Re:Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Win...
by dragonwriter on Monday June 27, 2016 @06:29PM
(#11990031)
> Sure, it was a "look&feel benefit", but it also significantly hurt discoverability and reduced the number of features available.
I think that the ribbon design itself actually helped discoverability, at the expense of familiarity for long-term users of the old interface (OTOH, I think that simultaneously with the introduction of the ribbon, they also made it so a lot of options that previously were on the UI required customization to actually have them surfaced at all -- which they also, IIRC, did in some previous versions without changing the UI structure -- and, IIRC again, they reversed some of the most egregious of those in 2010.)
I think that the ribbon design itself actually helped discoverability, at the expense of familiarity for long-term users of the old interface (OTOH, I think that simultaneously with the introduction of the ribbon, they also made it so a lot of options that previously were on the UI required customization to actually have them surfaced at all -- which they also, IIRC, did in some previous versions without changing the UI structure -- and, IIRC again, they reversed some of the most egregious of those in 2010.)