In IE7, classic menu bar is disabled by default.
In Office 2007, there is not menu bar at all. Also the traditional toolbar is gone. I can't find a way to create my own custom toolbar too.
What's happening I know menu bar is very classic and not pretty, but it is one single place that I am 100% sure that I can get all the features from a program. I don't want to lose it.
Is MS trying to throw away menu bar?
Raja-kandasamy
Doesn't it make sense to add images, graphs etc objects to the presentation
Besides, I often add graphs and diagrams to Word-documents, too. Makes architectures easier to describe and read.
Alexandre Defalque
"Word isn't the only Office-client with the ribbon. How about PowerPoint "
I haven't used power point in about five years. I write code. I don't do management presentations.
Kardath
Guess who's the major user/buyer of Microsoft Office products ... give you a hint, it's not you, the developer, it's the people who sign off on budgets, and they tend to be management types who give presentations.
That said ... apparently you're just a coder/programmer, and not a developer or architect ... a lot of us developers have to do business analysis work, and present our cases to the management types, making arguments for what we believe to be the best choice to make or path to go down. there are plenty of people, including me, who appreciate new features in Office. And before you demean me as not being a coder, I'm typically one of the top 30 or 40 answerers on this board, I've been writing code since I got my first Tandy BASICA programming book over 20 years ago -- programming pays my bills.
Badajoz95
Yes... the are dimishing and obscuring menu bars. This is deliberate.
eman1975
Wellnow
Yongjun.Wu
People have been asking features for Office that have been there for years. Reason: they don't know that the functionality exists already as they can't find it from all the menus and toolbars.
With the ribbon in Office 2007 the application can show only the relevant information and all the unnecessary controls are hidden away. Say, when you want to Insert something on a page, you go logically to the Insert-tab in ribbon and you are shown all the insertable objects. After you insert a drawing, you are given additional tab for formatting the drawing. This additional tab is not relevant, before some formattable object is selected, so it makes no sense keeping all those functions visible all the time. I think this makes the ribbon much more flexible than menus/toolbars ever were.
Also, ribbon isn't only just another toolbar, but the live preview and galleries are important part of it. They make it much easier to see what the outcome will be. They are not practical/possible to do as well with the traditional menus and toolbars. If you want to explore the functionalities of a program that uses ribbon, you can similarly go through all the tabs and see most of the possibilities it offers.
Sure a ribbon is harder to implement (Jensen Harris's blog gives a good insight to that process), but it shouldn't be the reason not to make better usability.
jinfeng_Wang
They're not. Neither is a GUI, if you want to be picky about it -- I could type a simple document just fine using vi. The new features are just more "bells and whistles". As far as I'm concerned, as long as they don't interfere with functionality, they're fine. (As long as the familiar keyboard shortcuts aren't tinkered with too much, I don't much care what the interface looks like. Don't mess with my shortcuts! Or else!
)
Edmund Jones
Oh no, why do they want to do that Menu bar is the best. I use Menu bar on Photoshop a lot because it is a centralized place that I know it has every feature listed. If I don't remember where the function is, I always go back to menu bar. Or when explore programs functionalities, I always go through the menu bar. But now I can't do that on Office2007 anymore. %*#$(&#)
And I still think using Fovorites from Menu bar is the best. I am getting old.
But seriously, what can be better than a menu bar That ribbon thing is fency, but it is not as flexible or complete as a menu bar. Ribbon is harder to implement, limited space to show all the features, no mouse over menu selection (the ribbon tab), and no straight forward function list.
Michael_317
Hey, check out Word 2007. Try pressing Alt and see what happens. Weird.
I must say I do love menus. All functionality in one place. Pretty cool. New GUI designs could be worth it in the end though. Don't worry, I'm sure Microsoft won't let us down. They never have ;)
braden2
But you can hold down Alt to bring it up. This threw me at first, but then I realized I prefer not having it. Though I tend to use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible, so it's not big a deal to me.
(Unfortunately I'm having too many problems with IE7, so I've gone back to Firefox. Oh well!)
RoadGlide
are YOU joking WYSIWYG is useful in any number of environments or scenarios.
Learning VB
You didn't answer my question. When I do word processing, I'm interested in typing a document that's all. Why do I need a Gallery and Live preview We haven't had them before. I've been very happy with Word, if anyone asked me what word needed, it would never occur to me to say, "A Gallery and a Live preview." So why are they needed
ajliaks
Choose a diety and take it's name in vien........
Who on earth needs a gallery do do word processing Let's get real. Before long we'll need 3-d Glasses just to word process. Why does anyone need a live preview I rather thought 2003 was the penultimate.
Even with the quick bar, itms are in groups and every time I want to change a font color there's an additional mouse click so a quick operation is slowed down by an addition selection. That isn't productive. Why would I be interested in trading a gallery for more work and consequently lower productivity