I have no problem with people linking to their own blogs or other locations if it helps to explain their point better. “Just go here to read what I think” would perhaps seem a little rude, but I have no problem with an excecutive summary here with a link pointing elsewhere for more detail.

    Please bear in mind that for anti-spam reasons, all comments containing links are automatically held back for manual approval.

  6. Stephen

    Oops, sorry Steve, maybe if i read the question properly that would have made more sense! My comments on what YOU think are the same as Earl and Tim, and highlight the same frustrations with regards to speed, lack of complete content and “context” issues. Forget the hype….

  7. Andy Gore

    Dont quiet like the ribbon at all. I like the idea that MS originally used in office. But a copy of the ribbon on Autocad does not make any sense. To me its a great concept but should be used to compliment the command line. I use autocad with left hand on the keyboard and left thumb on the spacebar (enter key in acad). Thats the fastest.
    Ribbon is very slow and takes away a lot of real-state on my 28inch monitor.

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