This is a great presentation by Jensen Harris, talking through the history of the MS Office UI and the design approach that brought about the ribbon. Contains nice shots of the early prototypes from slide 60 onwards.
Read more about it on Jensen’s blog
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I'm Harry Brignull, User Experience Lead at Madgex in Brighton. My work involves building experiences by blending User Research, Interaction Design and process consultancy. In the past few years I've consulted for Nokia, British Airways, Vodafone, O2 and many others.
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[...] The Story of the Microsoft Office Ribbon by Jensen Harris- 90 Percent of Everything [...]
I followed Jensen’s blog for a while and found a lot of the articles about redesigning word fascinating; the “Why the new UI” series in particular is a highlight. Great to see he’s sharing those early drafts ….
[...] The Story of the Microsoft Office Ribbon by Jensen Harris [...]
I have been using the for two years and I still cannot quickly find things do to this ribbon BS. Today I am making the change to open office good riddance MS Office
The ribbon sucks. And just when we get use to it, MS will change it again ):
[...] I’ve had more than a couple of people e-mail to ask how they can open these .docx files. The .docx format was introduced by Microsoft beginning with Office version 2007 (that’s the version with the ribbon, rather than the toolbar; more info here). [...]