HackerTube.dev

MIX08 Microsoft Office 2007: The Story of the Ribbon (1 of 10)

creativecrewchannel · 32.4K views · 2009-01-12 · 10:01

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

Jensen Harris of the Office 2007 design team tells the behind-the-scenes story of the Ribbon at MIX08. He covers early prototypes, mistakes, and the UX principles used to design and validate it.

On Hacker News

HN points to it to explain the design rationale behind the Ribbon and why the older menu and toolbar interface had accumulated too much cruft.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2011–2020

Topics

Search by tags

What people said

brudgers · 2011-10 · Recommendation

> "It seems that essentially, every single command that customers have used or requested has been moved into a ribbon or wedged into some corner of the chrome. And many are rightfully lambasting it." Being surprised by Microsoft employing the ribbon and persistent UI elements in a redesign of any software product is nothing short utter cluelessness. The story of the ribbon: [ [VIDEO] ]

Read the original HN comment ↗
ghaff · 2020-07 · Reference

I never loved the ribbon and I suspect that Microsoft underestimated how disruptive the change was for a lot of people. However, I saw a presentation by one of the lead designers around the time that it was introduced and he certainly made a good case for how the older interface had accumulated way too much cruft. ADDED: Ah, this is probably it: [VIDEO] (That said, MS Office in general had been loaded with so many functions that 1% of users used but that were absolutely essential to some 1% that it's something of a mess anyway. It's one reason I prefer the relative simplicity of GSuite these days.)

Read the original HN comment ↗
richev · 2018-09 · Reference

I actually really liked it when Office 2007 introduced the ribbon, in particular when I understood the rationale behind it (which was covered at MIX08[0]). [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by creativecrewchannel, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources