First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly.
Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps.
From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice or Collabora Desktop Classic is that it has a sane UI/menubar visual paradigm. (Which MS obliterated eons ago.)
But let's talk about what matters: Collabora (the online document suite) is slow as heck.
It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.
That should be the top priority. Full stop.
LibreOffice works fine for desktop. But, for Collabora, the web experience needs to be fast. The lag in Collabora is simply unacceptable.
People expect online, and they expect collaborative, and they expect nearly instantaneous updates (at least not painful to type and wait for screen to update).
Talk about misplaced priorities. In my very humble opinion.
At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design.
I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.
> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment
If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better:
"...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent variables...results support the conclusion that the user interface of Excel 2007 did change for the worst in comparison with the user interface of the 2003 version." [0]
A study from 16 years ago is hardly relevant anymore. Back in 2003, people were still familiar with Office 2003's layout; most people have long since forgotten that layout or never learnt it in the first place.
The author doesn't discuss users' existing familiarity with Office 2003 and they only mention the word 'training' once, that "software design to interact with technology should require the least amount of training as possible" whilst never acknowledging that training in, and even qualifications in, the use of the Office suite was very much a thing in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Even then, the most problems were had in Excel. Advanced usage of Excel is done by technical people who would have had some training. Word and PowerPoint weren't shown to have significant difference in usability; arguably, Word is the program most people forced to use the Office suite spend their time in.
Never mind the ways by which the Ribbon and computers have changed since Office 2007. Options moved around, the Ribbon height reduced, screens having gotten wider to compress fewer options into submenus…
The author states at the end of their conclusion:
> In order to determine if the result of the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists and are not due to the learning curve the experiment can be repeated with users having at least three years using this version.
Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up?
It would be more interesting to see a comparison between Office 365 now that the interface has effectively become the de facto standard (same as Windows, macOS, mobile, tablet, and the web version) and Google Sheets (which retains the menus, toolbar, etc.).
I'm no lover of the Ribbon myself but I feel like there's better evidence for it not being the ideal interface than this which wouldn't have convinced me even at the time.
This isn't the proof that'll bring down the titan.
>> the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists...can be repeated with users having...years using this version.
> Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up
I would love to see more recent and similarly thoughtful work on the exact same subject. If I find more, I'll try to remember to come back here and comment. Definitely, I am interested in the clearest evidence regarding whether either paradigm is "actually" more usable, and not just the result of some confounding variable(s).
With a null hypothesis that the classic toolbar is no better than the ribbon, I just wanted to see some data (instead of assuming that what users have now has to be more efficient for those users just because it's what the market-leading product has been giving users for about two decades).
I agree - we're coming up on 20 years of the ribbon, it is too jarring to go back to the fixed toolbars and the vast majority of computer users have no experience with the "old way."
Google Docs implements the most popular 10% of features that people use 90% of the time.
It was said in the distant past that the last 10% of the time everyone is using different features — the long tail 90% of features. You had to implement them in your software.
When did we switch so we adapt our workflows instead, and only use the common features now? And software doesn't have to implement the long tail?
This is true I suppose. Google Docs is a bit different. I'm not very familiar with their offerings. Here in the US, most stop using it past grade school and graduate to MS products after, at least in my experience.
I don't think it matters since Universities will not be taking Google Doc submissions unless it's core ed classes, any beyond it will be LaTeX anyways.
And I can tell that while at CERN, those using LaTeX on paper submissions were the minority, on ATLAS TDAQ/HLT group it was a mix of Word, and FrameMaker.
What's wrong with the ribbon? It's basically a tabbed toolbar. Unlike a menu bar it doesn't cover up content or require extra actions to hide, and it doesn't require precise mouse movement in order to avoid accidentally hiding.
Ribbon vs. classic toolbars is the comparison to be made. (Sorry for saying menubar when I meant toolbar up above; that was probably confusing.)
I'll try to explain the gist of it, since that seems to be the question:
As you say, one facet of ribbons is they are essentially tabs. So, ribbons obscure whatever is on "those other tabs". Often, with additional annoyance of taking more space than needed to show what they do show (which often is not want is needed). And any section within a given tab can have its own peculiar (varied) layouts. (Continuing the "find it in the hierarchy - customized for the purpose to make your life easier the way a designer thought would help!" paradigm.)
Contrast with toolbars. Show the ones you need, customize them if wanted. Icons and locations are quite effective for selecting actions. They can all be seen at once. They do what they say. No constantly interpreting the interface flow to find stuff.
> It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.
In my experience, Google Docs has this, but realtime collaboration with Word is unusable. Which is interesting, because that means a huge number of existing Office 365 users have yet to experience it.
I think UI looks is a very Subjective opinion. I am rather young so I have realy only experience the Ribbons and for me everything back to the old is a huge step back is always going to look old and dusty to me. But thats personal opinion.
Now speed in editing thats a clear showstopper. And we all can agree on that.
The internal guts of Collabora's data models and such are based on the LibreOffice code, right? My understanding is that it's really hard to get Google Docs-like performance with real-time multi-user editing if the whole app wasn't engineered from the ground up to make it possible, which LibreOffice wasn't.
I would not be surprised to learn that substantial parts of the core of Office were rewritten to make that possible. Unlike Collabora/LibreOffice, Microsoft is one of the most well-resourced organizations in the world and can afford to do that kind of colossally expensive project. Of course, they'd need an extremely compelling reason to do so, but Google Docs was an existential threat to their market share.
Also, other commenters report that the real-time collaborative editing experience in Office is more sluggish than in Google Docs, and this is consistent with my own admittedly very limited anecdotal experience, and if this has persisted for years it may well be for deep architectual reasons.
Office for web and desktop office were literally separate teams, in separate locations, when I worked there. Complete separation unified only by a document output.
I'm currently working on a set of documents with 3 or 4 other people in collabora and we have no more problems than with office 365. It works. You can type simultaneously even in the same line (one types while another corrects the spelling of the previous word, etc), no problem at all.
You can switch away from ribbon styles btw, if it's not your jam. IMO it's grown on me. As for my experience, collabora thus-far has been plenty responsive.
