UI: Licensing the Ribbon

Microsoft revamped it's Office UI with the new Ribbon style, which is essentially a cool looking toolbar inside number of tabs. Microsoft announced that they're licensing the UI to almost everyone that isn't a direct competitor of it's office suite, that means MS Office clones like OpenOffice and the like aren't allowed to have the license. It even has a preview of the UI guidelines with lots of MUST and MUST NOT do in terms of cloning the UI, what was missing was any guideline should the ribbon be customisable(maybe in the final guideline it will be included).

While it's understandable that Microsoft invested millions in designing the new UI, and they might have felt ripped off when most if not all applications copying the pre-Office 2007 UI to the point of even the icons are the same, for the most part(except those coming from Mac) applications were easier or at least familiar to use because of the similarities with MSOffice. Less re-learning you know exactly that the diskette icon, although virtually obsolete now, is for saving; same with an open folder to open something. But hey, MSFT designed the Office UI from the start and they might have felt "should you want to emulate our UI, better do what we do and follow the guidelines." I think the end result being the overall application using the Office UI will have that same familiar look and feel as the actual Office and of course better UX(user experience.) Should the guidelines be finalised expect some of the popular apps/components, especially partners and ISVs to sport the new UI(with OfficeUI license of course)

Jensen Harris an Office UI architect some interesting post/comments about the new license
Published 11-23-2006 11:09 AM by bonskijr
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Comments

# re: UI: Licensing the Ribbon

Cool, thanks for the heads-up! I will probably make this my personal goal for next year =)

Cheers!

Wednesday, November 22, 2006 11:41 PM by yeyi

# re: UI: Licensing the Ribbon

so they have patented the ribbon.  this is really bad no matter how you look at it.  it's not our problem if they spent millions of dollars inventing that interface.  

the time will come when will have to pay Microsoft a licensing fee for writing applications for Windows.  this sucks!  

Thursday, November 23, 2006 12:31 AM by smash

# re: UI: Licensing the Ribbon

Suck might be an understatement, just take a look at all the comments from Jensen's post http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/11/21/licensing-the-2007-microsoft-office-user-interface.aspx

I guess this is more directed to it's competitors, however you'd just have to be suspicious about the draft guideline; so many MUST and MUST NOTs to follow

Like one comment in the post: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/11/21/licensing-the-2007-microsoft-office-user-interface.aspx#1118390

"Sure they can licence out the graphics but the concept?"

Thursday, November 23, 2006 6:41 AM by bonskijr

# re: UI: Licensing the Ribbon

the ribbon itself is not even an original idea, since it's more of a mashup of concepts that have existed before which Microsoft did not invent, thats for sure.  for me its just a menu of icons.

maybe Richard Stallman is right after all.

Thursday, November 23, 2006 2:35 PM by smash

# re: UI: Licensing the Ribbon

it's like Microsoft saying that "hey THIS is the way to do that UI thing." can Microsoft sue me, say, if I do it a little differently, thinking that my implementation is better for a particular app? i cringe at the thought.

Thursday, November 23, 2006 7:18 PM by cruizer

# re: UI: Licensing the Ribbon

I'm sure, although it looks cool(the Ribbon), for most application, the pre-Office 2007 look will stand for a long long time. Just imagine VS sporting that look, it would be clutter and downright obtrusive(unless they'd minimized the icons but still)

Friday, November 24, 2006 9:32 PM by bonskijr