mwitthoft said:
Well, it's nice of Microsoft to open up a huge competitive opportunity.
By shooting themselves in the foot - - with a bazooka no less - -
called the "ribbon".
Or, in the event they actually listen to users (what a radical idea for
a software company) they could make the ribbon an option, and put back
the menu bar.
Microsoft would claim that they did listen to their users.
The rationale for the ribbon was the complexity of the earlier menu
and toolbars or the difficulty in finding commands. The ribbon was
supposed to reduce that complexity or difficulty, though it couldn't
do other than increase the difficulty for current users who knew where
things were in the Office 2003 and prior menus/toolbars but not to
start with in the ribbon.
What's lacking is choice. The presence of 'classic menu' add-ins
demonstrates that Microsoft *could* have provided old style menus in
Office 2007. So why didn't they?
At least for spreadsheets, every company that has sold spreadsheet
programs and have changed menu structures in newer versions has
provided old style menus as a crutch for existing users. That was true
for Lotus 123 in both 123 For Windows 1 and 123 Release 4 for Windows
and all subsequent versions, all of which have included the Classic
Menu. That's true for Borland and Corel, which have included
alternative menu trees since Quattro Pro version 1. And it was even
true for Excel 5, which provided an optional Excel 4 menu.
Why not this time? Would it be too cynical to suppose that back then
all these companies knew they'd lose market share to competitors if
they didn't accommodate existing users' expectations? Would it be too
cynical to suppose that the absence of effective competition today
means they don't need to care about existing users' reactions? It's
clear they could have provided alternative RibbonX files with, say,
Excel ribbon tabs for File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Data,
Window and Help with the expected commands and submenus under them.
It's clear they could have provided alternatives to the ribbon UI
since 3rd parties have done so. But they wanted to force a radical
change. Whose interest do you suppose was first & foremost in deciding
to do that? Users?
