I've always said Microsoft is the first to violate their own guidelines.

IE7 is based on Vista UI.

I agree with being consistent. However, ease of use and training should also be kept in mind. Office is the most widely used application. If you design your UI to be similar, users will feel more at home.

>Microsoft Guidelines? That went out after Windows 95. Let's see........
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>Windows Media Player (skins..egad!!)...
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>The new IE7....
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>and every new version of Windows (and dare I say .NET), has cool new visual features that don't follow the old Guidelines....
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>Just use good sense, don't use that which will be annoying to users, and be CONSISTENT throughtout your code. Don't change how you do things as you go along, unless you go back in your project and make things consistent. Users hate changes and inconsistency.