Colourful titlebar is now grey

[Tcaws]

You seem to have got rid of the colourful titlebars (red, green, yellow) that were present, even in the last Beta. They are still showing in the User interface menu, but they are just grey in practice.

(That's a real disappointment, of the "stay on previous version to not lose that feature" variety)

[SuperTech]

Thank you for your honest feedback, and I'm sorry to hear that the new on-demand interface is disappointing for you. We understand that design changes can be difficult.

In the current ribbon interface, only the name of the active ribbon is colored as per the new design.

We know that preferences vary—some users prefer this new look, others the older one, and some favor the menu interface only. While it's a matter of personal choice, this update is part of our ongoing effort to improve the experience for the majority of our users. We appreciate you sharing your perspective as it helps us shape future decisions.

[SuperTech]

Good News! We're pleased to announce that a new colored theme will be introduced for SoftMaker Office NX/2026 for Linux in the next beta release.

[Woody44]

We know that preferences vary—some users prefer this new look, others the older one, and some favor the menu interface only. While it's a matter of personal choice, this update is part of our ongoing effort to improve the experience for the majority of our users. We appreciate you sharing your perspective as it helps us shape future decisions.

Here's a general thought as feedback to your development team:

Those people (and companies and governmental entities) who purchase your software are end users. We don't buy it to tinker with bells and whistles, we buy it to GET ... THINGS ... DONE. We learn how to do the things we need to get done with the software we have. When a new version of the software comes along, it's wonderful if it introduces some supercalifragilisticexpialidocious new feature that 99 percent of users will never EVER want or need ... as long as you leave the stuff that we use alone so we can continue to GET ... THINGS ... DONE.

When you tinker with the interface ... that interrupts work. It looks different. That's distracting, and distraction interferes with productivity.

Reality check: "Different" does not equal "better." A perfect example is the menu interface. Essentially from the first appearance of graphical user interfaces, most software programs went along very nicely with what we now think of as a "classic" menu bar across the top of the screen. Somebody came up with that interface, and many people were paid significant amounts of money to develop it and to improve it. It worked (and still works), and millions of people around the world somehow managed to GET ... THINGS ... DONE using it.

And then, in 2007, Microsoft came out with Office 2007 and the ribbon menu structure. I was working in a municipal agency when the town "upgraded" from Office 2003 to Office 2007. Work came to a virtual standstill, because nobody knew how to do any of the things they had been doing quite satisfactorily for years or even decades.

To the designers on your development team, a little thing like the color of a menu bar, a toolbar, or a program title bar may seem like a trivial detail, so they see nothing wrong with changing it in the holy name of being "new" and "edgy." But to the end user, it's not trivial. We are accustomed to seeing what we see. When we open up a new version on Monday and it's different ... the brain disengages. It sees "different," and it immediately stops to ask, "Did I make a mistake? Am in the right program? What's going on here?"

Advice from a long-time end user and former beta tester for multiple software companies: DO NOT change things for the sake of changing them. This is not an argument in favor of stagnation. By all means, introduce new features when and where appropriate, BUT ... have some respect for your established users. DO NOT just change things for no reason other than to make them different. We don't want different. We want the same. We want to be able to keep using our software productively, not waste time figuring out what's new and different about every new version.

I still use the classic menus in SoftMaker Office. I dearly wish you would offer a classic menu option in FlexiPDF -- it needs one. At my most recent job for a public (municipal) agency, the town used Microsoft Office 2019. Fortunately, it is a small municipality and the IT team were reasonable people. I asked then if they would install Ubitmenu menu for me, and they did so. Ubitmenu is a German (I think) add-on for Microsoft Office that restores the classic menu structure. Having that available to me was the only way I was able to get any work done. IT took the unusual (for IT people) attitude that if it would make me more productive, they would let me use it.

This should be a mantra for software developers: "Different does not equal better." If there isn't an urgent need to change something -- DON'T.

[SuperTech]

Thank you for the detailed feedback and advice.

[Tcaws]

Good News! We're pleased to announce that a new colored theme will be introduced for SoftMaker Office NX/2026 for Linux in the next beta release.

I hadn't seen this post before the beta release came out. But I noticed the coloured top bar was back as soon as I installed the new Beta.

And I rushed here just to say thank you so much, I'm really pleased to see it back.

[SuperTech]

Thank you for the valuable feedback. We are glad that you liked the new theme design.

[ITFlip]

My 2 Cents

• It's great that your interface has a choice of Classic or Ribbon interfaces. And wow, the Quick Access bar even includes a vertical version of the Classic Menu (I do use this sometimes).

