Self-reply, sorry, the ribbon really gets my goat. Here's the deck from the Office team on how and why they designed the ribbon: http://video.ch9.ms/slides/mix

Self-reply, sorry, the ribbon really gets my goat. Here's the deck from the Office team on how and why they designed the ribbon: http://video.ch9.ms/slides/mix08/UX09_Harris.pptx http://video.ch9.ms/slides/mix08/UX09_Harris.pptx I realize the Office team had a very hard task. They can't remove features or some of their 100 million users get mad, and they're making a ton of money so they've got a lot of devs looking to add features, so they've got thousands of features and of course users can't find things. For a contrasting approach, I think the Keynote app on Mac went a different and easier-to-use route: 1. All the options with no context (e.g. insert new object) are in the top menubar, and the contextual options (e.g. change font color) are in a sidebar. So it's clear where to look for things. 2. Commands are in one place only, so you remember where you should look. (Okay, there's a little bit of duplication as the OS-level font menus are in the menu and the sidebar). 3. The contextual stuff is on the side instead of the top, which works better with the wide screens we use everywhere on desktops these days. 4. Contextual menus options stay the same size and shape and in the same location relative to the content, so you retain your muscle memory.