Hi Jay,
In many large corporate settings (where Office apps are often run through thin clients, such as Citrix [i.e. slow no matter what
G] and not used full time by users, the Ribbon seems to be better accepted as in the previous incarnation, users were locked out
from doing any customization on their own that would 'stick' and the menus seemed to almost always be set to not show the full menus
(many folks don't realize there are additional menu commands below the ones shown in that mode and think that with the Ribbon MS
added a lot more features than just those new in 2007).
With 2007 corporate users may still not be allowed to make their own QAT that 'sticks', but they do have, as Beth mentioned some
help in that Template embedded QATs do seem to be allowed
For help desks, with the internet and broadband and higher speed connections being more common these days it's more likely that the
help desk will have the ability to 'take over' the users workstation or at least watch what they're doing to help out than in the
past, but they would still be slowed by having to figure out too many unique locations for items as Office is usually not the only
thing they have to support
Developer's also have a learning curve. It's more unfamiliarity than degree of difficulty in some cases that prevents folks from
providing customized ribbons for their users in corporate environments, and yes in both the Ribbon and the QAT there is room for
improvement in 'version next' g). For the Ribbon, scaling took a lot of work on MS on the backend and DIY (do it yourself)
Ribbons don't always scale as well and yes locking down the QAT graphics was an interesting choice, rather than providing a
'sandbox' area for having 'safe' graphics to use.
In addition to Patrick's work, Greg's article at
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Customize_Ribbon.htm
can be an interesting exercise for a first play with making your own custom ribbon.
In watching users with Office 2007, I've seen some frustration that the Themes aren't consistent in their effects across apps, but
I've also seen that folks are more willing to try something/undo it/try something else with the ribbon than with menus. Menus,
after you choose something, often 'go away', and unless you happened to remember what you just clicked, you have to hunt for the
same spot to try again
With the Ribbon, it's still there, pretty much where you left it unless you move the context point in your
document, so you can try until more or less satisfied.
Having had to write my own UI for programs for years, then add custom commands to WordStar and beyond, I can appreciate how much
'fun' selling and implementing then troubleshooting each of the changes within MS must have been. To their credit, MS hasn't fallen
back on the
'it's version 1' (when speaking of the Ribbon) as basically, it does work very well for the most part for day in/day out tasks.
The lack of use of text labels on the QAT (since one of Jensen's blog's statements was that there research said the ribbon had icons
plus text because it worked better) came down, in part, to how much screen space it would take up both vertically and how many QAT
items you could put across a screen with and without text. Tradeoff/settlement/compromise/lack of time to make more changes... who
can say for sure
============
"Jay Freedman" wrote in message ...
Besides that, there's the argument that Jonathan West has been
pressing for lo these many months, that one developer can make a
template containing customizations and macros that are then used by
hundreds or thousands of end users. SQM doesn't capture any of that.
Agreed that enforcing a standard for UI customizations isn't a "bad
thing". But according to Jensen that consideration was secondary to
the overload of commands that would have made the menu/toolbar
paradigm unworkable. I'm not sure I completely buy that for 2007, but
I think the feeling was that they'd get the pain out of the way this
time so people will accept it better in the next version.
Two things that would make the QAT-primary approach easier to accept:
distinctive icons or text for all QAT buttons (no more anonymous green
circles), and the ability to use custom icons made from arbitrary
bitmaps (preferably for any command, but at least for macros).
--
Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP
*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*