Word 2007’s New UI – The Ribbon
Now that Word 2007 is out in the wild with a brand new user interface, I figured it would be good to provide a quick overview of Word's new UI—specifically the "Ribbon—and point you at some very cool tools to help you use the new UI.
The Ribbon
While there is a whole lot more to Word 2007's new UI, the first thing you will notice is that all of Word's menus and toolbars have been replaced with a single container that organizes Word's full feature set into a series of tabs. This container is known as the "Ribbon".
In this post, I won't go into detail about the goodness of the Ribbon since Jensen has an entire blog about this, but instead will drill into the components that make-up the Ribbon so you know what you are working with when you get Word 2007.
To start, here's a break-down of the Ribbon into its various components:
- Ribbon = a collection of all the tabs and contextual tabs
- Tab = a container for several groups of related commands. Examples of tabs include "Page Layout" and "Insert"
- Group = a labeled set of closely related features. Examples of groups include "Font" and "Clipboard"
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Contextual Tab = is similar to a normal tab (described above). The difference is that Contextual Tabs are only available when an object is selected in the document.
- For example, when a picture is selected, the contextual tabs associated with pictures are available.
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Dialog Box Launcher = the icon that appears in the bottom-right corner of some groups that can be clicked on to open the dialog box relating to the features contained in the group.
- For example, the "Font" and "Paragraph" groups each have a dialog box launcher which launches the "Font" and "Paragraph" dialog boxes, respectively.
Tools to Help you Work with the Ribbon
This new Ribbon based UI required a reorganization of all of Word's features. For example, the hyperlink button was on the default toolbar in Word 2003, but can be found in the Links group of the Insert tab in Word 2007.
Word 2003
Word 2007
While research, reviews, and current users of Word 2007 have shown that Word's new UI allows for more efficient and effective use of Word, we know that there will be a bit of pain around locating commands in the new UI. After all, this is the first UI overhaul Office has had in its ~20 year history.
To help ease this transition process, there is a very cool tool called the Word 2007 Guide: Word 2003 to Word 2007 interactive command reference guide which allows you to click on a command in Word 2003's UI, and then see where that command is in Word 2007's UI (exactly like the Word 2003 & Word 2007 images above).
Step 1: Click command in Word 2003
Step 2: See the location of the command in Word 2007
This tool also exists for Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007, and is super helpful for anyone just getting started with the 2007 Office system.
There you have it, no more toolbars and menus, just a result oriented Ribbon and a handy tool to help ease the transition. Nice.
Let me know what you think.
Jonathan
