Do you hate the new ribbon menu design of Microsoft Office 2007 as much as I do? I haven't met anyone who likes this new design concept from Microsoft. Universally the reaction I see from anyone who checks out the new ribbon menus is "yuk", "what's that" and "why did they change the menus".
User Interface changes between major releases of Office have always meant learning the new menu structures, new features and where features have been relocated. Features often get moved around, change menus and new dialog boxes appear. As a user interface designer, I've always been shocked at how much license Microsoft takes in changing the user interface in new releases. And, we've always just lived with those changes. But ribbon menus are a significant departure from the current menu design paradigm, and a problem for most users.
I suspect Microsoft's reason for the ribbon menu design is to show off the new dynamic styles. As you change settings, such as the style options, the selected text in the body of the document changes as you hover over different options. That's actually a very handy feature and while a ribbon menu may make it easier to see these dynamic changes, it comes at a great cost. Productivity.
Ribbon menus make it hard to find things because the ordering and layout of the ribbons appear to have no rhyme or reason. The Home, Insert, Page Layout and other tabs are organized around tasks you would perform. For the most part, those make sense. But the content of the ribbons doesn't.
I've personally spent a great deal of time searching for how to perform a task which I already know how to perform, but just couldn't locate in Office 2007. For example, options like Find, Replace and Select are housed in an Editing subsection of the Home tab, which is located at the far right on the Home ribbon menu. Edit functions used to be right next to the File menu on the left portion of the interface. It seems like you would use editing functions far more often than using preset styles, so why demote them to the far right of the ribbon menu. The ribbon menus just lack good task-based design.
Maybe new design elements make learning Office 2007 applications easier to learn for newbie users, but I doubt it. If we tallied the productivity hit to all the existing users who spend hours relearning Office applications, I'm sure IT and business execs would be furious. I suspect that if ribbon menus were such a great innovation and productivity improvement that we would hear a lot more about it from Microsoft, in product reviews, and comparisons with the Apple Mac OS X user interface. But the silence is deafening, most likely because the opposite is true. If you are still in doubt, check out this area of Microsoft's site with the link titled "Where did that command go? " (Check out this sample.)
Sorry, Microsoft. While Office 2007 has some very powerful and useful additions, ribbons aren't on the menu.
Mitchell Ashley is principal consultant at Converging Network LLC where he provides product, technology and social media consulting to emerging technology companies. A successful CTO and product innovator, Mitchell has created many successful, award winning products in the networking, security, convergence, Internet and IT industries. In addition to blogging for NetworkWorld, Mitchell regularly blogs at TheConvergingNetwork and co-hosts the widely popular StillSecure After All These Years podcast.
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The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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Hate the Office 2007 Ribbon
I too hate this awful thing called the Ribbon. It's extremely cumbersome, confusing, and just plain bad. The fact that there is no option to revert back to the familar toolbar/menus makes it even worse.
Another thing that occured to me is that in future versions, in order to make room for the newest features Microsoft will want to showcase, they will again have to shuffle things around, banishing commands to the hidden recesses. More time wasted, productivity lost, etc. while you search for the commands.
Bet Microsoft will charge you through the nose for support calls, too, when after three weeks you still can't figure out where they moved the Heading 3 formatting style this time.
Mike
Out'ta Control Ribbons?
You're right, Mike. The ribbon menus could very easily be used to expand the functionality of Office products. Given that, it would also be easy for the ribbon menus to get out of control. I already despise most plug-ins that add another menu bar to the previous generation of Office 2003 products. Ribbons could even be worse.
Mitchell Ashley
Converging Network, LLC
Personal blog: http://theconvergingnetwork.com
Personal podcast: http://www.clickcaster.com/ss
Ribbon from Hell - Yes
What a pleasure to see other negative reviews of the despicable ribbon. (Been preparing one for months, but like most productive people -- which seems to exclude the majority of Usenet -- I really don't have the time to spend.)
I have the same reaction from my users: "Why the f-- did they do this?" What really kills me is the simpleminded happyfaced acceptance 2007 is getting from people who don't work very hard & thus don't need the continuity that '07 destroys. (Overheard at a writer's cafe: "Who needs menus anyway? I never use em!")
Microsoft claims users' logging data made them do it. What nonsense. Who do you know who would have answered "Yes!" to "Would you like all your functions moved somewhere else and your customization options drastically reduced?"? The notion that repositioning functions makes you more efficient would apply only if you're almost ALWAYS issuing commands and only rarely scrolling or editing. And that's the reverse of reality for nearly everyone.
Many other empty boasts tax my patience. Just one example: MS gurgles that Word 2007's Picture tab appears when you click a picture and goes away when you unselect it. That's neither new nor innovative: Word's Picture *Toolbar* has done the same thing since 1997; it just doesn't try to congratulate itself for doing so.
There's lots more, but what would be the point? The inmates are running the asylum.
-PX
OMG this is awful
My wife has a laptop with Vista and MS Office 2007. Ocassionally I use it and if I ever go into an Office application my blood pressure goes through the roof.
I just spent 3-4 mintues looking for the print button on Excel. After giving up I hit Cntrl-P and was finally able to print.
I want to take Steve Balmer's car, swith the brake for the accelerator, move the radio buttons to the back seat, and the AC controls into the trunk. How do you think he would like that?
The opprobrious ribbons of Office 2007
Talk about a way to ruin my productivity and drive me to my other PC's just to do a spreadsheet or write a report. It's just so hard to wade through the ribbon, to find familiar commands, and read from left to right and back while wondering why I'm lost.
Lack of choice
Here's an interesting thought about "Office with a ribbon".
Windows XP allows the user to switch back to the "classic" Start menu of Windows 2000, Windows Millennium, Win98SE, Win98, and Win95. Now, that's a long ways back.
In fact. Interestingly enough, Vista also allows a user to revert to that "classic" Start menu... all the way back to Win95.
Have you ever asked yourself why Vista Office will not allow you to switch back to a more familiar and productive interface?
Sure you have. But the answers with which your mind answered... weren't very pretty now, were they. Expressions like: "They've got us by the balls" doesn't make for comforting feelings, does it.
But I cannot help but find it odd that such a radical and obvious choice was deliberately left out.
And what happens with the next Office release? Y'know: when the ribbon is replaced with some other arbitrary "beneficial" doodad (a strip of pink bunnies in various postures)? How long do we plunk down hard earned dollars for a product MS determined is "for our own good"? We know perfectly well they've lost sight of "the-customer-is-always-right". Again: disturbing.
If they buried the ability to restore the menu bar and familiar icons in some ... vague and shadowy place... something that requires an "Office Tips" web page to help us locate... that would be one thing. Its complete absence speaks volumes.
Heh. I suppose I'm going too far, aren't I? It's clear where I"m taking this. Actually, it's clear where this is leading. It's so clear... but we chase away the images of Big Brother from our minds. We tell ourselves: "Conspiracy thinking is so not cool."
It's not cool... when it's wrong. When it's right, it's time to act.
There is another choice! You can get the old toolbars and menus
For those who want the original (and fully customizable) Classic menus and toolbars - our product ToolbarToggle and ToolbarToggle Lite has brought back them back to Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 for less than $20. ToolbarToggle can replace or be used side-by-side with the Ribbon at the same time!
Let us know what you think. http://www.toolbartoggle.com
Just another arbitrary useless feature
The ribbon is just one more needless change intended to drive sales of "new" software. Microsoft has entire buildings full of programmers and their managers, eager to preserve their jobs by coming up with ways to drive sales. Being unable to think of anything better than previous versions of Office, which all worked just fine even a couple decades ago, they have resorted to ways to make the old product look new. In doing so they have damaged the usefulness of the menu. The fact that this new menu requires its own "search" command to find anything in it points to its lack of clarity. It's a mess. You never needed to search the old "classic" menu.
I do only one thing with Word - type up documents, using Word as if it were a blank piece of paper. I use the same fonts, margins, etc. for reports, letters, newlstter columns and magazine articles. Styles and themes do nothing for me, and all I need is a very simple blank page to work on. Same thing for PowerPoint and Excel.
As a result 90% of the tiny icons in the inscrutable ribbon mean nothing to me, or would mean nothing if I could figure out what they're supposed to do. I wouldn't mind them if:
1. I could make them go away, and
2. I could find the few basic commands I need to find.
I've downloaded a bit of software that doesn't make the ribbon disappear, but at least it brings back the old simple menu. If you want to be able to use it the way you used to, namely the easy way, you have to spend another $30 on an application to fix it.
This reminds me of the original iPod - an ostensibly portable device that was made and sold to be carried in pockets, purses, gloveboxes and backpacks, but if you actually used it that way, it would instantly look as if it had been dragged behind a pickup truck down a gravel road. It had all the durability of a crystal wine glass and needed a $30 case to protect it from what was essentially the expected use. But it was so shiny, all white and chrome, they sold many thousands.
Personally, although the iPod is no doubt one of the great marketing triumphs of the century, I think from a design perspective it is one of the biggest failures. The exterior is form at the expense of function. Like the ribbon menu.
Our IT guy loves Office 2007. It's shiny.