Taking the Minimized Ribbon to the Max

One of the many areas in which we've spent time since Beta 2 has been making working with the collapsed Ribbon a more realistic option.

Since the very first public build of the new user interface, you've been able to collapse the Ribbon to just the names of the tabs by using CTRL+F1 or by double-clicking the selected tab. The design goal here was that when you wanted a maximum amount of screen real-estate in which to work with your document, you could get all of the UI out of your way at once. In fact, one of the main advantages to consolidating all of the UI into one place is that you can turn it off or on all at once.

The "collapsed" Ribbon in Excel 2007

In this "collapsed" mode, your document expands to fill virtually the entire available window. One piece which remains on the screen is your customizable Quick Access Toolbar, into which you can put any commands, buttons, or groups of controls you wish.

I often use this mode myself when I'm reading or performing simple formatting on a document; I use the Mini Toolbar and context menus to perform my basic tasks and then bring up the Ribbon when I want to do some more in-depth work.

Anyway, we got a lot of feedback in Beta 2 that the collapsed Ribbon was a great idea in principle, but that it didn't work very well in the real world. So, we dug in and did a number of features designed to make working with the Ribbon collapsed a better experience.

The first thing we did was simply to make collapsing the Ribbon more discoverable. What we used to call unofficially "collapsing" the Ribbon has now officially become "minimizing" the Ribbon. In current builds, you can right-click anywhere in the Ribbon to bring up a context menu which includes an option to "Minimize the Ribbon." This is in addition to CTRL+F1 and double-clicking the selected tab, which are still available.

A context menu item for Minimizing the Ribbon

Another big improvement: Many people have tried to keep the Ribbon minimized but use the keyboard primarily to access functionality.

Unfortunately, in Beta 2 every time you type a KeyTip to use a command in the Ribbon using the keyboard, the Ribbon expands and you have to manually close it every time. This was quite inefficient and basically made it infeasible to work with the Ribbon minimized for any length of time.

We've now done the work so that if you minimize the Ribbon, when you press ALT+H to bring up the Home tab, it comes up over top of your document like a little floating window. Then, when you've pressed the key for the feature you want to use, the Ribbon goes away, reverting back to its minimized state.

I made a little movie to show what this looks like and how it works. I put Excel in some extremely small resolution in order to keep the movie small (I think something like 690x440 or so), but you get the idea of how you might use the Ribbon minimized with the keyboard.

Watch the Minimized Ribbon Movie
(Windows Media, 21 seconds, 716 KB)

To un-minimize the Ribbon, you just right-click again and uncheck "Minimize the Ribbon" or press CTRL+F1 or double-click a tab.

Now, read Part 2, where you can see how this same feature works with the mouse. (C'mon, you know you want to watch another movie!)

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  That's awesome, Jensen. Can't wait to try it out.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Dear Jensen,
  
  Please make it clear to me. If I mark MINIMIZE THE RIBBON and quit the proram and then start it again, will the ribbon be minimized???
  
  I do find that most time when I open the file I DO WANT the ribbon to be minimized, so  can see more, that it why in my WISH/SUGGESTION to the beta was to give user an option to HAVE RIBBON MINIMIZED everytime the office starts. Though I received an answer that most people will have problems unminimizing it I still think that I am right, my reasons are:
  1. While you work with the notebook you would like to have it minimized most of the time
  2. If UMPC will have office 2007 in some time, this option is usable there too

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  This is terrific.
  
  I have to say I'm really impressed that all of these tweaks are making it into version 1.0 of the new UI. This really is going to be a pretty "mature" interface by the time it's released.
  
  On a different note, Jensen, could you please comment on discoverability of the Office button in a future post? Many posters (myself included) have posted here worrying about this issue. What have your usability tests and long-term surveys shown??

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Much better and far more intuitive. Look forward to giving it a go.
  
  When is a build goign to be available?

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Nice. I'd say the minimised ribbon could do with a button to maximise it, just to aid even more discovery of how to maximise it should they accidently minimise it.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Ctrl-f1? Was every other possible obscure key combination taken, so that you had to use "help button plus arbitrary modifier"?
  
