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?

  • @AA5BEnglish
    3•2 months ago

    Wow, you can fit one whole browser window on it … with headlines.

    Even back in the CRT days, I could have a couple windows, such as email, text, and IDE

    • my email program now has huge wasted ui space so might take up the whole laptop screen, leaving me thing. Email is not work, but something on the side for communication that shouldn’t interfere with work
    • my text chat is no longer a tiny rectangle in the corner but has huge wasted ui space and wants to take up an entire laptop screen. Even that is sometimes not enough. Text is not work, text is somethign on the side that shouldn’t interfere with work
    • my IDE has huge waste UI space and no longer fits any useable workspace on a laptop screen

    Laptops are great for portability: I used to carry them to work from any loaation. It was great while it lasted. Now I carry it from docking station to docking station, and I’m back to the bad old days of dpneeding an office set up, so I can have usable monitors

    • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
      1•2 months ago

      Wow, you can fit one whole browser window on it … with headlines.

      I easily fit my browser on it (displaying a reasonably-sized page without content being cut off) with a file manager at the side, which is what I had open at the time.

      I don’t know what you wanted me to show you. 4 windows in a quadrant layout? That would be doable too, for most programs.

      I was refuting your point that laptops are unusable because of modern UX - clearly they aren’t.

      Even back in the CRT days, I could have a couple windows, such as email, text, and IDE

      I thought we were talking about laptops! Now you’re talking about a monitor on a desk?

      As I just showed you, you can have multiple windows open on a laptop. My laptop isn’t even large, it’s just a usual 14.something" laptop.

      You should go into your display settings and turn your scaling down, because it seems to me you’ve got scaling set at 200% or something lol