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this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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But they do. Back in 2003 LCDs were still the new fancy thing and had resolutions like 1024x768 with questionable color accuracy and contrast in most cases. Today, even the cheapest office monitors are 1440p with decent colors. You can do much more with that. And that is not even considering 20+ years of shared experience how UIs should work.
But MS Office style ribbon that everyone considers more modern is complete crap at using modern monitors at their full potential. Ironically, the old toolbar ocean manages to use the increased screen real estate more efficiently
Not really, imo? Navigating the ribbons is much easier and faster if you don't use the software everyday. But fun fact: LibreOffice has ribbon UI, it's just a little hidden.
Iirc newer versions ask you on first run what UI you want.
I have both LibreOffice and MS Office at work. I use Libre most of the time because I find ribbon very clunky and I always have troubles to find what I need. While working in Libre feels like a breeze to me.
And anyone can point out a thousand examples arguing the opposite: that interfaces are becoming "worse", downgraded. Or argue that neither is true, interfaces are the same quality-wise, and all we saw was "sidegrades".
It's still treating what's a subjective matter of features as if it was an objective matter of age. It's all an "it depends"; you can't simply assume "newer thus better lol lmao", as the usage of "dated" implies.
At most what a designer can do is to say "doing things this new way will improve usability for
$cohort1but decrease it for$cohort2. Since$cohort2is not part of our core target audience anyway, so let's implement it".(I was going to include a bunch of examples but I feel like they'd make people miss the point.)