Free Word 2010 Ribbon/Fluent UI Guide Available

Change is not necessarily a move for the better. Ribbon does not offer an advantage over classic menus. Practically speaking, a person used to any of the two UI's will be able to navigate easily; Thus why did MS remove the choice of classic menus?

The wheel was invented thousands of years ago and apart from refinements has basically remained unchanged in shape.

To those who insist that anyone who does not like Ribbon is basically against change; Then I say to you "Stop being victims of commercial interests and or Fashion victims".
Change does not always mean progress and since Ribbon is not an improvement it cannot be considered a change that brings progress.

Keep the fancy pastel colours and illogical layout and the lack of functionality but also give me the right to choose what is best for me too!

toolbars and menus are fine for simple programs that only have a limited set of features - eg notepad.

for more complicated software, a different approach is needed.

word (and office) have become so feature-rich over the years, that the menu paradigm had to be thrown away - look at the pictures below, taken from this long and geeky video.

if you don't like office, save yourself some money and go openoffice - it's great that we can choose.

each to his own, and all that.

Considering I never really used Office 2007, 2003 or XP I had to make the jump from Office 2000 to Office 2010. Yes, it's a significant change and I've found myself searching for how to perform a task even if I've done it before. However, it's been a welcome change as some tasks were actually made simpler. Also, with Office 2010 they added native PDF print support and the ability to insert screenshots which our old version did not support, these are money savers for anyone or any company that previously had to buy programs like PDF creator or Acrobat and Snagit.

Those complaining about the ribbon haven't dived too deep into customizing the interface. I have the ribbon hidden in my Outlook and all my common/frequent tasks on the title bar, there are days I never see it in my main Outlook window. Those customizations are then exportable to move them to another PC or in the case of a reinstallation need.

Dave76 said:

I found after a couple of days that I much prefer the new ribbon in Office, works well once you get use to it.

Agreed, Dave, entirely. I love the Ribbon interface. It changes as my needs change without clicking through the same menus all the time. :)

Too bad the Ribbon Guide doesn't work with 64 bit browsers being Silverlight based as it is:

Microsoft Silverlight cannot be used in browsers running in 64 bit mode.

AutoCAD Archtecture 2011 has done a great job of implementing the Ribbon interface as well. If one doesn't like it, well, one had better learn to do so. It's the way Windows apps are heading.

Now I know why some people camp outside computer stores in order to be the first to buy something new!

I use 3D CAD software amongst others and the lack of Ribbon in them is a blessing. Not to mention that they use the classic menu gui and the menus consist of much more menus than any office software; Yet navigation is easy and fast.

RIBBON does not offer anything more than classic menus and it is a myth that due to the contemporary programs having more menus then only ribbon can accomplish the task.

I know what I want and what I do not want is someone shoving down my throat a totally unfriendly ui just so that they can claim to offer something totally new.

Thank god for the people who take the time to offer us classic menus for the Ribbon based software.

Damn suits will be serving us pink air and charging us for breathing it

especially when they are belgian chocolate flavoured.