IMHO The pinacle of the Windows desktop was Windows 2000. Windows XP was ok except for the default bubble gum theme. We don't talk about Windows Vista and Windows 8. Windows 7 was sort-of ok. Windows 10 is was trying to salvage some of the Windows 8 mess with little success. Can't comment on Windows 11 because I'll stick with Windows 10 as long as possible ;)
I agree with this more when you include how the then current versions of MS Office felt to use.
Ribbons might have a place at the absolute entry level of usability, but they'll never replace a well designed menu system that includes keyboard shortcut documentation in the UI within a super information dense presentation.
I hate the way menu bar is detached from the window/app that it applies to in macOS, but over time I've learned to grudgingly appreciate one thing about this design: it forces the apps to have a menu bar, because if you don't, it is such a visual sore point. So even when designers go nuts with UX layout, which seems to be so common these days, they still have to provide access to various things in the menu bar in a way that is mostly consistent across apps, and in any case is easier to find things in (esp. thanks to menu bar search as standard feature).
Who are you targeting as the main user of this software? Most users do not depend on keyboard shortcuts but rather repeatable actions they can use the mouse for. The ribbon only annoys power users which is a number much much smaller than 50% of all users. Plus keyboard shortcuts still exist with the ribbon system.
As someone who has spent a lot of time with “regular users”, no body is complaining about the ribbon…
> Plus keyboard shortcuts still exist with the ribbon system.
So this objection is completely manufactured?
> The ribbon only annoys power users which is a number much much smaller than 50% of all users.
It's 0% of the users who are new to the software, and 90% of the users who have used the software for some time. The UI shouldn't be optimized for people who are only going to use the software a few times unless the software is only meant to be used a few times.
But in the case of office software, what you want is affordances that can be eliminated at the user's own pace while they get to know the software over years or decades. Things like indicating the keyboard shortcut next to the menu entry, which is standard for most UI toolkits. Or things like allowing the "ribbon" to be disabled, which I would be really surprised if you could come up with a reasonable opposition to.
It also annoys infrequent users, because you need to remember into which ribbon they stuffed what you want to do and what icon it uses. With a classical menu bar, the organization tends to be more intuitive (in my experience, at least) and you can skim the different menu items to find what you need.
That seems to depend on the specific version of Office, if the screenshots I looked at are to be believed. Office 2016, for example, doesn't seem to have it.
Edit: Maybe this depends on settings rather than versions? Upon further investigation, I've found some screenshots of Word/PowerPoint 2016 that have a search bar and some that don't.
