A while back, ok several years ago, I took a look at the new (at the time it was new) ribbon. I was interested in porting my Custom Toolbars into the new and improved format. At the time I spent hours trying to digg up information on the subject.
To put things bluntly, MS messed up good on the implementation!
This is not to say that the ribbon is not a powerful tool and all the rest of that.
That said, it has been implemented in what I consider an incomplete form. MS provides no tool, to develop custom ribbons, no built-in callback routines…, no access to the ribbon built-in images, and so many more flaws I don’t even know where to start! It is a mess.
Then they still support old custom toolbars, but you have no way to edit, delete or work with them directly. You have to revert back to using 2003 or prior, or develop your VBA own code to interact with them.
The whole situation smells bad.
So what is one to do. First off, you have to realize, that the entire Office suite Ribbon is fully customizable and to work with it you can use a Custom UI Editor, EXCEPT for MS Access. That’s right, as usual, MS Access is in a category of its’ own. What a surprise!
Firstly, get ready to do a lot of reading, before you are even ready to tackle creating a ribbon. Here are a few places to start:
www.accessribbon.de
http://www.andypope.info/vba/ribboneditor.htm
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338202(v=office.12).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb187398.aspx
http://www.rondebruin.nl/ribbon.htm
For MS Access, try http://www.ribboncreator.de/en/ The ribbon creator is a graphical interface to create the required XML and VBA code. Basically, what MicroSoft forgot to include in its’ own software!!! At the very least it will speed up development and you can tweak what it generates.
All in all, the ribbon, because of the way MS has chosen to implement a half baked technology, is a miserable failure (from the developer’s perspective)! Actually, even from the end-user’s perspective also. Where I used to be able to load 6 toolbars containing 50 icons (or more) where I had all the commands I needed at my finger tips, I now have 1 ribbon containing 10-20 commands. You end up spending your time flipping back and forth, all day, between tabs! It is never ending and tedious after a while. This is MS’ idea of empowering the end-user? Come on! But hey, it looks cool dude! This is the best that the best minds at MS could come up with; seriously!!!
That said, I believe MS has other plans for the ribbon, probably a way to introduce the end-user to the new layout, flow to be expected in future releases of their OS or other programs. Let use not forget the fact that MS is playing a major game of catchup with MAC.
The Ribbon sucks from a developer’s perspective. That’s it. It is a nightmare of the Y or Z generation tech heads and nerds who are all gaga about UI design being separated from the unwashed programmer masses and who are all into XML.
To the end user however, the Ribbon is very, very powerful and useful. Notable programs that benefit a lot from the Ribbon are Microsoft Project – icons are just “there”, Visio, Powerpoint and Excel – it needs the team to take the Ribbon to heart and actually place useable icons in useable positions. The Ribbon is modal yes, but then that is what the QAT – Quick Access Toolbar is for.
Access itself doesn’t need the Ribbon much but the Access Developer could use it a lot except that it is a cow to set up.
I don’t see the ribbon as any more powerful than toolbars were. They are simply more graphical! They take up more real estate and thus mean you have less bang in one screen then one previously did. I do not find they have added any new functionalities that didn’t previously exist, but merely present them in a different manner. No revolution here.
Instead of coming up with something new, MS redeveloped their product. Too bad in my not so humble opinion.
As for Access not needing a ribbon, I’d have to disagree. My applications require custom toolbars and now ribbons to enpower the end-users. Give them certain abilities. They are a necessity in all Office application, na way around them. Perhaps very basic databases can get away with just switchboard to control everything, but in more advanced databases, ribbon rapidly become a necessity. And I develop on a daily basis advanced databases and am stuck continually fighting with Access 2007 & 2010 shortcomings!
I agree fully! The ribbon a visually beautiful, but everything beyond the visual is nothing but headaches. The fact that MS didn’t standardize implementation throughout the entire Office suite demonstrates their own lack of foresight. They have basically left developers to fend for themselves trying to figure things out. Their online example are minimalistic and they offer no sample download … to learn from.
This and so many more reasons are why people are migrating away and using alternative office suite, such as Open Office, which for most users works just as good, if not better.
MS will not learn until they are a thing of the past. They are just lucky they have other enterprise level software that keep making them money.
Really, you needed to write a post to state the obvious! We all know the ribbon sucks! It’s a piece of crap from any angle you look at it. That’s life, we’re stuck with it, next.
Your conclusions are right on the money and it is hard to believe Microsft did not see these problems during their development process. Makes one wonder.
Our company pilot tested Office 2007 after using Office 95, 97, 2000 & 2003 over the years. We soooo disliked it, that we chose to migrate away from MS Ofiice completely and installed Open Office instead. We may not be a big company (57 computers), but I have a feeling more & more companies will do the same, especially when they realize that alternate software works better, less error & updates and cost much less, if anything at all!
Ribbon is the worst technology for Access (MS Office), ever! There’s no tool to help programmers to handle Ribbon easily. Callbacks? That’s TOP OF THE TOP OF STUPIDITY!