“A menu of that many items obviously won’t scale well, but maybe thats just a symptom of a greater problem.”
I don’t know if I’m understanding you correctly, but the Office team designed the ribbon simply because there was that many items (i.e. similar to the firefox illustrated). And it works really well. All the simple things are to hand. But so are all the more complex things. Unobtrusivly, but also not hidden away.
IE7 beta2 is giving a good example: the main menu is hidden. It can be visible by hitting left Tab key.
If that user is happy with that toolbar setup, who are you to tell him he shouldn’t be?
Have been wandering around Jensen Harris’ blog linked to here, and am having this horrible feeling that my expertise in Office is about to be flushed down the toilet on the altar of usability.
Will Alt-E-S-V work in Excel?
Will Alt-T-O work in Office?
All those keyboard shortcuts I use without engaging the conscious brain? The ability to rearrange all those nicely small buttons to my liking? (that Paste button on the ribbon is a freaking horror)
Help the helpless newbie by all means, but please don’t shoot my hands off.
Define “web sites”. Would MSN.com count as a web site? How about GMail or Hotmail?
I personally think it is a huge mistake for web sites to adopt traditional client app interfaces. For example, the way the latest version of Yahoo Mail tries its darndest to look exactly like Microsoft Outlook.
Web apps should transcend the limitations of traditional apps, not ape them.
“I watched the Office ribbons demo and I think it’s mostly just eye candy.”
I would completely disagree. It really does dramatically improve productivity and discoverability. Word (and the rest of Office) is already a pretty solid base line. It’s already very good at what it’s meant to do – help you write documents quickly. Now it makes it easier to go the next step – documents that look pretty.
Some of the features, like “Quick Formatting” has been around for ages. You’ve always been able to use headers and pre-defined headings, but it’s been hidden away, people didn’t know how to use it and it was slightly cryptic. Now people can use headers a lot easier, with all the benefit of automatic style updating, table of contents and all the rest.
The interface really does help you to get at pretty much every feature in little more than 2 clicks maximum. Surely that dramatically increases productivity over cascading menu’s up to 4 deep and remembering various shortcuts? Isn’t that a lot more than just eye candy?
You only highlight the new features in Word. Excel has new features that really dramatically improve it. The whole new table paradigm really improves how you use Excel and what you can do with it. And it’s a new feature that will pretty much be used by everyone every time they use Excel, it’s that useful.
“Most of my writing today tends to be in email”
If you use Outlook there will be a lightweight (or slightly more advanced if you have Word installed) version when writing your emails. But I agree, it should be extended so anyone can include it.
“The new ribbon is just a bandaid, not a cure.”
To all who don’t mind the possible dodgy legal implications I urge to download Office 2007 (find a torrent or something) and try it out for 20 minutes. I’m almost certain you will be converted 
It really does solve the problem very well. Even with all the functionality, whatever the feature you’re looking for it can be found in one of 8 tabs (including the possibility of 2 extra tabs if an object is selected). Doesn’t take long at all to scan through them.
“its a set of applications that have grown too complex”
There is only 1 feature in the first 4 tabs I would never use. I use most of them regularly. I wouldn’t really use the Mailings tab, but a lot of people would. And I would occasionally use a lot of the features in the Review tab. So Word hasn’t outgrown itself to become too complex an application at all. And now I know where everything is. Previously I was managing all the references in my essays myself. Now I can use the excellent tools they provide that I have just discovered.
To all who don’t mind the possible dodgy legal implications I urge to download Office 2007 (find a torrent or something) and try it out for 20 minutes. I’m almost certain you will be converted
While I may be skeptical, I will certainly give it a try. I can’t have my users knowing more about the new Office than me!
BTW, why do I always have to enter the word “orange”? Why not something else? Is it tied to the user??
why do I always have to enter the word “orange”?
Why not?
It’s my ultra ghetto hard-coded CAPTCHA that… isn’t really a captcha.
p.s. Don’t tell the spammers, because it’s working so far.
Whats the alternative ?
Not following you here. You’ve taken a completely ridiculous scenario (a browser with hundreds of toolbars installed) and used it to show that toolbars are no good.
This contrived scenario’s no good.
The point of Firefox extensions is that you can add or remove them at will to suit the experience you desire. Users pick a few and go with it, and remove them if they don’t use or like them. The same goes for the screenshots of Word with every toolbar enabled. They’re sensational, but they prove nothing.
If a user’s installing every single Firefox extension available, they’ve got bigger problems than user interface managment. UI design needs to serve the needs of the 99%.
while i think the ribbon idea is a good extension/rethinking of the menu/toolbar concept, certain things just don’t scale. having a single program let you do 15,000 things may not be the best thing. A menu of that many items obviously won’t scale well, but maybe thats just a symptom of a greater problem.