  Right clicking and choosing minimize from a pop-up menu? Dude, lose the shame and steal from OS X. Put a blob widget in the upper right corner to toggle it, and you're good to go.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Perhaps a button that I'll be able to click in the Quick Access Toolbar to minimize the ribbon would be a nice option. The button doesn't have to be on the QAT by default, just in the list of functions to choose from in Preferences.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  I would like the ribbon to be minimized as a default.  As it is, every time I open a document, the first thing I do is minimize the ribbon which is frustrating.
  
  Also, I would like to have my default set to Zoom to "Page Width".  As it is, the second thing I do is click Page Width so that my document takes up the maximum amount of scrren space.
  
  Any ideas?

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  faberryman:
  
  I believe that in Word, zoom is not a global option but a property of the document itself.
  
  So, I think you could change your default template (Normal.dotm or Normal.dotx or Normal.dot) to have Zoom set to Page Width and it would make new documents open that way.
  
  I think existing documents still get opened in the last zoom setting used in that document.
  
  You could ask on the Word blog to make sure, because I could be wrong.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Once again, impressed by the amount of feedback you guys are acting on.  Thanks for the hard work.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  The hovering ribbon? That's a cool idea! I agree with Ben R.; all your usability work is paying off in having a really usable feature the first time around.
  
  (I'm afraid, however, that I also agree with those who suggest a blobby button thingy to collapse the ribbon, like the Outlook left pane and the Access nav pane.)

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  I want to hug your whole team!
  
  I was so excited about the new keyboard access model so that I can use the mouse way less. This makes that actually possible. I'm super excited!

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Looks, as Adrian pointed out, rather "menu-like."  
  
  For users that hate the ribbon (i.e. corporate customers resistant to change), I can see how a collapsed ribbon deployment of MOSS 2007 could provide an "Office 2003 UI compatibility" mode (of sorts).  This is particularly true if the tabs fly down rather than expand down in response to a single left mouse click.
  
  
  
  

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  So does this mean that if the ribbon is collapsed and you hover the mouse over one of the tabs that the tabs contents will display over the top of your document too?
  
  Or is this hover-over a keyboard exclusive.
  
  [)amien

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Looks great. However, what's up with Excel still being an MDI application (as seen by the second set of minimize/restore/close buttons)?

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Ok I played with this with beta 2 and it is so annoying that powerpoint BEEPS at me every time I minimize or maximize the ribbon.
  
  Please stop the NOISE.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Jensen,
  
  It's great to see that you continue to make tweaks based on user feedback. But I have to ask - have you considered an auto-hide option for the Ribbon? Seems to me that such an option would give users all they need - without having to right-click, press Ctrl+F1 or double-click a tab.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  As German women say, wunderbra!
  
  JohnV: if you do not like the MDI, you can always open a new copy of Excel for every additional document.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Looks great! However, it would be even better if the ribbon pops up in in transparent mode. That way it obstruct the work underneath.

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  Very Good!
  How can the ribbon minimize through VBA? Any code or keywords etc.?

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  The idea of a widget to minimize/maximize sounds good. But I'd use one that's better than the one in the bottom right of the tabs (see the Paragraph tab image above -- will that open a modeless dialog, a modal dialog, popup a menu or something else? Depends on the tab).

• Anonymous
  July 20, 2006
  I hope the next new feature will be auto-minimize, means that if the ribbon's minimized, clicking on a tab will open it, but also close it if the cursor goes south and leaves the floating ribbon area.

• Anonymous
  July 21, 2006
  Much nicer, but add my vote to (a) giving mousers the same interaction, and (b) giving the entire Ribbon a user-configurable transparency level.

• Anonymous
  July 21, 2006
  What about adding a little arrow to the Office menu?
  
  This way it look similar to a "toolbaricon that will popup a menu once clicked".

• Anonymous
  July 21, 2006
  To TC: read the Excel blog and Excel newsgroups. Majority prefers MDI interface to multiple @#$% Excel icons in the Windows Task Bar. MDI interface is easier when working with multiple, LINKED workbooks and/or mutliple windows into the same workbook (which may be more commonly used in Excel than Word or PP). Besides, it's just a configuration setting whichever way it defaults.
  
