So one of the better known perks Microsoft employees get to enjoy is using all the internal shiny pre-release software the company develops.
About a month ago I installed Office 2007 on my work computer. It’s my slice of the internal dogfooding effort. The experience has not been without quirks and crashes here and there, but in general its been awesome. The best change so far is the Ribbon, and here’s why.
The most common Office question I get is “How do I use this specific feature?” And of course, it takes the most time to tell them where some highly buried feature actually is. The Ribbon gives everyone a visual, results-oriented UI that immediately shows you where all the features are. Features are separated with tabs just like menus, but the presentation is a lot cooler (with most changes viewable as mouseovers). Its about time Microsoft takes risks like this with interface design!
P.S. I’m posting directly from Microsoft Word 2007.
