OSNews

While I could be as vitriolic about the Ribbon as mickrussom,(even after nine months of use), I will tone it down a bit.

While the Ribbon solves the problem of getting the most options in the users eyesight, it is not without its costs. Trying to present everything is like serving all courses at once at a restaurant. The Ribbon is horribly cluttered.

Office 2007's Ribbon is also poorly separated on contextual actions. There is some duplication and there is some randomness in the allocation of actions to the separate tabs. As an example, why are text layout and copy/clip/paste + search and replace "Start" items? I mostly start with an empty document and only after typing a body of text, will I start putting in bold/underlined/italic emphasis. Plus, when you start, what is there to copy/clip/paste?

What also vexes me is the increase in the number of actions I need to perform to complete a task. I need to traverse a lot more distance with the mouse, switching through tabs and hitting the right button. Some actions also take more clicks than the old conventional menu.

Then there are extra contextual tabs which only appear with certain tasks such as inserting pivot tables. Even more traversing en mouse clicking.

The Ribbon is ultimately a "Noob Interface". It gets all options in the face of someone who doesn't know where to look. The problem with that, is that it also gets all the options in the face of someone who already knows very well what he wants. Someone who'd like some control and ability to create real custom interfaces and have stuff that is rarely needed out of the way. The quick launch bar is a very poor substitute.