Alex,

This is another example of not knowing the reasoning. 80% of the enhancement requests received by the Office teams were already in the products. They needed a better way of discoverability. Obviously people couldn't find the functionality from the menus. The ribbon makes it easy to find things.

And, people better get used to the ribbon. It's finding its way to other applications. NotePad, WordPad, and Paint in Windows 7 have the ribbon.

>This is software: it doesn't have to be an either/or. The way the tool I referenced works is by adding a tab that contains the old menu. Simple. If you get stuck finding a command you can go to that tab. You can stay there as long as you like or you can practice with the new way. I am aware there are new commands in the new version that MS decided not to add to the menu. No problem, but the old way wasn't so bad they had to throw it away. Now, if I could legally transfer my copy of Office 2003 to a new machine I would be happy, but MS doesn't want you to do that. So when you buy a new machine you have to make a choice.
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>What bothers me most is MS's attitude. I think they were afraid the ribbon would not be accepted so they decided to ram it down people's throat. The words that describe that attitude are haughtiness and hubris, and as you know well Craig, "pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall".
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>I much prefer the way the VFP team evolved the product: add compelling new stuff but keep the old stuff. Just deprecate it. What I resent is that some other teams in MS don't care about the time current customers have invested learning their products. I guess that is it.