Image: Screenshot from Microsoft Word 2007 ©2008 Jason Bean
Could the Office Ribbon be going away? No, not really but I just read about it being called something else.
The new name is "Office Fluent User Interface".
Can that be right? I’d think the ribbon was developed for people that weren’t as fluent with the Office applications as those users that were probably considered "fluent" in the first place.
In fact, I’ve had a couple of conversations with people that have suggested that the people Microsoft left behind with their Office 2007 user-interface redevelopment were those above-average and "expert" users.
History tells us that it is a bad idea to change the interface of an established word-processing application. A similar act of folly caused the demise of Wordstar, for example. Word’s menus and shortcuts had been learned by its users for eighteen years, so forcing them to adopt a different metaphor, without the choice of the ‘classic view’, seems reckless. At least we could switch off the ridiculous animated paper-clip (TFC), their previous attempt to dumb down their flagship applications. However, unless you buy one of the many applications that are designed to put back the classic menus, you are condemned to haunt the Ribbon UI (TFR), looking for that elusive Word Count menu item.
Simple-Talk uses Microsoft Word as the de-facto standard for article submission, and most authors I’ve spoken to are united in their dislike of the new ribbon UI. It may help the novice, but those of us who have the old menu tattooed into their cerebellums are disinclined to thank Microsoft for suddenly changing all the rules.
I for one actually like the ribbon interface. That can also be accurately interpreted to mean that I don’t consider myself above-average or "expert" in the Office applications prior to 2007.
I believe the real question is whether or not Microsoft really made the mistake when they didn’t offer a "Classic View" option to the interface. The comments on the article link below share quite a number of good thoughts, opinions and suggestions for what should have been done on both sides of the argument.
Source: Application Usability and Standards by Tony Davis on Simple-Talk