Windows 8 Secrets: Windows Explorer Ribbon
When Microsoft introduced the Ribbon user interface as a replacement for the overgrown menus and toolbars in Microsoft Office 2007, many were shocked. The change was audacious for such a mature software product, and it completely blew away years of ingrained shortcuts and skills. But the Ribbon UI was also innovative, and useful, and it provided a way to make previously hidden functionality far more discoverable. It was so successful, in fact, that Microsoft began adding it to other products, including the Windows Live Essentials apps and, in Windows 7, both Paint and WordPad.In Windows 8, Ribbon usage is accelerating again, and Microsoft’s next major OS will include this UI in the most visible of all possible places, Windows Explorer. In early builds of Windows 8, this Ribbon UI is only half-finished and, frankly, of dubious value. In fact, based on the divergent ways in which various related UI elements are repeated around the window frame, we get the idea that the use of the Ribbon in Explorer is, in fact, quite controversial inside the halls of Microsoft’s Redmond campus.
