I think ribbons are one of the great UX failures of the Microsoft Office suite. An alternative arrangement of functions are property palettes like they are use

I think ribbons are one of the great UX failures of the Microsoft Office suite. An alternative arrangement of functions are property palettes like they are used in CAD tools, Adobe Photoshop, Open Office, or Apple Pages. There, functions are not globally aranged in ribbons like "Start", "References", but are presented in the context of a selected object. For example, if I have selected an image, the topmost palette shows properties applicable to an image. In addition, I get tabs with options for the placement of the image in a text frame, and for the page the text frame is located on. Very neat, not at all arbitrary, but reflecting the hierarchy of the objects I am working with.