There has been a conflict building up within the LibreOffice ecosystem, with Collabora publishing a desktop version of their web-focused LO-based suite, while TDF (The Document Foundation) has decided to hire several developers to work on an on-line and potentially mobile version. So, essentially, both "sides" are taking each other on, even though a plurality of LibreOffice commits are made by Collabora employees. There have also been some "beheading" in the form of the expulsion of a few members of the TDF, particularly the former long-time TDF board-of-directors chairperson who is with Collabora (previously Allotropia) and a couple of others - a highly contentious decision which some argue is contrary to the TDF statutes.
This is a no way a complete or a fair summary of everything that has gone on; and it's been simmering for a number of years now.
Due disclosure: I am a TDF trustee.
--------------
About Collabora Office for Desktop itself: Personally, I don't see it as being up to par. The main thing going for it is that its ribbon-ish interface is more polished than LibreOffice's. But - I don't like ribbons; and features are missing; and it feels clunkier than LO itself.
> the charter of projects like LibreOffice are fundamentally broken—they're aiming to replace Microsoft Office by cloning it, but Microsoft Office itself is part of a busted paradigm
I'll amend my previous position and say that the charter should be to (a) as much as possible change the menu and dialog structure to match whatever the last "good" version of the Microsoft Office UI was, but still ultimately focus on (b) doing everything I said in those other comments.
I don't know about paradigms and stuff, but I do know that office productivity apps - document writer, spreadsheet, presentation and the others - put together are the second most used 'app' on a PC/laptop after a browser. And that's probably true for just the document writer alone.
I'm a big fan of plaintext (and things like Markdown). But I don't buy the argument that "plain text over the web is the future" or that that combination can or should supplant office.
Also remember that LibreOffice started before Microsoft Office even existed: as StarWriter in the mid-1980s. Yes, there has been a lot of borrowing between computer apps in this domain (and let's also not forget WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 etc.); and I am even willing to entertain the possibility that in 40 years' time we will all be doing something completely different. I mean, I still think people will be writing letters and CVs and reports but maybe the apps would be very different. Anyway, until that time, we need a decent office app, with support for the world's many written languages and their quirks, without spying on users, with multi-platform support, with a decent license etc. - and LibreOffice is that.
> I don't buy the argument that "plain text over the web is the future"
Good thing no one is making that argument. That's a fabricated quote.
> the second most used 'app' on a PC/laptop after a browser
This is supposed to be a rejoinder? You're just undergirding the thing that you're purporting to respond to—that when it comes to the dominance (or, if you prefer, relative importance) of actual multi-/cross-platform ease-of-access between browsers versus 90s-era suites like MS Office and LibreOffice, the office suites lose.
> until that time, we need a decent office app, with support for the world's many written languages and their quirks, without spying on users, with multi-platform support, with a decent license
We do need that. Which is why I described it. And LibreOffice is in a worse position than it should be with respect to filling this hole because of its failure to embrace the actual multi-/cross-platform and ease-of-access benefits afforded by the ubiquity of standard Web browsers and the formats they understand, contra the formats that the 90s-era office suites produce (useless to anyone who doesn't have that office suite or a quasi-compatible one installed).
I was also curious. It says this in about the middle of the homepage:
"We love LibreOffice. We are privileged to be the largest code contributors to the codebase, Collabora employs several founders of The Document Foundation, and many of the top committers. We offer a Long Term supported product based on LibreOffice, branded as Collabora Office Classic, and are deeply grateful for and acknowledge many skilled community contributors we work alongside, as well as the incredible range of features that LibreOffice code enables."
* Collabora Online is rebranded, and hosted, LibreOffice Online
* or rather - LibreOffice Online never really existed and it was always Collabora Online Development Edition (I cannot find any LibreOffice Online that's not just Collabora Online Development Edition)
* Collabora Office for Desktop is Collabora Online, packaged as a desktop app
* Collabora Office Classic is just rebranded LibreOffice
* Collabora (the company) is one of the biggest contributors to LibreOffice
On Wikipedia, there is a fairly complicated timeline chart of the various LibreOffice variants [1]. Same article also says
> Ecosystem partner Collabora uses LibreOffice as upstream code to provide a web-based suite branded as Collabora Online, along with apps for platforms not officially supported by LibreOffice, including Android, ChromeOS, iOS and iPadOS.
I installed it from Windows Store, opened a blank text document, and the styles box appears to contain white text on a white background.
I opened a blank spreadsheet, typed in something, tried to create a pivot table, and it only expanded the selection without showing the dialog box.
I restarted it and those bugs were fixed, but the Pivot Table UI is still the ugly non-interactive one found in LibreOffice (which Excel got rid of 26+ years ago).
Yeah, unfortunately this seems to combine the UI and performance issues of LibreOffice with new issues from the new front end.
It also has a basic mistake in text editor UX: the caret blinks independently of caret movement. This means that the caret is invisible half of the time while trying to navigate text. Most text editors avoid this by restarting the blink cycle to force the caret visible on each movement.
> It also has a basic mistake in text editor UX: the caret blinks independently of caret movement. This means that the caret is invisible half of the time while trying to navigate text. Most text editors avoid this by restarting the blink cycle to force the caret visible on each movement.
It doesn't do that on my computer. LibreOffice 7.0.4.2 shipped with GNU/Linux Debian.
Seems to be a dumbed down UI with less customization, but built with shiny new browser tech (Canvas, WebGL, CSS)! Also limited macros. No embedded Java
Yes. From the original announcement: “HTML + JavaScript-based front end, powered by your system’s native browser engine (like WebKit, Chromium, etc.)”
From the email-walled “whitepaper” [0]: “If you need tools like the Base database
module (including Java-based
components) or the full Math module,
Collabora Office Classic remains the
right choice - Collabora Office isn’t
trying to replicate those. Collabora
Office will run macros, but for
advanced macro authoring and
debugging you should use Classic. For
extreme Calc workloads (think complex
Solver models or analysis across
hundreds of thousands of rows) Classic
is likely the better fit.”
I have super light office requirements these days and those are satisfied with OnlyOffice (https://www.onlyoffice.com/). I do believe it's an Electron app but works quite fast in my personal experience. (Probably faster than LibreOffice if it's still like the last time I used it).
