Are menus dead?

I downloaded Office 2010 and have been fiddling with Excel and found the UI to be excellent. However, unless I'm missing it, menus are nowhere to be found. Are they done?

Brad

Posted 2009-12-13T19:44:54.273

Reputation:

Badly formed question, I guess. Is it proper UI design to include menus? may have been better. – None – 2009-12-13T19:53:35.437

Answers

In summary:

Office doesn't use WPF or Winforms, it uses Win32 (unmanaged C++).
The ribbon was added and menus gone in 2007.
Menus still exist in WPF.
Menus were replaced in office because the ribbon does a better job at exposing features and making common tasks easy by reducing the need to dig through menu hierarchies. Most people like the ribbon better after adjusting to it.

RandomEngy

Posted 2009-12-13T19:44:54.273

Reputation: 432

Don't you mean "the ribbon was added" (and therefore menus were removed) in Office 2007? – Billy ONeal – 2011-03-07T02:30:11.643

I've found that the ribbon can be annoying at times ... like when it magically switches to a different tab as I'm navigating data... (MS Excel was the last place I recall seeing it in office 2007) Other than that I love it. Single click to do most actions... except those I switched the ribbon tab to before navigating the data... d'oh! – Jason D – 2009-12-15T01:37:30.830

Office doesn't use WPF for UI. menus were removed in office 2007! replaced with the ribbon

Hannoun Yassir

Posted 2009-12-13T19:44:54.273

Reputation: 111

Don't know where I got that... Thanks! – None – 2009-12-13T19:51:12.760

Office has menus. It's just it uses the ribbion interface. This means everything is avaialble in the same vertical and hoizontal space.

If anything, Office is taking the route that they way we use menus is changing. Not the fact menus are dead.

Another example is Firefox. They are lookng for new ways of handling many tabs in one screen. Whatever method hey choose, it's still menus and tabs.

Finglas

Posted 2009-12-13T19:44:54.273

Reputation: 101