Despite mixed reviews and customer complaints Microsoft has announced it will continue to extend the new Ribbon interface to other applications. While Ribbon offers users little to gain, and for many it feels as though Microsoft made the change for nothing more than change sake, the value proposition of the Ribbon to users of Microsoft Project and Visio stands to increase.

Office 2007 Is Far from Complete

Microsoft Office 2007 was officially released this year to businesses and the general public. To date there have been mixed feelings about application appearance and user objections to functionality. However, the Corporate VP of Microsoft Business Division Product Management Group, Chris Capossela, revealed at the end of January 2007 that the Ribbon-based user interface is likely to be applied to other applications that are not part of Office 2007.

Usability experts have long recognized that there are two conceptual interface models: task-driven and object-driven. In previous versions of Office, Microsoft used its traditional nested menu interface...