I hadn't looked at the Github page in a while. They seem to have a ton of new features one of which regrettably is a very front end center AI presence.
> Based in Latvia, OnlyOffice owner Ascensio System SIA was a subsidiary of Russian-based New Communication Technologies. Due to EU economic sanctions targeting Russia, European organizations that used the commercial version of OnlyOffice were prohibited from doing so.
Wow. The EU got banned from Microsoft Office because of investigating America's genocide, and it banned itself from OnlyOffice because of Russia's genocide. No wonder they clamor for an EU office product.
Conceptually I like the Windows Store for certain things (i.e. those where I want automatic updates) - I can manage my apps from it via the winget CLI and winget.config files, and get automatic updates.
However, the LTSC edition of Windows doesn't have Windows Store support, and the non-LTSC editions of Windows have become untenable to me.
I briefly tried it : I don't see the point, there is no way to connect it to your online collabora instance or directly to Nextcloud or anything except your local files.
Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances and is not an app bundled inside a browser.
> Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances
I don't think you've ever used LibreOffice if you think it in any way fits the description "performant". It's a great project but I wouldn't exactly call it snappy.
I use regularly both libreoffice and collabora online and I can say the former is snappy compared to the second. It can take a longer time to open thought, mostly on Windows.
I’m right there with you on the desktop side. The main reason I love LibreOffice is specifically because it isn’t bloated. It has a minimal footprint and loads fast, which is a breath of fresh air compared to the resource-heavy alternatives. Keeping that speed and simplicity is exactly why it’s still my go-to.
I use Collabora online all the time (via Nextcloud) but I don't quite understand why I'd use this over LibreOffice on the desktop, which feels significantly more powerful than the online tool.
The few screenshots they show make this look similar to the existing online tool, which is fine for a lot of work, but like Word Online hits a wall with more complex documents.
I have to use MS products at work and use Collabora (on Linux) at home. Sometimes, I have to edit the same spreadsheet at home and at work and that usually works flawlessly, besides automatic coloring. Now, I also don't try to code in Excel, so that might be one reason. Excel graphs are also nicer.
Here is a comparison by the Document Foundation for spreadsheets [1]. I think it speaks for itself.
Regarding Powerpoint I can't say. I can't recall when I last used Powerpoint for anything. We have an in-house system where I just select slide type, enter my text and attach pictures in a form and it builds a CI-styled PDF for me. I think its basically a LaTeX front-end, but I never cared.
Don't bother, I tried with a disposable email address and they make you subscribe to a mailing list before sending you the download link. When you do eventually get it, it's a 3 page puff marketing PDF.
I converted it to TXT and pulled out the only bit of interest here:
Collabora Office Collabora Office Classic
Fresh, modern UX Classic, established UX
Javascript & CSS UI to match Collabora Online VCL-based classic UI
Simpler settings / streamlined defaults Very extensive options, menus & dialogs
No Java Java used for some features/wizards/DB drivers
No built-in Base app Includes Base UI
Runs macros Full macro editor & advanced BASIC/Python/UNO
Modern web tech (Canvas, WebGL, CSS) Custom toolkit (VCL)
Fast to iterate (edit JS, fewer recompiles) Core/C++ changes typically require recompiles
Initial release – Enterprise Support is coming Long term Enterprise Supported
Quick Start Guides and video tutorials Extensive manuals & books
If you don't give an email address, it doesn't even prompt you to ttry again. It just bugs out and redirects to a home page with a broken URL attempting to inject HTML from client side.
That's strange because the only reason for a user to use OpenOffice/Collabra is because they don't want to deal with an annoying company that makes a far superior product. If the inferior product is also run by an annoying company, why bother?
Yeah, I'd say that's the gist of it altogether... I get they want to monetize hosting/support etc.. but they should really try not to gatekeep what should be basic/public information.
I'd still probably put Collabra above Google Docs, but definitely a step below even MS Office Online, err 365, err CoPilot App or whatever the hell they're calling it now... (naming issues not withstanding). Though MS has been enshitifying the offline versions of office a lot, not to mention Outlook in particular.
Aside: Why MS hasn't done a version of "Microsoft Access Online" with a WASM port of VBA in order to lift/shift Access apps into a hosted environment that's backed by Azure SQL under the covers is kind of beyond me. I mean, it shouldn't take too much effort at this point with the level of tooling MS has been capable of.
Access was the distilled VB + Database apps kind of thing that a lot of SOHO really thrived on, and they could totally (re)capture that market with a bit of legacy uplift/support along with a newer model/design. Displacing the winforms models with webforms and a dedicated server/service system. 3 versions to start, a legacy/support, a bridge and a new model where it's TS/JS and monaco for editing instead of VBA/wasm/webforms in a browser/canvas. People are running older versions of Windows in wasm/x86 emulation... making that pretty and wrapping hosted access runtimes should be somewhat reasonable. Shouldn't it?
well that's the whole point. It reveals organizational attitude and their focus on entrenching the product with pre-sales madness, instead of properly proving value of the product.
I choose not to participate in that, it's fishy. Others do better.
Hmm. I can't actually find the link to start using it to try it out. ? It offers a Free Demo that is behind some kind of details harvesting form. I don't want a demo. Is this usable enough to move a small (6 people) team away from google sheets ? hard to say since i can't test it and it doesn't say what the cost is. Stop hiding your shit behind hard to navigate/use/privacy invading bullshit. Just let us use the stuff. If you must gimp it, do it in a way that doesn't stop us using it first.
Is your team looking at the cloud version or a local install?
If latter would suggest checking current version of LibreOffice (which is Collabra Office Classic) as a local (i.e. on client computer) install. If former, then I'd imagine you will have to fill the form in to get access.
Man, welcome to the current millenium. Somewhat. I really love FOSS but LibreOffice’s bulky and awkward UI was always too much for me. Happy to see Collabora doing it a bit better.
I have not tried LibreOffice Online in many years, but it does not look like LibreOffice at all. It has the MSOffice ribbon clone. It is closer to OnlyOffice
From my understanding Amazon at least internally uses Salesforce's Quip product which is closer to Google docs than office (live collab). There's still MS office use as well depending on org. Just curious, were you suggesting libreoffice as a cost savings measure or are you just sick of Quip?
