MS Office, Ribbons, and you

[Mark Wieder]

Richard-

Friday, February 2, 2007, 8:22:32 AM, you wrote:

> Dan also shared this background article from Jakob Nielsen about the new
> Office UI:
> <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/wysiwyg.html>

My take du jour:

While I do like the new look of Office 2007, I don't find the Ribbons
idea in Office all that revolutionary. Office has for years now had
configurable toolbars, and if you get used to the icons you can use
them instead of the menus. What Microsoft has done in the new Office
is remove the redundancy.

I think the true inheritor of the results-oriented interface Jakob
Nielsen was talking about is the iPhone: a flat panel touchscreen that
is context-configurable to the current application. If it's in phone
mode you have a telephone keypad available. If it's in video mode the
keypad is replaced by a full-screen video. Et cetera. It's a little
box that fits in your pocket and can be whatever it needs to be at the
moment.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net