Omer van Kloeten's .NET Zen

the ribbon isn't adaptive?

i swear by all that's holy that my ribbon added a few functions that i've used oh so often (like superscript and underscript)

or maybe it's my imagination..

I have tried Office 2007 on a test server at work, and can't stand the ribbon.  It takes me a lot longer to do some of the basic things that used to be quite fast in previous versions.  I can't find a lot of the things I need.

I used to be able to build my own floating toolbars of the commands I used to use the most, and drag them around into the positions that made them easy to get to.  Now, apparently Microsoft has decided that I should be flogged over this use of a feature they were touting as a great enhancement to productivity  - and it was.  Now, they believe customizability is a bad thing, and they take it away from us.

I will NOT be putting this garbage on my own home machines.   I have Office 2003 on one machine, and OpenOffice.org on another.   Unless Microsoft releases a service pack that fixes Office '07 to give back the classic UI, they will not see another cent from me from Office sales.  I just can't work effectively with '07.

BTW - The File menu isn't actually gone as the original post states -- they disguised it as a round "Office Button" that a lot of people don't realize is a button and not decoration... really "discoverable", Microsoft... way to go!    So we're told now that menus are bad, but context menus are ok, then they give us one little menu, but don't make it look quite like a menu...  I think it must have been the same people who came up with the design of Vista...  Don't know what they're smoking over at MS, but keep it away from me.

Hmm . I haven't had much exposure. But that is mostly caused by the fact that *when* i've encountered O2007, I was seriously slowed in my work, so that pretty much keeps me from even trying it out :)

Not to mention licenses.

I stick with O2003 and OOffice like Mike :)

The ribbon is without a doubt the most hideous thing Microsoft have introduced yet.

I still hate the "XP look" they brought in years back, I didn't like it when they changed Visual Studio 2003 to 2005 (they moved all the menus and remove key functionality only to put it back in in SP1), and now I hate the "ribbon."

There was NOTHING wrong with the old style menus.  This is just another example of incredibly bad US design inflicted on the rest of the world.  Ever heard of "global" user groups Microsoft?  Now I can't find anything I need easily so what have I done? I've had to recreate the menus and hide the ribbon bar.  But why should I have to do this - why can't we have a classic mode like Windows?  The whole thing smacks of a rushed botch job, like so many MS releases.

Wait for menus to come back in SP1...

The ribbon enormeously improves productivity, stop whining about the half day it takes you to adapt to it, really. You're smart, surely you can find where the BIG BUTTON is for whatever task you want. If not, try hitting F1 whenever you feel the frustration coming up...

I work with the ribbon for 2 months now, and I can't stand earlier office versions anymore, menus just lack this "action-orientated" thing ribbons have with them.

Want to do something basic? Sure it will be in "home". Something fancy with VBA? Surely it will be in "developer". Want to "review" your document? Work with its data? Guess where that'll be...

Also, of course they replace the menus as well. Press Ctrl+F1 and you'll readily appreciate this.

GH wrote: "Wait for menus to come back in SP1..."

They didn't change anything with SP1!

Beginners and intermediate users mostly love the new design because they discover features.

I hate it. Taking away customisation was going too far. MS forces you to do it their way - my way is much better. So go back to Office 2003 if you can.

Nevertheless, Office 2007 has been a success financially for Microsoft. They're working on similar changes to Windows!

Hello, i found this new style a friendly UI, what you need is to get used on it guys, always the people that get used on something, they found some hardness on the new things, and they start to scream :P.

i am a programmer, and my opinion is that this UI is much friendly than the menues style.

But, I agree with some guys here that Microsoft is obliging us to use there ways!!!

I am suffering from the buys inside of some Controls in microsoft visual studio for example ':( .

Anyway, guys you will change your opinions when you get used on this UI

regards,

I have to use O2007 at work - but continually find things that are much harder to get to, and much less intuitive than they were with the menu interface - I'm not impressed.

In my last job, I worked tech support for a major manufacturer - one of the most common things (easily 20 times a day) for us to do was to verify the version of Office being used: click on 'Help', then 'About...' (by clicking and holding on Help, then releasing on About, it became effectively a single-click operation - that has now become a four-step process: click the 'Office Button', click the 'Word Options' button, click the 'Resources' category on the left side of the  Options Dialog, then click the 'About' button. Then, once you've verified the version (with build number, all service packs, any add-ins, etc....), it now takes 2 clicks to return to the main application screen! If this is what is passing as an 'usability improvement'...

The Ribbon in Microsoft Ofice 2007 is a great improvement! The Ribbon showed me features and stuff that I could never find using the menus. And also, customizability is still part of Microsoft Office 2007. You can create your own tabs and commands using the steps that Help gives you. Microsoft has a Quick Access Toolbar that you can put commands on. There is also an add-in out there that allows you to change the Ribbon.

Microsoft implemented the Ribbon into Office 2007 because they were running out of room on the menus and toolbars. In Word 1.0 (released at least 15 years ago) had only 100 commands, all of which you could see on the menus and toolbars. In Office 2003, there were over 1,500 commands, which were all crammed into the same menus and at least 20 toolbars. In Office 2007, they created the Ribbon so they have room for all of those commands.

Also, there are add-ins that include the standard menus (File, Edit, View, etc.) and the Standard and Formatting toolbars on the Ribbon.

Everyone just likes to bash new things. They like it, but they want to follow the crowd and bring down new stuff. The Ribbon is one of the best things M$ did!

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