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?

  • Captain Aggravated
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    42 months ago

    I swear I still get letterboxes on a 16:9 television watching at least some movies. And of course I get pillarboxes for days watching “fullscreen” pan & scan DVDs or anything shot for TV before 2010.

    16:10 is a pretty good laptop aspect ratio, but on the desktop I don’t think I’m giving up my 21:9 monitor. For gaming it’s simply majestic and having enough real estate for CAD and a spreadsheet open side by side and actually get stuff done is something I won’t give up.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 months ago

      Actually i have and love my 21:9, but it was a weird journey.

      The most common resolution for them is 3440x1440 21:9

      At work i use a 2560x1600 16:10

      You may see my problem, i was not going to give up those 160 vertical pixels. So i got a 3840x1600 instead…

      Which comes down to the same 21:9…

      I think the reason its not a problem is cause how rarely your only using a single fullscreen window on such ultrawides.

      Majestic for gaming ind… and the gpu caught fire again.