Honestly, OnlyOffice works extremely well for my purposes, and I install it on all my friends' PCs. It looks a lot like MS Office and is quite compatible with a variety of documents I've tried, in my experience.
As a devout supporter of Ukraine, I'm not sure it's fair to denounce the FOSS version of the app just because it was built by developers that reside in Russia. We all know that the company outwardly stating "we are against the invasion of Ukraine" wouldn't end well for them, and as long as you're not paying for it, I don't see a huge difference using this vs. your average American software (in which the developers also reside in a country with questionable government leadership). Enlighten me if I'm wrong though
I'd trust a Linux distro build of a Russian FOSS product a bit more than a windows binary from their website. So trust here is context dependent, at least for me. I still use Audacity for example and it has similar ownership issues.
The people of a country are not members of that country's ruling regime. It makes no logical sense to say that one cannot trust open source software from Russia merely for it being Russian in origin. Not all people in the USA are CIA, and not all Russians are FSB.
Are the people of the USA responsible for everything the US government does? Is every single person living in China responsible for the actions of the CCP? Is every single Russian personally responsible for everything that Putin does?
It doesn’t matter. If the FSB knocks on their door and says “add this extra code to your builds or you’ll disappear into the basement of the Lubyanka”, what do you think they’ll say?
True, but we have the same issue with US-based software, or any closed source software really. At least here I can take the source code and check for myself, or let an AI, before building.
I don't care about dated looks. I do find MS Office's pressure to use OneDrive frustrating and annoying. Honestly, older UIs for office suite products just feel more direct and responsive than the clever ribbon bars. Excel used to be svelte (25 years ago or more...) Now it feels bloated and clumsy. LibreOffice Calc (same parentage as Collabora Office) feels more like Excel used to feel. Similar complaints about Word.
A lot of open-source doesn't have a process to integrate and follow a design strategy from a designer. A business can mandate that work be done to adapt/follow a given design strategy... for open-source it's often harder to do so... and even then you face the same or more resistance to change.
It took basically a corporate control for Audacity to make its' difficult transition to a better design from its' mediocre one. That said, I'd love to see something modern transformed from The Gimp's core in a similar way. That doesn't even begin to cover what you might want in terms of inter-app collaboration...
KdenLive, Blender, Gimp, Krita, InkScape, Audacity and other tooling, as an example, all use different UI/UX base libraries, and no clean way to cross-integrate features between them if someone wanted to assemble an open-source Adobe alternative. There's no baseline equivalent to even MS/Office's use of COM/DCOM for interoperability.
Good points. Designers need to be first-class citizens whose input is sought early on, not to attempt to make a purse out of the finished pig's ear. RFCs are a venue for this. Designers, for their part, need to share their ready-to-go libraries in all the popular frontend frameworks. The two could also collaborate on developing tools to automate design linting, similar to automated code review programmers use.
For the past week or so I’ve been using pencil.dev and I’m impressed. It’s like a local Figma that connects to Claude code or cursor, and you can just ask it to design stuff
It definitely has its bugs and it eats up tokens/context like crazy. But it make product development so much easier and faster, while providing great design
First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly.
Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps.
From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice or Collabora Desktop Classic is that it has a sane UI/menubar visual paradigm. (Which MS obliterated eons ago.)
But let's talk about what matters: Collabora (the online document suite) is slow as heck.
It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.
That should be the top priority. Full stop.
LibreOffice works fine for desktop. But, for Collabora, the web experience needs to be fast. The lag in Collabora is simply unacceptable.
People expect online, and they expect collaborative, and they expect nearly instantaneous updates (at least not painful to type and wait for screen to update).
Talk about misplaced priorities. In my very humble opinion.
At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design.
I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.
> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment
If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better:
"...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent variables...results support the conclusion that the user interface of Excel 2007 did change for the worst in comparison with the user interface of the 2003 version." [0]
[0] Morales (2010), A COMPARATIVE USABILITY STUDY OF MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007 AND MICROSOFT OFFICE 2003, https://scholar7-dev.uprm.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/a03...
A study from 16 years ago is hardly relevant anymore. Back in 2003, people were still familiar with Office 2003's layout; most people have long since forgotten that layout or never learnt it in the first place.
The author doesn't discuss users' existing familiarity with Office 2003 and they only mention the word 'training' once, that "software design to interact with technology should require the least amount of training as possible" whilst never acknowledging that training in, and even qualifications in, the use of the Office suite was very much a thing in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Even then, the most problems were had in Excel. Advanced usage of Excel is done by technical people who would have had some training. Word and PowerPoint weren't shown to have significant difference in usability; arguably, Word is the program most people forced to use the Office suite spend their time in.
Never mind the ways by which the Ribbon and computers have changed since Office 2007. Options moved around, the Ribbon height reduced, screens having gotten wider to compress fewer options into submenus…
The author states at the end of their conclusion:
> In order to determine if the result of the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists and are not due to the learning curve the experiment can be repeated with users having at least three years using this version.
Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up?
It would be more interesting to see a comparison between Office 365 now that the interface has effectively become the de facto standard (same as Windows, macOS, mobile, tablet, and the web version) and Google Sheets (which retains the menus, toolbar, etc.).
I'm no lover of the Ribbon myself but I feel like there's better evidence for it not being the ideal interface than this which wouldn't have convinced me even at the time.
This isn't the proof that'll bring down the titan.
>> the study with respect to the Excel 2007 application persists...can be repeated with users having...years using this version.
> Do you know if the author or anybody else followed up
I would love to see more recent and similarly thoughtful work on the exact same subject. If I find more, I'll try to remember to come back here and comment. Definitely, I am interested in the clearest evidence regarding whether either paradigm is "actually" more usable, and not just the result of some confounding variable(s).
With a null hypothesis that the classic toolbar is no better than the ribbon, I just wanted to see some data (instead of assuming that what users have now has to be more efficient for those users just because it's what the market-leading product has been giving users for about two decades).
