gdgt

When I first saw it I honestly thought it was a joke, in fact I still kind of hold to that belief. Whether it's out of a, likely vain, sense of hope or not is another question. Microsoft's ribbon interface in its Office suite has been almost universally panned, at the very least for its aesthetic. I can't imagine why they would hold to it under such vocal opposition when other parts of the UI are being taken in such a markedly different direction. It is porbably due to a lack of communication and, dare I say, synergy between the two teams, a problem Microsoft should be painfully aware of at this point.

I agree with frankspin on one point here, Windows Phone 7 and parts of the Windows 8 UI's use of minimalism is a much appreciated departure from how Windows has come to look. It's also unique and in complete opposition to Apple's often overwhelming use of skeuomorphic designs. Hopefully Microsoft will consolidate their UI teams and start moving in that direction with more focus in the future because, quite frankly, the ribbon UI needs to die.

Edit: A relevant linked article from Lukas Mathis at ignorethecode.net on how much of the ribbon is close to useless for almost everyone, according to Microsoft's own research.

"Again, this is Microsoft’s own research, cited in the same post: nobody — almost literally 0% of users — uses the menu bar, and only 10% of users use the command bar. Nearly everybody is using the context menu or hotkeys. So the solution, obviously, is to make both the menu bar and the command bar bigger and more prominent. Right?" - Laurie Voss

ignorethecode.net­/blog­/2011­/08­/30­/explorer­_bar/
seldo.tumblr.com­/post­/9549775746­/this­-is­-genuinely...

I actually use Office products in a meaningful way (like, H/PC acceleration for Excel, heavy-duty documentation and living 24/7 in Outlook way) and I don't mind the ribbon.

I've never had a strong opinion on it one way or another, apart from the fact that it does look somewhat Fisher-Price but I think on balance it's not that bad a way to engage untrained but nevertheless heavy users into using more of the Office features.

Whether wisely for the Windows community as a whole - especially the early-adopter power users, or people who believe they are - or not, that's clearly something they've considered for W8. I watch people who should be (and list themselves as) competent computer users struggle with basic file management tasks. A previous PA who didn't last long apologised with a sweet smile when she made a very elementary error and said the words "I'm sorry, but I'm not very good with computers" (CV: Proficient with Windows & Office). I replied "Well it's just as well you don't sit in front of one for 8 hours a day, isn't it?".

That's clearly something an IT department minion can't say out loud (well, on their last day maybe) and something that your regular Joe (or Josie) won't allow themselves to acknowledge. And there is something to be said for enabling the inexpert but reasonably motivated to discover Explorer features in this way.

However from a Mac-addled tech-blogging Starbucks-seat-polisher mindshare point of view they've obviously failed miserably because of the Fisher-Price look aspect. But while these individuals are the loudest, they do the least on their systems and let's face it, 90% of them don't actually need - or are familiar in any detail with - anything more than Textedit to get their work done.

For power users? You can clearly shift the entire thing out of the way if you're familiar with commands. Some of you will know that if you hide the ribbons in Office (Ctrl-F1), there's actually significantly more screen real-estate available (especially for notebook workers) than previous iterations. The same appears to be the case for Explorer. But it isn't shinier, and yes, a small Apple-appreciating part of me does think it could have been shinier / better /iconed/.

My biggest concern by far though is that they haven't addressed touch. So either there's a separate touch file management or object shell, or... the words 'epic fail' comes to mind if people are expected to build tablet form factors around it.