With all the noise from the
PDC about the new Microsoft Office 12
user interface (see also Julie Larson-Green's
video on
Channel 9), Daniel and I wanted to experiment with a menu-less application, just to see what this would feel like. Waiting for a first beta of Office 12 would certainly be too long, so we decided to try it out on our own application.
As Creative Docs .NET GUI is home made, it was not too difficult to get rid of the menu and implement something which looks and feels like Office 12's ribbon. It took Daniel about two days to get a beta version of our application with the revamped GUI. You can check it out
here. Be sure to use the
LookMetal look in the global settings (press F5 to reach them).
Where Word 12 still seems to have a
File menu, Daniel decided to put all file functions directly into the ribbon too. Here is what this looks like:
The buttons at the top of the window ("Documents", "Objects", "Operations", "Text") are really buttons which show or hide the associated ribbon.
We are eager to hear what you think about this new GUI. How does it feel? Do you prefer the menu-based version? What would you like to customize?