I suspect any such studies these days will be Office vs Google Docs vs iWork vs LibreOffice. Mind boggles how that data will look!
Well, to get a really balanced UX research sample, you must invoke the full trifecta:
- The Zoomer
- The Boomer
- The Clanker
The question is, if you grant that a different design is better in a vacuum, how to weigh that against the benefits of existing familiarity.
That's easy. Would you rather have your coworkers working with an artificial handicap, or not?
Some people give regular users too little credit. A major reason they are such terrible users is because the software they are given is terrible.
Fix the software, and the users' ability is, to a measurable degree, fixed.
Existing familiarity is nothing compared with the daily additive benefits of better tools.
I agree - we're coming up on 20 years of the ribbon, it is too jarring to go back to the fixed toolbars and the vast majority of computer users have no experience with the "old way."
Except for all the people who use Google Docs, I suppose.
Google Docs implements the most popular 10% of features that people use 90% of the time.
It was said in the distant past that the last 10% of the time everyone is using different features — the long tail 90% of features. You had to implement them in your software.
When did we switch so we adapt our workflows instead, and only use the common features now? And software doesn't have to implement the long tail?
This is true I suppose. Google Docs is a bit different. I'm not very familiar with their offerings. Here in the US, most stop using it past grade school and graduate to MS products after, at least in my experience.
I don't think it matters since Universities will not be taking Google Doc submissions unless it's core ed classes, any beyond it will be LaTeX anyways.
LaTeX is no longer the king of universities, Word has been for quite some time part of the official templates.
https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions
And I can tell that while at CERN, those using LaTeX on paper submissions were the minority, on ATLAS TDAQ/HLT group it was a mix of Word, and FrameMaker.
Maybe this is unique to my comp sci program, but all of our final papers in my program were required in LaTeX before graduating in 2023.
I have worked in 3 companies in the last 8 years and we all use gsuite just fine. I will even say that I really prefer gsuite over office365 web.
I would like an easy way to switch between the two paradigms. I got used to the ribbon
What's wrong with the ribbon? It's basically a tabbed toolbar. Unlike a menu bar it doesn't cover up content or require extra actions to hide, and it doesn't require precise mouse movement in order to avoid accidentally hiding.
Ribbon vs. classic toolbars is the comparison to be made. (Sorry for saying menubar when I meant toolbar up above; that was probably confusing.)
I'll try to explain the gist of it, since that seems to be the question:
As you say, one facet of ribbons is they are essentially tabs. So, ribbons obscure whatever is on "those other tabs". Often, with additional annoyance of taking more space than needed to show what they do show (which often is not want is needed). And any section within a given tab can have its own peculiar (varied) layouts. (Continuing the "find it in the hierarchy - customized for the purpose to make your life easier the way a designer thought would help!" paradigm.)
Contrast with toolbars. Show the ones you need, customize them if wanted. Icons and locations are quite effective for selecting actions. They can all be seen at once. They do what they say. No constantly interpreting the interface flow to find stuff.
> It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.
In my experience, Google Docs has this, but realtime collaboration with Word is unusable. Which is interesting, because that means a huge number of existing Office 365 users have yet to experience it.
I wonder if there's an opportunity there.
I think UI looks is a very Subjective opinion. I am rather young so I have realy only experience the Ribbons and for me everything back to the old is a huge step back is always going to look old and dusty to me. But thats personal opinion.
Now speed in editing thats a clear showstopper. And we all can agree on that.
The internal guts of Collabora's data models and such are based on the LibreOffice code, right? My understanding is that it's really hard to get Google Docs-like performance with real-time multi-user editing if the whole app wasn't engineered from the ground up to make it possible, which LibreOffice wasn't.
Unless Microsoft complete re-wrote Office to add Sharepoint collaboration features, they seem to have managed it.
I would not be surprised to learn that substantial parts of the core of Office were rewritten to make that possible. Unlike Collabora/LibreOffice, Microsoft is one of the most well-resourced organizations in the world and can afford to do that kind of colossally expensive project. Of course, they'd need an extremely compelling reason to do so, but Google Docs was an existential threat to their market share.
Also, other commenters report that the real-time collaborative editing experience in Office is more sluggish than in Google Docs, and this is consistent with my own admittedly very limited anecdotal experience, and if this has persisted for years it may well be for deep architectual reasons.
Office for web and desktop office were literally separate teams, in separate locations, when I worked there. Complete separation unified only by a document output.
> The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony
LibreOffice has a Ribbon interface option, too.
If both remain available options, that's fine. Sometimes the new thing becomes the default, and then the old thing gets dropped.
That is not going to happen with LibreOffice.
Downvote me all you like, this won’t happen.
Microsoft did actual UX research about the ribbon. It's better. Deal with it.
I'm currently working on a set of documents with 3 or 4 other people in collabora and we have no more problems than with office 365. It works. You can type simultaneously even in the same line (one types while another corrects the spelling of the previous word, etc), no problem at all.
You can switch away from ribbon styles btw, if it's not your jam. IMO it's grown on me. As for my experience, collabora thus-far has been plenty responsive.
Ribbon has it's uses for certain people or situations. Of course menu is much faster but again for certain people.
There has been a conflict building up within the LibreOffice ecosystem, with Collabora publishing a desktop version of their web-focused LO-based suite, while TDF (The Document Foundation) has decided to hire several developers to work on an on-line and potentially mobile version. So, essentially, both "sides" are taking each other on, even though a plurality of LibreOffice commits are made by Collabora employees. There have also been some "beheading" in the form of the expulsion of a few members of the TDF, particularly the former long-time TDF board-of-directors chairperson who is with Collabora (previously Allotropia) and a couple of others - a highly contentious decision which some argue is contrary to the TDF statutes.
This is a no way a complete or a fair summary of everything that has gone on; and it's been simmering for a number of years now.
Due disclosure: I am a TDF trustee.
--------------
About Collabora Office for Desktop itself: Personally, I don't see it as being up to par. The main thing going for it is that its ribbon-ish interface is more polished than LibreOffice's. But - I don't like ribbons; and features are missing; and it feels clunkier than LO itself.
