MS Office, Ribbons, and you

[Scott Rossi]

Recently, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Any of you thinking about Ribbons-influenced designs for your apps?

For years, though not with the moniker "ribbon".


> What do you make of this shift?

You may recall I posted to the list about this very subject back in Dec
2005:
http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2005-December/072749.html

I've spoken with corporate developers who question the idea of "hiding"
features from users, or at least that's how they view it.  But one also has
to question, does it do any good to make every product feature visible to
users when the set of features doesn't fit on the screen?

One could argue that the current state of UI (visual treatments not
withstanding) has changed little over the last decade, if not longer.  Why
not try to push usability and design in different directions?  Users as well
as operating systems have both become more sophisticated.

For myself, I think the ribbon idea and context sensitive UI is good.  But
then again, I also like radial dial controls, while many do not :-)

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
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