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This is a weird article to me. In my experience, people hated the ribbon and didn't find it useful or innovative, just annoying. Also, most of my friends that s

This is a weird article to me. In my experience, people hated the ribbon and didn't find it useful or innovative, just annoying. Also, most of my friends that switch to Mac found the Mac version of office to be quite a bit better than the Windows version. I know Word for Mac had quite a few more features (Notebooks being the biggest one) than the windows version. I suppose they could be talking about lack of apps, like OneNote and Visio?

ThomPete 14y ago
Ribbon was an improvement to 99% of the people using it.
- r00fus 14y ago
  If it was such an improvement, why did they remove the menus? (it takes a paid extension to bring those back). They could have at least left it as an option for power users.
  - ThomPete 14y ago
    because the menus would make it worse for the average user and the power user should be willing to pay if it's that important for them.
untog 14y ago
I agree with you on the Mac comments, but Paul Thurrott himself talks about the ribbon in the comments- it annoys experts, but everyday users love it. Since we are surrounded by very tech savvy people, we tend to think that everyone hates it. They don't.
- princeb 14y ago
  to some extent i can't really buy this argument. office 2007 still accepts office 2003 keyboard shortcuts, so if an expert is completely at home with 03 he or she should still be able to function normally in 2007+ without needing to visit the ribbon very much. i was quite happy with this - the ribbon is there, but it forces nothing on me. i was happily smashing away until i one day decided to pay attention and saw the yellow dialog box over the ribbon which said something like 'office 2003 shortcut'. if an lotus 1-2-3 superuser for some reason really couldn't change his spots after 30 years, excel 2010 still keeps / as a menu shortcut for those folks, even though lotus shortcuts no longer work.

ThomPete 14y ago

Ribbon was an improvement to 99% of the people using it.

r00fus 14y ago
If it was such an improvement, why did they remove the menus? (it takes a paid extension to bring those back). They could have at least left it as an option for power users.
- ThomPete 14y ago
  because the menus would make it worse for the average user and the power user should be willing to pay if it's that important for them.

untog 14y ago

I agree with you on the Mac comments, but Paul Thurrott himself talks about the ribbon in the comments- it annoys experts, but everyday users love it. Since we are surrounded by very tech savvy people, we tend to think that everyone hates it. They don't.

princeb 14y ago
to some extent i can't really buy this argument. office 2007 still accepts office 2003 keyboard shortcuts, so if an expert is completely at home with 03 he or she should still be able to function normally in 2007+ without needing to visit the ribbon very much. i was quite happy with this - the ribbon is there, but it forces nothing on me. i was happily smashing away until i one day decided to pay attention and saw the yellow dialog box over the ribbon which said something like 'office 2003 shortcut'. if an lotus 1-2-3 superuser for some reason really couldn't change his spots after 30 years, excel 2010 still keeps / as a menu shortcut for those folks, even though lotus shortcuts no longer work.