I don't know who's in the minority, but he's not alone. I hate the ribbon element. I'm all for context aware UIs, but in today's world of 16:9 monitors, a huge

I don't know who's in the minority, but he's not alone. I hate the ribbon element. I'm all for context aware UIs, but in today's world of 16:9 monitors, a huge ribbon wasting all that precious vertical real estate is a terrible design choice. A good model to follow is Apple's iWork, where they have a single context aware toolbar with the advanced, detailed options managed in the sidebar. For quick edits, they should use a ‘floatbar’, a UI element that appears above selected text with a minimal set of the most commonly used buttons. If there are any designers here, you can help out by subscribing to the design mailing list.