> the charter of projects like LibreOffice are fundamentally broken—they're aiming to replace Microsoft Office by cloning it, but Microsoft Office itself is part of a busted paradigm
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24759573>
> The LibreOffice project's imprimatur should be to stop existing[…] The editing paradigm perpetuated by the legacy of MS Office is a dead end.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795918>
I'll amend my previous position and say that the charter should be to (a) as much as possible change the menu and dialog structure to match whatever the last "good" version of the Microsoft Office UI was, but still ultimately focus on (b) doing everything I said in those other comments.
I don't know about paradigms and stuff, but I do know that office productivity apps - document writer, spreadsheet, presentation and the others - put together are the second most used 'app' on a PC/laptop after a browser. And that's probably true for just the document writer alone.
I'm a big fan of plaintext (and things like Markdown). But I don't buy the argument that "plain text over the web is the future" or that that combination can or should supplant office.
Also remember that LibreOffice started before Microsoft Office even existed: as StarWriter in the mid-1980s. Yes, there has been a lot of borrowing between computer apps in this domain (and let's also not forget WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 etc.); and I am even willing to entertain the possibility that in 40 years' time we will all be doing something completely different. I mean, I still think people will be writing letters and CVs and reports but maybe the apps would be very different. Anyway, until that time, we need a decent office app, with support for the world's many written languages and their quirks, without spying on users, with multi-platform support, with a decent license etc. - and LibreOffice is that.
> I don't buy the argument that "plain text over the web is the future"
Good thing no one is making that argument. That's a fabricated quote.
> the second most used 'app' on a PC/laptop after a browser
This is supposed to be a rejoinder? You're just undergirding the thing that you're purporting to respond to—that when it comes to the dominance (or, if you prefer, relative importance) of actual multi-/cross-platform ease-of-access between browsers versus 90s-era suites like MS Office and LibreOffice, the office suites lose.
> until that time, we need a decent office app, with support for the world's many written languages and their quirks, without spying on users, with multi-platform support, with a decent license
We do need that. Which is why I described it. And LibreOffice is in a worse position than it should be with respect to filling this hole because of its failure to embrace the actual multi-/cross-platform and ease-of-access benefits afforded by the ubiquity of standard Web browsers and the formats they understand, contra the formats that the 90s-era office suites produce (useless to anyone who doesn't have that office suite or a quasi-compatible one installed).
Collabora vs LibreOffice branding is always quite confusing to me.
How is this project related to LibreOffice and also to what used to be called LibreOffice Online? (And Collabora Office Classic. And Collabora Online)
I was also curious. It says this in about the middle of the homepage:
"We love LibreOffice. We are privileged to be the largest code contributors to the codebase, Collabora employs several founders of The Document Foundation, and many of the top committers. We offer a Long Term supported product based on LibreOffice, branded as Collabora Office Classic, and are deeply grateful for and acknowledge many skilled community contributors we work alongside, as well as the incredible range of features that LibreOffice code enables."
I think - not sure - that
* Collabora Online is rebranded, and hosted, LibreOffice Online
* or rather - LibreOffice Online never really existed and it was always Collabora Online Development Edition (I cannot find any LibreOffice Online that's not just Collabora Online Development Edition)
* Collabora Office for Desktop is Collabora Online, packaged as a desktop app
* Collabora Office Classic is just rebranded LibreOffice
* Collabora (the company) is one of the biggest contributors to LibreOffice
All of that is true. Collabora has put a lot of time and money into LibreOffice.
On Wikipedia, there is a fairly complicated timeline chart of the various LibreOffice variants [1]. Same article also says
> Ecosystem partner Collabora uses LibreOffice as upstream code to provide a web-based suite branded as Collabora Online, along with apps for platforms not officially supported by LibreOffice, including Android, ChromeOS, iOS and iPadOS.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History
Also didn’t these guys buy Zetaoffice?
If anyone from Collabora Office is looking, there is a weird paragraph with syntax-colored HTML in https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/collabora-online-now-av... "*A Note on Early Releases"
I installed it from Windows Store, opened a blank text document, and the styles box appears to contain white text on a white background.
I opened a blank spreadsheet, typed in something, tried to create a pivot table, and it only expanded the selection without showing the dialog box.
I restarted it and those bugs were fixed, but the Pivot Table UI is still the ugly non-interactive one found in LibreOffice (which Excel got rid of 26+ years ago).
Uninstalled.
Yeah, unfortunately this seems to combine the UI and performance issues of LibreOffice with new issues from the new front end.
It also has a basic mistake in text editor UX: the caret blinks independently of caret movement. This means that the caret is invisible half of the time while trying to navigate text. Most text editors avoid this by restarting the blink cycle to force the caret visible on each movement.
> It also has a basic mistake in text editor UX: the caret blinks independently of caret movement. This means that the caret is invisible half of the time while trying to navigate text. Most text editors avoid this by restarting the blink cycle to force the caret visible on each movement.
It doesn't do that on my computer. LibreOffice 7.0.4.2 shipped with GNU/Linux Debian.
Standard LibreOffice Writer doesn't have the issue for me either, only the version shipped in Collabora Office for Desktop.
Sorry, I missed that it wasn't about plain LibreOffice.
File a bug!
Seems to be a dumbed down UI with less customization, but built with shiny new browser tech (Canvas, WebGL, CSS)! Also limited macros. No embedded Java
Yes. From the original announcement: “HTML + JavaScript-based front end, powered by your system’s native browser engine (like WebKit, Chromium, etc.)”
From the email-walled “whitepaper” [0]: “If you need tools like the Base database module (including Java-based components) or the full Math module, Collabora Office Classic remains the right choice - Collabora Office isn’t trying to replicate those. Collabora Office will run macros, but for advanced macro authoring and debugging you should use Classic. For extreme Calc workloads (think complex Solver models or analysis across hundreds of thousands of rows) Classic is likely the better fit.”
[0] https://paste.c-net.org/FuriousWhistler
> No embedded Java
This is a great feature!
I have super light office requirements these days and those are satisfied with OnlyOffice (https://www.onlyoffice.com/). I do believe it's an Electron app but works quite fast in my personal experience. (Probably faster than LibreOffice if it's still like the last time I used it).