• It's also great that you have a few color choices: the original TextMaker Red (good for brand identification) and the now common Dark Interface. I think these choices are the minimum; the grey is nice option too. Individuals can choose what they feel is best for their eyes.

• Some home users may like even more colors available for both Classic and Ribbon interfaces.

__________

I can appreciate some issues as an end-user and as a support person, having been a Technical Report Writer, Software Trainer, and IT Support Technician, Helpdesk Manager and IT Director, before and after the existence of the Ribbon.

• For beginners, the Classic interface can take longer to learn, but many/most features can be invoked (if not completed) from the keyboard without even looking at the screen and without switching to a mouse. Once learned, the Classic interface can allow a person to work more quickly and efficiently.

• When the Ribbon came out, long-time users of the Classic interface were up in arms - they were experts in the previous interface and they essentially had to learn to use new tools, sending their productivity down, at least temporarily (they were familiar with the available functions, but where are they?). Change is difficult and while many experienced users found the Ribbon to get in the way of productivity, some preferred the Ribbon. Beginning software users and casual/occasional users tended to like the Ribbon initially because options were more logically categorized and more visible, and therefore easier to find. Even seldom-used functions were easier to locate. i think the Ribbon is less efficient and requires more use of the mouse.

• Folks who are used to the Ribbon feel lost with a Classic menu. A person can get used to new ways of accomplishing tasks, but there is a balance between change for improvement and change to just be new. For now, it seems both interface types are relatively common.

Even though I believe the Classic menu to be more efficient, I currently prefer the Ribbon. I've written some 70 page documents recently, but this is more occasional. Some home users (including me) may like even more colors available for Classic and Ribbon interfaces as there are people with color blindness or a sensitivity to certain colors. I know that some applications are "skinnable" by third parties, and I'm not proposing that route, but I would not mind a dozen color choices (as a future low-priority suggestion - functionality is much more important).

[Woody44]

• For beginners, the Classic interface can take longer to learn, but many/most features can be invoked (if not completed) from the keyboard without even looking at the screen and without switching to a mouse. Once learned, the Classic interface can allow a person to work more quickly and efficiently.

For some users the Classic menu may take longer to learn -- for others it may take less. It depends on whether the person is textually oriented or graphically oriented. I'm textually oriented (which is ironic, considering that I'm in a design profession and my undergraduate degree is in art).

• When the Ribbon came out, long-time users of the Classic interface were up in arms - they were experts in the previous interface and they essentially had to learn to use new tools, sending their productivity down, at least temporarily (they were familiar with the available functions, but where are they?). Change is difficult and while many experienced users found the Ribbon to get in the way of productivity, some preferred the Ribbon. Beginning software users and casual/occasional users tended to like the Ribbon initially because options were more logically categorized and more visible, and therefore easier to find. Even seldom-used functions were easier to locate. i think the Ribbon is less efficient and requires more use of the mouse.

I am paralyzed when confronted with a ribbon menu. I do not agree that the ribbon menu (in TextMaker, Microsoft Word, FlexiPDF, Adobe Acrobat,, or whatever) is in any way "more logically categorized" than a classic, text menu. It's just different. Lets face it -- when we moved from MS-DOS and command-line interfaces to Windows 2.0 and 3.0 and the GUI user interface, some body (or a number of somebodies) put a lot of time and thought into devising what we now refer to as the 'Classic" menu interface. At that time, the people who came up with it did so because it seemed to them to be the most logical interface. And it worked -- very well -- for quarter of a century before some whiz kids decided that a ribbon-style menu interface was "better." It isn't better -- it's just different. It probably is "better" for some users, and it very definitely is NOT "better" for other users.

I support SoftMaker in continuing to make both user interfaces available. I think that's the best approach to satisfying the needs of the largest number of users. And if SoftMaker wants to make more color choices available for those users who absolutely MUST customize the appearance of their user interface -- that's fine, too. What I do NOT support is changing the default colors just to make Office 2026 look different from Office 2024. That's not helpful. That's not change for the sake of improvement -- that's just change for the sake of change.

• Folks who are used to the Ribbon feel lost with a Classic menu. A person can get used to new ways of accomplishing tasks, but there is a balance between change for improvement and change to just be new. For now, it seems both interface types are relatively common.

And users accustomed to the Classic menu are lost when confronted with a ribbon menu. There's a reason I still use FlexiPDF 2022. I bought FlexiPDF 2025. I can't use it. That was when SoftMaker switch FlexiPDF to a ribbon menu. Likewise Adobe. I can't use Adobe Reader DC -- I use Adobe Reader XI, because it has a menu I can comprehend.