  With regard to ribbon haters (like me), glad to see it'll finally be able to work like a menu (staying hidden most of the time). Maybe this is more of an Excel bias, since that's the Office app I use most, but I like to see as much of the worksheet grid as possible. I agree with others that it'd be nice to minimize the ribbon via VBA, and I'll go one better: it'd be nice to completely hide the ribbon (as in not even the tabs visible, and the document window expanding into the area formerly used to show the ribbon) and redisplay it via VBA. It's currently possible to hide Excel's Worksheet Menu Bar via VBA.
  
  In the company where I work there are a few VB.Net applications that use Excel workbooks without showing any of the Excel UI aside from vertical and horizontal scroll bars and worksheet tabs and the worksheet scrolling buttons. Unless Excel 2007 has this capability, looks like we may be sticking with Excel 2002 for a few more years.

• Anonymous
  July 21, 2006
  Bah!  You should've used the WMV9 Screen codec instead of WMV9 Pro! ;)
  
  (For those that don't know, WMV9 Screen codec is designed especially for app demos and results in very small file size.)

• Anonymous
  July 21, 2006
  Users should be able to hide the ribbon entirely, and just use keyboard shortcuts.  (Without popping up the ribbon to show you intermediate steps as you type those shortcuts.)
  
  I knew a guy at NASA who was so fast and accurate with Excel and its keyboard shortcuts that he could go from large (gigabyte) data file to beautiful astronomy pic and accompanying science charts in just a couple minutes of furious typing (no mouse, not even looking at the screen to see what he was doing).  Alas, it would take Excel more than five times as long to catch up with him, because it was busying rendering all the intermediate steps for everything he had typed and the worksheet was so enormous that this really took some time.
  
  You get points for humor though; it was always quite entertaining to watch the screen continue to animate in a confused blur long after he had stopped typing, finally arriving at the completed image and charts.

• Anonymous
  July 22, 2006
  To Harlan: The majority of people who use Excel don't read the Excel blog nor do they participate in newsgroups, so your reasoning for keeping MDI doesn't hold up. I, for one, like multiple windows. If you need so many Excel windows open where it overloads the task bar, then it's probably an application better left to another program.
  
  It's all a matter of taste.

• Anonymous
  July 22, 2006
  Interaction design at its best. So, now get the graphic design at the same hight level ;-)

• Anonymous
  July 23, 2006
  So minimizing the ribbon...
  When you click on a tab, does that tab just hover over?
  
  Also a neat thing...
  When it's hovering, there should be transparency in the whole ribbon that's being displayed, and the button your mouse is over shows without any transparency, so then you can see what your document.
  
  Is it going to be able to be moved to the sides?
  
  Great job...definately moving to the new office...using the beta now and it's great

• Anonymous
  July 23, 2006
  Once again, this helps a little bit but does not resolve the overwhelming problems with the Ribbon (which, btw, I do like).  The QAT is useless for people with vision problems, as is much of the Ribbon (too small, no labels).  I don't need 14 tiny icons for font formatting, or a huge icon for paste, but the current Ribbon implementation does not allow me to turn any of these features off.  Customization, which continues to be ignored, needs to be addressed.  The idea that 'oh, there will be a 3rd party tool for that' is outrageous.  Something as integral as user customization should not be an afterthought.

• Anonymous
  July 23, 2006
  
  Great great feature!
  
  Cannot wait to give it a try!
  
  Also what would be a great feature is a king of mouse over slide out feature for the ribbon when it is is minimized state.
  
  It would help keeping the work estate maximize will easing working with the mouse pretty much the same way you have greatly solve the keyboard issue.
  
  

• Anonymous
  July 23, 2006
  I think I like the ribbon idea. Regardless, here we have an example of some real UI innovation coming out of Redmond. I hope it can be merged with the unified toolbar look for a Mac OS version.
  
  I agree with Carl's point. Have a visible option to minimise the ribbon. Context menus are a shortcut, they should never be the only way to activate an option/feature. Mac OS has a toolbar collapse button on the window title bar which would work well.
  
