The new ribbon style user interface of recent Maple versions is well structured and visually much more appealing than the former user interface. Great for new users. However, I do not use the new Maple version for productive work because it is considerably slower to use: Much more clicks and mouse movements are involved than before, which breaks the flow.

To improve this situation, I thought about customizing the quick access toolbar with menu items that I need all the time. With Maple 2026 this suggestion has become a less viable solution because the quick access toolbar shrunk in size and moved to a screen location with low mouse activity (to get there fast, the mouse has to move back and forth like Speedy Gonzales). The tiny buttons in the toolbar are hard to distinguish and to hit in one go (a golfer might say “it's rare like an eagle”). If you disagree, try to write text and switch to non-executable math (to enter a symbol) and switch back to text and continue writing. Do the same with the former user interface (e.g. Maple 2024) and compare.

As a new suggestion I thought about adding a new tab "My Tab" to the ribbon that is customizable by the user. Here is what I would pick from the current ribbon items

(A subset from 4 out of 10 tabs: The Home, Insert, Edit and Help tab. The latter is less important)

I would probably also add these two items

although they do not fully replace the former buttons from the contextual tool bar

.

I use the above buttons from the former user interface allot in text passages to toggle between text and non-executable math. They are also useful to change the input mode of an empty document block (instead of inserting a new line with the desired input mode and deleting unwanted input lines). These buttons were introduced with Maple 2021 to improve usability, now they are gone and with it the ease of integrating math into text. With Maple 2026, I have to go back to using F5, which now “toggles” between three states (with the drawback that now in 1-D Math no indication of the state of the input mode is available on the user interface).

The above selection of menu items is my selection to work efficiently on textbook style Maple documents composed of explanatory text passages (including non-executable math) and Maple input and output. Other users would probably customize differently according to their needs.

A final remark about the undo function. Most software has undo on a top level. I do not understand why undo is not in the current quick access toolbar.

I strongly hope for productivity improvements that I can stop using Maple 2025.2 for Screen Readers (having the former user interface). Please do something to reduce mouse movements and clicks of frequently used interface functions. There is too much tab switching between the 3 most important tabs (Home, Insert, Edit) and too little functionality and ease of use of the quick access toolbar.

I would be interested to know which menu items other users would select.