Windows 7 To Use Office 'Ribbon?'
Color me confused. Seriously. According to hands-on reports, Microsoft Windows 7 makes extensive use of Office 2007's "ribbon" interface - in such basic applications as Paint and WordPad, extending its context sensitive interface that changes completely and utterly in a handful of ways depending on the currently selected mode.
The complicated, unintuitive ribbon interface was designed, according to Microsoft, to replace the traditional menu system, which Microsoft says is too complex and can hide important features.
How very like Microsoft, then, to create a menu system altogether more complicated, more willing to hide important features, and so visually complicated that I ran screaming from Office Word, a program I've used and loved since I was a pre-teen.
And how much more like Microsoft to be so completely out of touch that it wants to take its newest mistake and smear it all over the OS that is supposed to bring us back to Windows. Vista users like myself who are frustrated with the feature bloat and visual/functional labyrinths required to perform basic tasks take note, Windows 7 may not be the answer we're praying for. Indeed it might be an altogether worse Frankenstein of design-by-committee and once-discarded features: witness the once-dead HomeGroup feature, designed to simplify LAN setups for non-business users, now slated for a return in Win7.
Windows 7 may use Office "ribbon" interface [Electronista]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, In the News on 17 September 2008
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: microsoft, microsoft office 2007, ribbon, windows 7
Man, I'm so happy I don't know what this "ribbon" thing is. Office 2008 for Macintosh has no "ribbon" thing.
I really like the ribbon actually. I find it far more intuitive after having relearned where everything is, which didn't take me too long. I use Word a lot so I'll defend the ribbon in that context. The ribbon does take some getting used to but it drags out a lot of features that were otherwise hidden by the old menu system like the references function that I use a lot for my work. It makes it so much easier to format tables or documents a certain way and you can preview the changes to your document as you mouse over the various options. The ribbon allows the inclusion of quick access to a heck of functions without leading to overly nested menus or a mess of tiny little icons (ala the old Word versions and their clones). The graphical interface is so much prettier too.
If I had a choice, I'd never touch those old word processing interfaces again. Maybe it's a preference thing but I find the Mac version of Office to have the worst of all worlds. It's a nightmare to have separate windows pop up for every little function.
Many power users hate the ribbon, but not because it represents change. We hate it because it STIFLES change -- the kind of change we made great and productive use of in pre-ribbon programs, namely, customization. The vast bulk of options for editing one's own interface in Office programs is gone in Office 2007, and Microsoft now bullheadedly claims its users wanted that to happen. (You can't even change the interface font size.)
Those who blithely dismiss the customization robbery are invariably those who have never been under pressure to make their work more efficient. Overheard in a writer's cafe: "Who needs menus anyway? I never used em!"
It took a while to get used to it in office, but it really helps on the long term. I really think that my Firefox needs a ribbon with Yahoo!, Stumble!, address and menu bars, there is a big chunk of the screen taken away. A ribbon is welcomed!
Agreed. Note that it really concerns me as I use Mac OS X and will continue to do so for the time being. I originally hated the nested menu interface in Microsoft Word until by chance one day i discovered the way to customise toolbars.
Hello instant productivity boost.