Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Ribbon menus
Raised as a usability problem by 5 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2011–2025), in 5 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Ribbon is hard to explore and hard to reset to defaultUnreviewed
20112026- Exploring the ribbon is more painful than a plain text menu; hard to return to default2020-07-10
- Gigantic button-filled ribbons with cryptic icons make actions hard to find2020-02-28
- Ribbon items use mixed fonts, positions and icons, so users cannot search it methodically2014-05-09
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 5 complaints
- Menu items move or hide, so users can't find commands where they expect them2025-05-19
- Exploring the ribbon is more painful than a plain text menu; hard to return to default2020-07-10
- Gigantic button-filled ribbons with cryptic icons make actions hard to find2020-02-28
- Ribbon items use mixed fonts, positions and icons, so users cannot search it methodically2014-05-09
- Finding an infrequent command in a ribbon is harder than in a menu2011-10-18