Microsoft porting Office ribbon to Windows 8? Screenshots inside

Emil

Posts: 152   +0

It appears that the Ribbon UI introduced in Office 2007 and further cemented in Office 2010 as well as certain Windows 7 and Windows Live applications is being ported over to Windows 8. More specifically, it is being introduced in Windows Explorer, according to screenshots obtained by Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott and posted at Within Windows.

In early builds of Windows 8, the Ribbon UI is only half-finished and it's use is already being debated, both inside and outside of Redmond. If Microsoft deems it worthy, the Ribbon UI will replace the menu and toolbar in today's Windows Explorer. This will make many more features easier to discover, but at the expense of onscreen real estate.

In addition to the default tabs (Home, Share, and View), there are various dynamic Ribbon tabs that can appear (much like in Office 2010), including Library Tools (when viewing Libraries), Picture Tools (when one or more image files are selected), and Disk Tools (in Computer view), among others. Just like in all other applications it is used in, the Ribbon UI can be hidden, which is likely why a few view style choices are duplicated in the status bar.

The change to a Ribbon UI unsurprisingly brings a new File menu. Furthermore, if you look closely, the screenshots clearly mention "Sync" (Windows Live Mesh functionality for sharing files and folders across computers?) and "Web sharing" (Windows Live SkyDrive sharing files and folders via the Web?). Microsoft is far from finished, so it's really too early to judge, though we're sure many will anyway.

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Windows 7 came out about a year ago I think everyone is still burned out from all the hype from win7. Its like having 2 presidential election a year apart. I am tired of being bombarded by windows news from last year.
 
If Microsoft deems it worthy, the Ribbon UI will replace the menu and toolbar in today's Windows Explorer.

No thank you.

Just like in all other applications it is used in, the Ribbon UI can be hidden...

Thank you.

I'm not against change, but I find nothing wrong with the current menu and tool bar. I know the new layout makes things easier to find, but being knowledgeable in the way of the Windows key on the keyboard, I don't have issues finding what I need, lol.

Windows key, U, U. Have a nice day! :p
 
As much as I love Microsoft products, I have to agree in that Windows 8 is incredibly premature. It hasn't even BEEN a year since RTM.

There is still a lot of building to be done on the Windows 7 platform, and they are worried about the next iteration. Well, I guess they want to get this cycle's ME\Vista out of the way early.

Wake me up when they start talking about windows 9.
 
All this hoopla about Windows 8 is probably going to work against Microsoft's best interests. This could make Windows 7 look like an interim operating system and companies that are finally looking to make the jump off of Windows XP may procrastinate a little longer.
 
Mizzou said:
All this hoopla about Windows 8 is probably going to work against Microsoft's best interests. This could make Windows 7 look like an interim operating system and companies that are finally looking to make the jump off of Windows XP may procrastinate a little longer.
I hope not. Windows XP needs to die in a fire.
 
I don't get why the hate with XP. It is exactly the same (at normal use, ok?) but no so good looking. Is that why?.
 
I must say I really dislike the ribbon UI
And it's infecting all applications I use, Solidworks, AutoCAD, Office etc etc

I guess I just don't like change
Or is it perhaps waiting an eternity for these bloated POS apps to start up on my quadcore work computer with 8GB RAM?

Meh
 
First. All these "Ribbons" are horrible vs. a clasic Pulldown Menu and a clasic Toolbar. Really "Ribbons" are a complete recoil on a windows GUI.

Second and One More Time: "Windows XP works and works very well".
 
XP is fine if you are still on a machine build from 2005.

Its virus central, has terrible uptime and just sucks with modern hardware.

Am I suppose to use my Quad with 12GB's of ram on Win xp?

As someone else posted Win xp needs to Die in a fire already. And unless your in a corporate environment you have no excuse to be still on it.

lol these are the 3 reasons I see alot.

A. Your cheap.

B. Your a novice.

C. Your CHEAP!

D. A ******* that thinks XP is better than Vista/7 because your too slow to learn a new menu.
 
Mmmm, it seems that something is wrong with Windows XP ... and... Why half the desktop computers in the world still have it installed ???
 
I hope not. Windows XP needs to die in a fire.

