From: John Beckett 

"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in
message news::
> Microsoft has decided to replace the menu/toolbar with the
> ribbon design and forcefeed us the ribbon paradigm.

While I totally agree that a lot of Microsoft's stuff in recent years has
been totally irritating, we need some reality checks here.

I know several people who instinctively change the XP Start menu to
"classic" (or whatever it's called - the result is that the XP
desktop looks more like Windows 2000). Frankly, the majority of these
people are idiots. If they put a tiny amount of effort into figuring out
what the XP Start menu does they would realise that the new stuff has many
benefits. At least they would be making an informed decision if they wanted
to switch it to classic.

I remember the months of whining that went on when File Manager was
replaced with Explorer. OMG - you have to have two instances of Explorer
open to do some of the stuff you could do in File Manager! I bet the chief
whiners would be totally lost if they were now confronted with File Manager
- OMG I can't do a Ctrl+C (or Ctrl+X) followed by a Ctrl+V somewhere else!

In fact, I remember the whining that went on when Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V etc were
chosen as the new shortcuts for copy/paste. Again, Microsoft has been
proven to be correct. They recognised that Ctrl+C etc were better than
Ctrl+Ins etc, and tore up the old rule book.

So, whereas I dread confronting the "ribbon" when I finally
upgrade, I know that it should get a fair trial before being discarded.

We won't know for another six months of so whether the change in IE menus
is good or bad, or whether the ribbon in Office is clever or stupid.

John

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