Something that’s been around for as long as there have been GUI environments is the standard menu bar. Some people think it’s a "Windows thing". Not exactly.
This menu style reaches quite a few years back in computer history as far as GUIs are concerned. The first menu in the bar is always File and the second either View or Edit.
This was seen on Apple II DeskTop (that’s pre-Macintosh):
MS-DOS 5′s EDIT text editor (not in a GUI but still follows the format):
In Windows, version 1.01 easily has a File/View that can be seen:
OPENSTEP, which Mac OS X is based on, also had a vertical treatment of File/Edit:
…and so on.
The File/Edit menu bar is definitely not indigenous to any one particular OS.
Something you’ll notice these days that more software is foregoing the old-style menu bar altogether.
Google Chrome was the first browser I used in Windows that absolutely killed off the menu bar 100%; it simply doesn’t exist in that browser under Windows or Linux. The only time a menu bar can be used with Chrome is under Mac OS X due to the fact apps that run in that OS require the use of the menu bar.
Windows Vista and 7 brought several new programs that switched from the old menu bar to the new ribbon interface. This is either comprised of icons or icons with text-based tabs.
Microsoft’s Windows Live Essentials programs all use the ribbon interface as of version 2011, as does Office 2010.
The Opera browser, while still able to have the old menu bar, hides it in a new installation.
Why are old-style menu bars not as good as they used to be?
A large problem with the old menu bar style is that it cannot be customized; there is simply no way to do it. Whatever the program offers you for menu structure, that’s what you have to deal with and you cannot modify anything.
In the past this was not necessarily an issue because programs used to be simpler and therefore didn’t have that many options to wade through to get things done. As time went on however, programs became much more advanced. As a result, menus became a nightmare to deal with. A classic example of this is Microsoft Word. Prior to version 2010, menus and sub-menus for many functions are so deep within the program that it’s almost impossible to remember where certain things are without writing them down first. With today’s Word you can take any function and place a shortcut in the ribbon, similar to how you would bookmark a web site in a browser.
Another large problem with the old menu style is that they only work well on desktop computers, or to be more specific, stationary computers. Seeing a File/Edit menu bar on a smartphone or other touchscreen device (like GPS portable navigation) simply wouldn’t work well.
Do people prefer symbols over text concerning menus?
Generally speaking, yes they do.
One of the very big deals with the desktop GUI environment is that just about anything can be represented by an icon rather than text. While it is true you lose menu space by doing that (you can stack more rectangles than squares), for many a symbol is easier to remember and recognize than a word, hence why we’ve been using pictograms since 1936.
Newer GUIs are go very heavy on a symbol-input menu interface rather than text, and this is also slowly but surely making its way into the programs and apps we use on a daily basis.
This begs the question of whether the old File/Edit style program menu shouldn’t just go away altogether.
Should it?
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
For ease of use, I prefer the traditional program menu. Alas, MS is on board with the ribbon interface, as is Autodesk. I’m having to get used to the ribbon, and maybe someday it will be as intuitive as the old format, but it takes getting used to. The File menu for an individual program can be varied quite a bit with what it does, but the Edit menu? In Firefox, Ctrl+C/V/X/A/F/Z/Y are standard functions in almost every program I use, and those shortcuts haven’t changed in a long time. Why keep the Edit menu? The keyboard has a Ctrl key, and you can hold it down while pressing other keys. Some people don’t know that, but they really should.
In Revit 2010+, the ribbon is the only way of getting around (if you revert to ‘classic’ interface, Autodesk will not support any problems with the software), but in AutoCAD 2010+, you can hide the menu entirely and run everything from the command line.
Personally, I’d like to see less ribbon and more command lines in various software packages.
I will iterate my standard opinion on software preference questions of this nature.
Include both (or all) styles of menu-functionality. Make it a preference as to which to use. Everyone is happy. That is all.
I’m with mmseng – give the user an option for both. If it’s well programmed, it shouldn’t be that hard to maintain.
Personally, I don’t see how the ribbon interface is any better than the menus. Things still get lost down in the pull downs, or oddly organized. I’m not saying the ribbon is worse…just different.
In the best menu driven interfaces, there was also an accompanying toolbar. While the menu’s couldn’t be customized, you could add any option from the menu on the toolbar. This is pretty much exactly how the ribbon customization works. Unfortunately, not all programs implemented the toolbar, and a lot of people didn’t understand how to customize them.
In a perfect world, I’d like to see the option for both. Unfortunately, I’ve seen Autodesk screw this up in their Revit products. Big company, pricey software, and the option to revert back to the old style can make the software unstable to the point where Autodesk won’t support software issues with the old interface, even if the issue is seemingly non-UI related.
So yeah, I wish there was an option for both, but I really wish developers would fix their other snafus as well.