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by corin_ 5106 days ago
> I hate the ribbon in Windows 8 - that’s what most people said about the ribbon when it was first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007. And yet, it has become a great interface paradigm which makes features more visible and easier to use.

Not 100% related to Windows 8, but am I in the minority of disliking the ribbon in Office? When it first arrived I was excited by it and thought it was awesome, but after years of using it I still don't find it as useful as plain old menus, for the most part.

6 comments

With menus, it was still possible to page through the menus until you found what you were looking for.

With the ribbon, I still find myself going through every option to try to find something, only to end up googling where on earth they hid the function I was looking for.

So basically, Clippy could be helpful here? Bring him back! A bing-powered Clippy! lol, Ok, just kidding.
Same here. The ribbon requires more steps to get to the functions you need. It might be good for discoverability, and it might not hinder experts (since they'd use shortcuts) but I feel that it is a big let down for power-users that know what they want to do but don't use it enough to be able to do everything with the keyboard. That and that it is ugly and takes a lot of space.
Ribbon sucks. It sucked then. It sucks now even more. It doesn't work on desktop, and it certainly does not work with touch. Almost nobody has adopted ribbon. Even MS does not use it outside Office. You are not alone.
i think you're in a silent majority.
I would consider myself a longtime power user of both Powerpoint and Excel. I HATE the ribbon - it's much less efficient for most tasks (although it is prettier).
I think you are the minority. Ribbon is much better.
Does it matter? What if ribbon is not so popular, would that mean that Microsoft would actually listen and change? Or will it just go on like it always does?