> I expected the same reaction from both my wife and my boss when they > were first faced with the new layouts. Oddly, neither of them said a > thing to me or even asked my help with anything. In both cases it was > months later when I thought to ask them if they were having any > trouble and neither were. > > Apparently, now that people have more screen real estate, it makes > more sense to use ribbons than to hide things behind layers of menus. > > I think you made a huge mistake relenting right away and saddling her > with a 10 year old version of the program. Soon she won't be able to > open any documents people send her. I know in my wife's case pretty > much all the stuff she gets now is in the new format.
I wasn't going to say anything, but since you did: I agree with this completely. The ribbon interface is a little disconcerting the first time (or first few times) you use it, but it very quickly becomes second nature, and I find it easier to work with overall. MS research has confirmed this to be true for most users in a quite lot of consumer testing, and Office 2007 consistently gets higher overall UX (user experience) ratings than the earlier versions. Contrary anecdotal evidence from some members of this list notwithstanding, the ribbon interface is very well-liked. I just think of the ribbons as dynamic menus. In essence, the top-level menu structure changes to best serve whatever you happen to be doing at the moment. Whether you're working with references, page formatting, mailings, or whatever, everything you need is right in front of you, not buried in a menu somewhere. And, as you note, Office 2007 defaults to XML output (.docx, .xslx, .pptx), which the older versions can't open. I'd guess that 90% of the documents I get from others are XML at this point; correspondents would have to convert them for me if I didn't have 2007. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
