Office 12 vs. The Ugly Stick

The curtain has been pulled on the UI for the next version of Microsoft Office. You can check out some screenshots here, and a nice write-up about the changes by Luke at Functioning Form here. Basically, they’ve got a completely new paradigm for how people should interact with documents and find the actions they want to perform.

The biggest change: there are no menus (okay, there’s a file menu, but that’s it). The things that used to be menus, like “Edit” and “Insert” are now tabs over a big toolbar they call a ribbon. Most of the time, you’ll be on the “Write” tab in Word or the “Sheet” tab in Excel, but when you need to do something like insert an object, write a formula, or change the layout of your page, you’ll go to a tab dedicated to those actions, and go back to your default tab when you’re done. It’s really impressive and should be much faster and easier to use.

Visually, however, something is askew. The selected tab looks like the worst Mac Aqua rip-offs you’ve ever seen. You can see it in the top image showing the Page Layout tab. It doesn’t even look like it’s connected to all the actions below it. The second image is a change that I would want to make visually, just using a simple flat color to connect the ribbon to the active tab. If you ask me, a simpler solution is often-times a better one.