It's open source: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/
I hadn't looked at the Github page in a while. They seem to have a ton of new features one of which regrettably is a very front end center AI presence.
Important note OnlyOffice is basically Russian Software. The Company is majority Russian owned. So fuck them
I had to look that up, found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice#Organization:
> Based in Latvia, OnlyOffice owner Ascensio System SIA was a subsidiary of Russian-based New Communication Technologies. Due to EU economic sanctions targeting Russia, European organizations that used the commercial version of OnlyOffice were prohibited from doing so.
Wow. The EU got banned from Microsoft Office because of investigating America's genocide, and it banned itself from OnlyOffice because of Russia's genocide. No wonder they clamor for an EU office product.
One day I'd like to see people write the same regarding USA software companies.
Not defending Russia but pointing out the hypocrisy.
I've been using it on my phone for the occasional document and its been quite nice, much quicker/accurate than collabora office
Download button takes me to windows store. That doesn't work on my machine. On Linux got as a flatpak.
windows store was a huge red flag
Conceptually I like the Windows Store for certain things (i.e. those where I want automatic updates) - I can manage my apps from it via the winget CLI and winget.config files, and get automatic updates.
However, the LTSC edition of Windows doesn't have Windows Store support, and the non-LTSC editions of Windows have become untenable to me.
I briefly tried it : I don't see the point, there is no way to connect it to your online collabora instance or directly to Nextcloud or anything except your local files.
Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances and is not an app bundled inside a browser.
> Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances
I don't think you've ever used LibreOffice if you think it in any way fits the description "performant". It's a great project but I wouldn't exactly call it snappy.
I use regularly both libreoffice and collabora online and I can say the former is snappy compared to the second. It can take a longer time to open thought, mostly on Windows.
I’m right there with you on the desktop side. The main reason I love LibreOffice is specifically because it isn’t bloated. It has a minimal footprint and loads fast, which is a breath of fresh air compared to the resource-heavy alternatives. Keeping that speed and simplicity is exactly why it’s still my go-to.
I use Collabora online all the time (via Nextcloud) but I don't quite understand why I'd use this over LibreOffice on the desktop, which feels significantly more powerful than the online tool.
The few screenshots they show make this look similar to the existing online tool, which is fine for a lot of work, but like Word Online hits a wall with more complex documents.
For those who tried it, how good is the Calc (Excel equivalent) and Impress (PowerPoint equivalent)?
I have to use MS products at work and use Collabora (on Linux) at home. Sometimes, I have to edit the same spreadsheet at home and at work and that usually works flawlessly, besides automatic coloring. Now, I also don't try to code in Excel, so that might be one reason. Excel graphs are also nicer.
Here is a comparison by the Document Foundation for spreadsheets [1]. I think it speaks for itself.
Regarding Powerpoint I can't say. I can't recall when I last used Powerpoint for anything. We have an in-house system where I just select slide type, enter my text and attach pictures in a form and it builds a CI-styled PDF for me. I think its basically a LaTeX front-end, but I never cared.
HTH
[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_Libr...
I can fill in my opinion of Impress <-> Powerpoint.
It's atrocious primarily due to MS not following open ODF. Everything is out of wack, dot point have different shapes, and spacing is wrong.
Impress is also not all that great. It's defaults are generally ugly, its auto sizing breaks and the animation pane is buggy.
Calc is much better. Writer is decent compatibility with MS
Why is 'Differences between Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic' document gated behind a email-wall? Nothing but enshittification.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/case-studies/differences-bet...
Don't bother, I tried with a disposable email address and they make you subscribe to a mailing list before sending you the download link. When you do eventually get it, it's a 3 page puff marketing PDF.
I converted it to TXT and pulled out the only bit of interest here:
Even funnier when you try that from the "freedom" whitepage download https://www.collaboraonline.com/case-studies/opendesk/
If you don't give an email address, it doesn't even prompt you to ttry again. It just bugs out and redirects to a home page with a broken URL attempting to inject HTML from client side.
That's strange because the only reason for a user to use OpenOffice/Collabra is because they don't want to deal with an annoying company that makes a far superior product. If the inferior product is also run by an annoying company, why bother?
Yeah, I'd say that's the gist of it altogether... I get they want to monetize hosting/support etc.. but they should really try not to gatekeep what should be basic/public information.
I'd still probably put Collabra above Google Docs, but definitely a step below even MS Office Online, err 365, err CoPilot App or whatever the hell they're calling it now... (naming issues not withstanding). Though MS has been enshitifying the offline versions of office a lot, not to mention Outlook in particular.
Aside: Why MS hasn't done a version of "Microsoft Access Online" with a WASM port of VBA in order to lift/shift Access apps into a hosted environment that's backed by Azure SQL under the covers is kind of beyond me. I mean, it shouldn't take too much effort at this point with the level of tooling MS has been capable of.
Access was the distilled VB + Database apps kind of thing that a lot of SOHO really thrived on, and they could totally (re)capture that market with a bit of legacy uplift/support along with a newer model/design. Displacing the winforms models with webforms and a dedicated server/service system. 3 versions to start, a legacy/support, a bridge and a new model where it's TS/JS and monaco for editing instead of VBA/wasm/webforms in a browser/canvas. People are running older versions of Windows in wasm/x86 emulation... making that pretty and wrapping hosted access runtimes should be somewhat reasonable. Shouldn't it?
But how will we spam you if you don't give us email?
Nice, does it have Excel for Windows hotkeys?
You can customize them: https://help.collaboraoffice.com/latest/en-GB/text/scalc/04/...
This is help for the classic LibreOffice app, not the new web thing (which appears to have no settings?)
> The New Collabora Office for Desktop
> online.
Wrong answer. I want offline.
There is no reason for an office programm to connect to the internet.
They could as well have called it Collabora Offline. It’s the web app’s UX but locally.
What if you work on files with a team?
"Get a quote"
Okay, so what does it cost?
That's a "I may afford you, but I don't have people budget for those dumb calls" button for me.
That still doesn't tell me what it costs, though.
well that's the whole point. It reveals organizational attitude and their focus on entrenching the product with pre-sales madness, instead of properly proving value of the product.