  I can see that some people won't like the ribbon. Many Word users can operate little else and changing the UI massively from what they are familiar with, and were trained to use will not be appreciated. But for a new generation of Word users I think this is an improvement.
  

• Anonymous
  July 24, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 24, 2006
  Jools: you should be able to stay within that contextual tab (Format), in the following situations:
  a) switching between shapes. If you just click on one shape after the other, the tab should stay up
  b) clicking away from a shape and then selecting it again. If you have a shape selected, click somewhere else (white space) and click on the shape again, and the tab will be back up
  The tab will go away though if you switch between a shape and a chart, or a shape and a picture. Essentially whenever you switch between different object types. Note that in PPT 2007, a textbox is equivalent to a shape.
  If you watch in what sequence you click, you can easily stay within the contextual tab.
  Last but not least, there is also the double-click. If you double-click any object (chart, picture, shape, SmartArt, etc), the contextual tab will automatically come into the foreground. That should get you what you are looking for in all other cases.

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2006
  Earlier Tim said he thought Microsoft betas were too commonand that they were more like unsupported released

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 28, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 30, 2006
  Do you realize you improved the Ribbon 1000% by doing this? Seriously, SMART move. It makes much more sense in a collapsed state!

• Anonymous
  July 30, 2006
  PingBack from http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/07/30/finally-the-office-2007-ribbon-rocks/

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2006
  I didn't know you could minimise the ribbon bar until I went to a Microsoft presentation on the whole Office 2007 suite. That's useful. I use the mini-bar a lot and find most of the normal editing options I want are there and it saves mouse movements. But what I find most frustrating is the inability to customise it. For example in Powerpoint I use full justification a lot but it's not on the mini-bar. And for Word the only justification option is center. Can customising the mini-bar be provided?

• Anonymous
  August 04, 2006
  Jensen,
  
  OK. I see the point and actually prefer this to the previous version. However, that minimized ribbon at the top reminds me very much of the menus... Now, I lot of people found it very confusing with that hidding unused buttons in Office XP. I cannot honestly see much benefit here, when it is said that the ribbons "reveals" it all to the user... It remains buried under the ribbon and with the collapsing it just makes it clearer that there's a design flaw here in terms of "visibility"...
  
  Not only that, the amount of work required to customize the ribbon in XML is obscene if compared to the old way... I had to go to great length to write code that would generate XML which I can use in customizing the ribbon... It is simply not on.

• Anonymous
  August 18, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 24, 2006
  Jensen:
  
  Since we have a scripting language inside ActiveWords, we would like to be able script anything that you can do with keyboard commands. I didn't have time to read the entire thread, but will all the keyboard equivalents be exposed for availble somewhere so that we can continue to build agents that work inside O12. You can see what we have done here: http://www.activewords.com/plusapplications.html
  
  Regards,
  
  
  Buzz  

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2006
  Ribbon looks good, and makes more sense than the traditional heirachical menus that you have to make time to discover all the functions.

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2006
  There has been a little flurry of rumours on the blogsphere including the ever excitable slashdot that...

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2006
  "Minimize the Ribbon" does not appear in the menu. All I get is "Customize Quick Access toolbar..." and "Place Quick Access Toolbar below the ribbon".
  
  The keyboard shortcut works, as does doubleclicking the active tab's title, but neither keeps the ribbon permanently minimized.

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2006
  It was with a bit of surprise that I read a flurry of stories on Friday with breathless headlines like...

• Anonymous
  September 29, 2006
  
  I attended a conference where Chris Parkes gave a quick demo on the new features of the 2007 Office...

• Anonymous
  May 20, 2007
  [via Jensen Harris ] If you are a ThinkPad X60 user, you'll realize that your max screen resolution is

• Anonymous
  May 20, 2007
  crosspost from http://blogs.msdn.com/rextang [via Jensen Harris ] If you are a ThinkPad X60 user, you'll

• Anonymous
  July 17, 2007
  I ran into an interesting foible using the Ribbon in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 today. I'm generally

• Anonymous
  July 17, 2007
  I ran into an interesting foible using the Ribbon in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 today. I'm generally

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