Monday 6 October 2008

Menus or Office 2007 toolbars?

I notice that Google just changed their spreadsheet user interface from the Office 2007 toolbar style to the good old TMainMenu-like user interface. Nice. I guess I made the right choice, when I chose not to install the specially licensed Office 2007 components with my Delphi 2009.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you have a reason not to use/like the Office 2007 style toolbars? I think the idea behind them is rather good, but it might be a little too much of the eye-candy.

Lars D said...

Last time I tried to help someone print a Word document using Office 2007, I couldn't find out how... I gave up and told him to google for a solution on how to print using Word 2007.

Anonymous said...

IMHO the Office 2007 style tool bars are attempting to solve a Microsoft old age problem - bloating. MS Office is is bloated with way more "features" than it needs.
A well designed application will do with a simple and objective interface.

Anonymous said...

The reason might also be that MS does prohibit in its license for Ribbon controls to make an app that competes with any of their Office apps.
And AFAIK you can't develop your own ribbon controls without agreeing to MS license (due to some questionable patents).

Anonymous said...

I still program apps that have to fit into 800x600 and show lots of data. Frankly, I can't afford the real estate of the controls.

Anonymous said...

There was a solution if you want old menu in Office 2K7, is by using "Classic Menu for Office 2007" (3rd party product), just google it.

For those who doubt why ribbon are better than old menu, have to read about "Microsoft Office 2008 release for Mac".

And we as Delphi developer always love our old tabbed component pallete than a VS like :(

Office Ribbon was (really) only tabbed interface with eye-candy