I don't understand the fuss, it is minimized by default and works well on a touch screen by showing a lot of common commands. It's like people love to hate it or something, especially ones that don't even use Windows daily.
Can't comment on the tablet experience - maybe it works.
But Office on the PC wasn't made for a tablet - they intended the ribbon to be used by PC users, and it's terrible. Removing the menus eliminates discover-ability. The common case now when using a recent ribbon-enabled Office application, for me at least, is vaguely recalling a function that I used in a previous version and then hunting around for 2 or 3 minutes through the UI and not finding it. Without doing google searches, I'd never be able to find these features. And each of these feature-hunts adds up to a lot of wasted time.
You have to be kidding me. Discoverability is lower in a system which uses logically arranged tools, with larger buttons for more frequently used options than in a system which, perplexingly, hides everything behind nonlabeled buttons, in menus and sub-menus and ridiculous dialog boxes?
The ribbon is a massive, massive step up in usability, the difference is you already knew how to get to features in the old version, so there was a learning curve. Show two people who are brand new to office Office XP vs Office 2010, and I an completely certain that they'll have an easier time with 2010 (especially Excel, the usability difference there is incredible).
Discoverability is lower in a system which uses logically arranged tools, with larger buttons for more frequently used options than in a system which, perplexingly, hides everything behind nonlabeled buttons, in menus and sub-menus and ridiculous dialog boxes?
If you're trying to do anything other than the obvious stuff, then yes. I struggle to find anything in Office w/ Ribbon, whereas I could almost always find what I was looking for in a few seconds worth of menu hunting before. Personally, I find discoverability to be absolute shyte with the Ribbon interface.
That's EXACTLY the problem right there. You know what's probably the single best feature on OSX that nobody else has? The spotlight help menu. You never ever have to hunt for a command on your own again - and it even shows you where it is and what hotkey it uses for the next time you need it. It's both letting users discover and empowers them to use a product to its full potential at some point.
This is one of the most thoroughly researched and tested facets of Office. I assure you that you're wrong on the discoverability of Office features for the average user: it went up by leaps and bounds with the ribbon, and in fact the entire ribbon was designed to address the fact that the most common feature requests for Office were for things that already existed.
Maybe the ribbon helps new Office users with discoverability, but for a power user like me, it gets in the way and slows me down. For instance, in order to change the font size of highlighted text in Word, I have to keep coming back to the Home tab, even if most of my current work involves a different tab (such as Page Layout or Review). Another way of viewing this is that the Ribbon forces me to work within and switch between certain modes (Insert, Page Layout, a general mode corresponding to the functions on the Home tab, etc.). These modes don't match my own working modes very well. With a toolbar/menu combination, I wasn't forced into these modes as much. Common processes, the ones currently placed in the Home tab, were always right there on the toolbar, and I didn't need to switch back and forth to use them.
In Word 2010 at least, a simple right-click on highlighted text brings up something like a mini Home tab. You can change the font, size, color, alignment and everything.
OK, to be fair, I've never used the ribbon on a touch based device... just Office on a conventional PC with mouse/keyboard. But that was enough to turn me off on the "ribbon" and nothing I've seen or heard to date has given me sufficient reason to revisit my dislike for it.
But, I only use Windows at my dayjob where I have no choice, and I try to spend as little time as possible paying attention to the fact that it's Windows (hello, Cygwin). I'm probably not exactly the target market for MS on this to begin with. ;-)
