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FYI, that was how the menus worked in previous versions (Alt-f for the file menu, etc.), so ribbons didn’t expose any new functionality in that regard. In fact,
by jkaptur 7y ago
FYI, that was how the menus worked in previous versions (Alt-f for the file menu, etc.), so ribbons didn’t expose any new functionality in that regard. In fact, Microsoft bent over backwards to ensure that every old pattern people had used would continue to work exactly the same way.
- NotTheDr01ds 7y agoI thought about mentioning this, but Menus still had a tendency to dead-end into modal dialogs more often than not. A Ribbon command could still end up in a modal, but often times the Ribbon design allowed more functionality to be present in a non-modal way. I worked for Lotus/IBM when Word Pro was being developed, and they came up with the concept of a non-modal floating property bar (they called it the "Info Bar") that pretty much eliminated modals entirely. While I don't recall whether or not it was very keyboard friendly (I was still a mouse user at the time), it definitely showed me that there was a better way than "modal dialogs everywhere". When I moved on from IBM and had to use Office, I remember how grating it was every time I ended up in a modal dialog, so this was one more reason I was excited to see the Ribbon come along (more than a decade after Word Pro's Info Bar). I've never looked to see, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of the MS developers for Office 2007 came from Lotus/IBM, since it was a few years earlier that IBM had really given up the Office Suite fight for good.