The Ribbon UI in Visual Studio?
I started a twitter poll the other day on what people thought about having the Ribbon control be in Visual Studio as the primary menu system (not just having the control to plug into your own applications). The Ribbon control appears in Microsoft Office, WordPad and even Paint. It’s a way to bring many of the often buried menu options to the fore front and make most often used commands and operations more accessible.
Let me state that at the time of this blog post I do not have ANY knowledge of this actually being on the drawing board for Visual Studio vNext. I was just thinking about this the other day and decided to see what others thought as well. I was trying to think about what this would look like and if it would be better or not. I’ve not been told this is being thought of, shown any screen shots, or even had it hinted at in any shape or form. If someone on the Visual Studio team likes the idea and wants an opinion on it, I’ll be glad to share my own as well as any comments I get on this post.
So, what were the responses to the poll? Well, the overwhelming response was a big fat NO! I think the phrase Hell No would be more accurate. There were a few that were open to the idea and would try it out, but only a single enthusiastic Yes in the bunch. What was the reasoning behind the negatives?
Location, Location, Location
It came down to real estate. Most of the tweet responses to my poll were that people hated the idea based on how much screen real estate the Ribbon would take up. This was coming from people who either turned off all toolbars or utilized a minimal toolbar approach. Their goal was to get as much text editor showing as possible. So I pointed out that you can hide the Ribbon in office (as my earlier post also mentions) and would think it would work the same way in Visual Studio. By hiding the Ribbon it would be the net effect of turning off all the toolbars. You can also add quick access toolbar icons for the things you use most often and still not loose any real estate.
One response against the real estate issue was “just get another monitor”. :) I’d like to add to that by saying “Full Screen Mode” (Alt-Shift-Enter) is your friend.
Don’t Fence Me In
One interesting response was that they felt the Ribbon might restrict extensibility of 3rd party tools like Resharper and CodeRush. When it was pointed out that the Ribbon is extensible the response was that, yes, while you can extend the ribbon, just how many extensions would be too many? They gave the example that while in office there might two or three extensions installed, in Visual Studio a developer might install a dozen ore more extensions. If all those extensions tried to add a new Ribbon tab or fight for space on a single tab that could seriously jumble the experience, and thus there would be a fight for real estate on the Ribbon itself. I can definitely see this as a potential problem. I look at my own Visual Studio installation for my personal machine and see three or four additional menu items that likely would translate into tabs on the Ribbon.
It Makes You Go Hmmmm
A few of the other scattered responses were:
- One response was interesting in that he said that integrating the Ribbon into Studio might make us think more about our own User Interfaces more.
- Can’t VS have both a toolbar system and a Ribbon and switch back and forth, or make it optional to which is displayed based on user preference?
- Make the Ribbon floatable so it can be drug out and repositioned out of the way… like maybe on another monitor. :)
- Make Visual Studio look like iTunes. (Sorry, the Mac guy had to throw his two cents in).
At the end I’m still not sure if I would like this or not. I think I’d have to see what was selected to be on the Ribbon, the tab collections and hear the extensibility story before calling it one way or another. I will say that one of the reasons that Office went to the Ribbon was because of the buried features deep in the menu system. Visual Studio, especially the higher end SKUs, is starting to see the same problem in my opinion. There are many features that are buried. It took some getting used to in Office, but I do like the Ribbon control now. It mostly stays hidden though on my machine which is what I really want: a clean interface but with functionality just a click or two away.
So what are your thoughts? Ribbon? No Ribbon?