Why did UI’s turn from practical to form over function?

E.g. Office 2003 vs Microsoft 365

Office 2003

It’s easy to remember where everything is with a toolbar and menu bar, which allows access to any option in one click and hold move.

Microsoft 365

Seriously? Big ribbon and massive padding wasting space, as well as the ribbon being clunky to use.

Why did this happen?

  • robotica@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’ve used Office 2003, 2007, 2010 etc. all the way up to 365 not for work purposes, but just happened to have interacted with all of the versions.

    I have to say, I seriously don’t know what happened, but Office 2003-2007 feels the most stable and least clunky versions of Office (at least Word) in terms of basic word processing.

    I learned how to properly edit and format text in Word in university in a way that I could, without fail, reproduce almost any text design you could think of. When I was learning it on Office 2007 I believe, everything was so stable and predictable. Now when somebody asks me to format some text with 365, the styles functionality continually keeps bugging out and doing stupid shit that I basically can’t recover from unless I create a blank file.

    In conclusion, Office 2007 > 365

    /rant

    • mPony@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Same, but for Excel.

      Also, JFC the save menu in Office 365 is Cthulhu-level madness.

        • mPony@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          the windows save menu has remained mostly the same since win3. Office products used the regular windows save menu for ages. Then suddenly they introduce a monstrosity that takes up the whole screen and throws decades of useful design out the window. If i describe it further I shall descend into madness