“Microsoft on Thursday detailed some of the new features in its forthcoming Office for Mac 2011 suite, including co-authoring tools, Web apps, and a redesigned ribbon interface more consistent with its Windows counterpart. Microsoft is a part of Macworld 2010 expo in San Francisco this week, and has used the event to divulge details on its forthcoming update to Office for Mac, expected to arrive later this year.”
Finally they are bringing the ribbon to the Mac–good for them. But wait… they’re putting in the ribbon interface, but *leaving the standard toolbar*?!?!?!? This is what they call “the best of both worlds”?! The chrome on Word 2011 takes up a third of the freaking screen!!
Mind you, I’m assuming it’s hidable, so power users will find their way around the issue…. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s a ridiculous and inexplicable design decision for a target audience whose screens are often only 800 pixels high…. with the menu bar, title bar, and toolbar combined I estimate it takes around 50 pixels more vertical real estate than the Windows version.
That said, the new buttons on the ribbon look very nice and Mac-like.
Edited 2010-02-11 22:30 UTC
I wish they had left the standard toolbar, or the menus especially. I like the ribbon interface, I just don’t like that it’s the /only/ interface. It makes it impossible to find things that I know are there. You have to dig through layers of dialogs and the appropriate right click menus to get to them. I was never really well-acquainted with the old MS Word, so it’s not like I’m just complaining about things being different.
Exactly my first reaction on the screenshot. That’s a horrible use of horizontal real estate! Why not give the option to switch interfaces as needed, and keep things to a minimum.
True – the main reason for bringing it to the Mac was to make easy transitions between Office for Mac and Office for Windows – with end users at home who have a Mac and then go to work and do their thing. It makes little sense keeping the old model – if they are going to move to the ribbon interface then they should do it whole sale instead of this half baked compromised version.
Yeap, just when you though they were going to fix the problems with Office 2008 they sabotage Office 2011 to show once again they rescued a product from successful to throw into the jaws of failure. The only saving grace is that iWork is so horrible and lacking in features not only for professionals but university students as well such as citation/bibliography manager.
Two wrongs dont make it right.
Pretty much a step backwards.
I can say our company of 650 will continue to use Office 2003 because Office 2007 has become unsuable. The same is true with our corporate auditors E&Y, nearly 144,000 employees worldwide, will not be using 2007. From what the EY Staff tell me seems their other clients will not be migrating to 2007 either. So they are pleased not migrate to 2007. Intel IT corp head stated they will not be using Office 2007. I checked with my other beancounter friends and 2003 is their corporate choice of office suites. So pretty much every company in the Silicon Valley and its global affilates are not using 2007. Our managment has not mandated it, they think it sucks as well, our IT isnt purchasing it.
So tumbs down to Ribbons by many in the field.
I like the ribbon, but it was a bold move against hardcore users of Word and Excel to please the masses. I know I don’t care, and I actually think it’s a good interface (then again, I typeset in Latex and never use Excel, only ppt and Visio which just got the ribbon on 2010
), but alot of Excel powerusers I know are bitching about the ribbon like crazy.
It’s more of a radical habit change which stops alot of users than a bad design from MS tbh. Though, why can’t they let people create custom ribbons? (or is it possible?)
I know many people who have office 2007 and all those people cannot get any grip on that stupid ribbon thing.
I worked with it a few times but the old interface was way more intuitive.
Most cases are “I knew where it was before and I’m trying to map my existing knowledge onto the new way things are organized and it usually fails” though, at least for me and the people I know.
I’d rather eat broken glass covered in smallpox than use a menu-driven interface in a Word processor. Ugh.
Ribbon ftw.
It doesn’t bother you that when you’re in a word processor you’re probably typing on the keyboard and want to be able to access functions via the keyboard rather than the mouse?
If I get one more of those “keep typing your key sequence, but I won’t give you a visual cue” messages in Word 2007 I’ll go eat that smallpox covered glass.
what functions can’t be accessed with the keyboard?
http://temp.funtech.org/Office2007.png
The ribbon is an awesome thing. With a single click you can format the whole document, images, add charts, etc. Me, as a regular Office 2k3 user totally greet MSFT for doing this groundbreaking achievement.
… the way it is designed. Surely everyone uses 9:16 screens these days.
For those that are interested; you can right click on the ribbon (at least on windows) and select ‘Minimise the Ribbon’ This will only show the headings and when you click on it the items then appear below.
I wonder if they will be adding support for Visual Basic that was stripped out in Office 2008?
Yes, it seems so…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/12/office_for_mac_2011/
Actually the ribbon was designed to remove the menu bar and the toolbar providing something more “intuitive” and easier to use [that depends on who are you talking to]; but, in this forthcoming Office version, we have the Mac OS X ubiquitous menubar, a tool bar and… a ribbon?
I have a low-end MacBook and filling my little screen with menubar, tool bar and ribbon does not make sense at all; I need to have a lot of screen room to see what I am writing; so, I will continue using my OpenOffice while they will not implement a ribbon-like interface too.
Edited 2010-02-12 19:24 UTC
Try using addintools.com looks pretty good.
you can avoid ribbons and get 2003 pull down menus.
I’ve alway been mystified by the office ribbon. It’s like another UI pattern but different, and worse in a few ways.
The other pattern I’m taking about is the vertically stacked tool palette with expandable and collapsable sections. This was used by Lotus extensively and also was used in Mac Office 2004 I think.
The big advantage of this system is that multiple areas can be open at the same time, and the layout is better for landscape monitors.
The big problem with the ribbon is when two sections are valid for the context (i.e. when editing text inside a table) it tries to guess the right one but cannot be sure and usually gets it wrong.