I'm with you, perhaps the majority of the XP fans here simply can't afford to upgrade. In any case, I've always wondered how these XP diehards know it's better than Vista or Windows 7 since presumably that they're not running either of the more current operating systems.

Plus, as was just pointed out by Lionvibez ... hardware support is going to do nothing but get continually worse over time. There's a reason Microsoft cut ties with XP on the release of IE9, sooner or later it's simply time to move forward.
 
... Mmmm, Maybe because It's better than a Windows 8 (or 6.2) with a Ribbon design !!!
 
"Am I suppose to use my Quad with 12GB's of ram on Win xp?"

At this moment, I use a desktop computer that runs 4 virtual machines at same time over VirtualBox 3 to test a Oracle RAC !!!

Into my Virtual Machines, three OS guest have a Linux (or Solaris too) and other have Openfiler (Linux too).

My Host PC has a Phenom II X4 to 3.2GHZ, 8GB of RAM, 3 Sata II HDDs (of 500GB each) and 1 IDE HDD (160 GB) for backups.

and It's works very well, of course I use "Windows XP x64" like Host OS.
 
Mmmm, it seems that something is wrong with Windows XP ... and... Why half the desktop computers in the world still have it installed ???

Because chances are half the computers in the world are still running the same OS that came with the computer. I.e. people don't upgrade their computers.

Maybe some of those people downgraded from Vista, but if you're making a 100 bucks a month, chances are you're gonna keep your PC from 2002 around, cause a new one will cost you half a year's pay.

I forget which Gibson novel described the hacker who basically cleaned out all of Africa because they used obsolete hardware and software. Food for thought.
 
Um, the reason why so many people are still on XP, is because of China.

A very large percentage of China's users are using pirated copies of Windows XP. Some numbers suggest over 90%.

Do some research, fine the numbers yourself. Google It! ;)

But yes XP was a great OS for its time. I'm still running it on my father's and my mother's PCs. The PCs they are using are a number of years old and can not take advantage of the new Windows 7 features.

For example, they don't have graphics cards.

On board only, and no way to upgrade. They are in fact server mother boards (job perk). So no PCI, PCI express, and no AGP slots in case you are wondering. Only PCI-X. Good luck finding a graphics card that works for that, one that supports Aero and hardware based web acceleration (such as flash 10.1). Pretty useless graphics card this day and age if it does not.

And since they are a number of years old they can only run 32bit windows. No 64bit drivers for hardly anything. Only the mouse, keyboard, and monitor if you want to be precise.

So no possibility of upgrading. Not without hacking a ton of drivers together. Blue Screen heaven. So no thanks, they will stick with XP until they die or I get them a new PC.

They are dual core and have 3GB of DDR RAM (yes that's DDR1 at 333Mhz) so plenty of power for normal every day stuff (checking e-mail, viewing weather reports, etc.). They can even watch youtube (granted only at a max of 480p, other wise it lags (as in dropping frames, as in can't keep p with the frame rate).

So yea for me, sticking with XP was not much of a choice for my parents. They nor I can afford to buy new computers at the moment. Will happily take donations. ;) My user name at my real box dot com. Thanks. haha No email on that account so don't waste your timing bots trying to spam me. :p
 
The ribbon sucks, it has been a mess from the very beginning. How is having to click through ribbon tabs to find an icon (all of which are different sizes and not delineated with an outline like most toolbar buttons) faster than pulling down a menu bar for a clearly labeled command? Anyone miss the ability to click once on a menu bar to move through all of the menu items, including nested items, without having to re-click or hold down the mouse button? The ribbon forces you to click through every tab. And I see the delete button is still inconveniently located next to other constructive tasks like renaming and creating folders.
 
Per Hansson said:
I must say I really dislike the ribbon UI
And it's infecting all applications I use, Solidworks, AutoCAD, Office etc etc

I guess I just don't like change
Or is it perhaps waiting an eternity for these bloated POS apps to start up on my quadcore work computer with 8GB RAM?

Meh

I know where you are coming from, at first I didn't liked the ribbon UI (in Excel/PP/Word/Visio/MSP etc.) at all; but with time I started to use it and now I think it is pretty useful replacement of old style menus (althoug I still find myself using 'shortcuts' most of the time, a bad habit I guess ;) ).
 
The ribbon is probably better suited to a touch screen than the standard file menus etc. Just an observation.
 
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