I choose not to participate in that, it's fishy. Others do better.
Hmm. I can't actually find the link to start using it to try it out. ? It offers a Free Demo that is behind some kind of details harvesting form. I don't want a demo. Is this usable enough to move a small (6 people) team away from google sheets ? hard to say since i can't test it and it doesn't say what the cost is. Stop hiding your shit behind hard to navigate/use/privacy invading bullshit. Just let us use the stuff. If you must gimp it, do it in a way that doesn't stop us using it first.
On my screen, the words "Download Now" are the biggest on the page.
Is your team looking at the cloud version or a local install?
If latter would suggest checking current version of LibreOffice (which is Collabra Office Classic) as a local (i.e. on client computer) install. If former, then I'd imagine you will have to fill the form in to get access.
Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901100 Another commenter has summarised the differences between Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic (aka LibreOffice) for us
Man, welcome to the current millenium. Somewhat. I really love FOSS but LibreOffice’s bulky and awkward UI was always too much for me. Happy to see Collabora doing it a bit better.
Is it based on some open source core? Like the original Collabora Office?
looks like LibreOffice
I have not tried LibreOffice Online in many years, but it does not look like LibreOffice at all. It has the MSOffice ribbon clone. It is closer to OnlyOffice
It is LibreOffice at its heart, but wrapped with a web-techs UI, AFAIK.
LibreOffice has had a ribbon for a while.
I know, but it was not this direct ms office clone.
Why doesn't Amazon adopt libreoffice?
From my understanding Amazon at least internally uses Salesforce's Quip product which is closer to Google docs than office (live collab). There's still MS office use as well depending on org. Just curious, were you suggesting libreoffice as a cost savings measure or are you just sick of Quip?
Having the entire software ecosystem concentrated in Amazon, Google and Microsoft is not at all a desirable state of affairs.
Honestly, OnlyOffice works extremely well for my purposes, and I install it on all my friends' PCs. It looks a lot like MS Office and is quite compatible with a variety of documents I've tried, in my experience.
OnlyOffice is nice if you ignore the Russian background of it. I wouldn't trust it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j7zlf2/onlyoffi...
As a devout supporter of Ukraine, I'm not sure it's fair to denounce the FOSS version of the app just because it was built by developers that reside in Russia. We all know that the company outwardly stating "we are against the invasion of Ukraine" wouldn't end well for them, and as long as you're not paying for it, I don't see a huge difference using this vs. your average American software (in which the developers also reside in a country with questionable government leadership). Enlighten me if I'm wrong though
It’s about trusting the build. You can’t always know what happened between source and release.
I'd trust a Linux distro build of a Russian FOSS product a bit more than a windows binary from their website. So trust here is context dependent, at least for me. I still use Audacity for example and it has similar ownership issues.
I stopped using it more for technical reasons but when I was using it I installed it as a flatpak and removed network access.
The people of a country are not members of that country's ruling regime. It makes no logical sense to say that one cannot trust open source software from Russia merely for it being Russian in origin. Not all people in the USA are CIA, and not all Russians are FSB.
Are the people of the USA responsible for everything the US government does? Is every single person living in China responsible for the actions of the CCP? Is every single Russian personally responsible for everything that Putin does?
It doesn’t matter. If the FSB knocks on their door and says “add this extra code to your builds or you’ll disappear into the basement of the Lubyanka”, what do you think they’ll say?
True, but we have the same issue with US-based software, or any closed source software really. At least here I can take the source code and check for myself, or let an AI, before building.
This is honestly news to me. I had no idea.
This is probably great software. But the design, both of the site and the office software, looks so dated, it doesn’t even tempt me to try it
I don't care about dated looks. I do find MS Office's pressure to use OneDrive frustrating and annoying. Honestly, older UIs for office suite products just feel more direct and responsive than the clever ribbon bars. Excel used to be svelte (25 years ago or more...) Now it feels bloated and clumsy. LibreOffice Calc (same parentage as Collabora Office) feels more like Excel used to feel. Similar complaints about Word.
It is actually very, very janky and behaves like someone tried to reimplement ~15 years old Office UI in JavaScript. Not in a good way.
I really, really want them to be successful, but I cannot pretend it's a pleasure to use at all.
When I tried it last, it was painfully slow. Have there been any improvements on the performance front lately?
Typing in a word processor should not have input lag in 2025. It wasn't just a little lag, but the type and watch it catch up kind of lag.
It's laggy on MacBook Pro M4 Max. I have no idea what is it doing.
Could you be more specific?
Working with data I need to be objective, and while thinking objectively I prefer brutal/minimal ist UIs
It looks like MS Office, what's so bad about it?
It looks like a 2015 wordpress template
The open source world needs more designers.
A lot of open-source doesn't have a process to integrate and follow a design strategy from a designer. A business can mandate that work be done to adapt/follow a given design strategy... for open-source it's often harder to do so... and even then you face the same or more resistance to change.
It took basically a corporate control for Audacity to make its' difficult transition to a better design from its' mediocre one. That said, I'd love to see something modern transformed from The Gimp's core in a similar way. That doesn't even begin to cover what you might want in terms of inter-app collaboration...
KdenLive, Blender, Gimp, Krita, InkScape, Audacity and other tooling, as an example, all use different UI/UX base libraries, and no clean way to cross-integrate features between them if someone wanted to assemble an open-source Adobe alternative. There's no baseline equivalent to even MS/Office's use of COM/DCOM for interoperability.
Good points. Designers need to be first-class citizens whose input is sought early on, not to attempt to make a purse out of the finished pig's ear. RFCs are a venue for this. Designers, for their part, need to share their ready-to-go libraries in all the popular frontend frameworks. The two could also collaborate on developing tools to automate design linting, similar to automated code review programmers use.
Looking at what they did to commercial software that used to have excellent, high density UIs, maybe they should stay where they are.
For the past week or so I’ve been using pencil.dev and I’m impressed. It’s like a local Figma that connects to Claude code or cursor, and you can just ask it to design stuff
It definitely has its bugs and it eats up tokens/context like crazy. But it make product development so much easier and faster, while providing great design