That’s why Microsoft’s blog post about the upcoming ribbon changes is so carefully worded:
Office 365 toolbar missing windows#
And of course we all know what happened when Microsoft tried to unilaterally change the Start menu and desktop in Windows 8. Many people were upset when the ribbons were introduced in Office 2007.
Microsoft claims to have learned its lesson about changing the interface of programs used by a billion people daily. The icons are redesigned behind the scenes so they render crisply on screens of all sizes and resolutions. The new ribbon takes less space onscreen. This is the simplified Word Online toolbar. The design is not final but Microsoft has suggested that the simpler Word ribbon will be similar to the reworked toolbar in Word Online that was introduced a couple of weeks ago. Microsoft has studied users and concluded that the ribbons can be simplified and still meet the needs of most users most of the time. Today the icons have been updated and the look is flattened but the layout of the Word ribbon has changed very little in the last eleven years. This is the ribbon as it appeared in Word 2007. (Outlook was the exception it did not get a ribbon until the next version, Office 2010.) Commands were organized far more coherently but all Office users had to train themselves from scratch to discover the new location for familiar commands. When Office 2007 was released, it featured a radical departure: ribbons and buttons that replaced the menus completely. Microsoft embarked on an ambitious attempt to simplify and reorganize the toolbars for the Office programs. New features had been shoehorned into whatever space could be found, leading to a disorganized presentation. Commands were buried in deeply nested menus. This was the Word toolbar in Office 2003. Microsoft is previewing changes that are still a long way down the road. They want to make the ribbons (the tabbed toolbars across the top) simpler and easier to use, but they say there will be an easy way to return to the way they look now for people with strong muscle memory who don’t want to change. It’s possible that Microsoft will work thoughtfully and carefully and you will be happy with the result. Microsoft intends to simplify the ribbon in Outlook, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
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