MS office post 2007 is an utter mess for novices and power users alike. I say that as a "power user" who used office apps 8 hours a day pre-ribbon and post-ribbon and has to help people who don't.
The ribbons manage to unify the drawbacks of both the button bar and the menu bar that you mentioned:
- it is composed of "rows of incomprehensible buttons" with no logical order (Where is the most-frequently-sought insert-column button in Excel? Hint: not in the "insert" ribbon tab, that would be too easy. Where is the function to create collapsible rows/columns? In the "Data" tab...)
- it has additional features hidden so well that nobody can find them without googling - Excel's most powerful features like creating named cell styles are now only reachable by clicking through several layers of unintuitive unlabeled mini-buttons tacked on as an afterthought. Yes, I have the muscle memory for remembering half a dozen triple-chord keyboard shortcuts like Alt-D-F-F, but nobody who didn't use Office 2002 will be able to use the new version at anything approaching full speed - that is exactly the opposite of UI discoverability.
The ribbons manage to unify the drawbacks of both the button bar and the menu bar that you mentioned:
- it is composed of "rows of incomprehensible buttons" with no logical order (Where is the most-frequently-sought insert-column button in Excel? Hint: not in the "insert" ribbon tab, that would be too easy. Where is the function to create collapsible rows/columns? In the "Data" tab...)
- it has additional features hidden so well that nobody can find them without googling - Excel's most powerful features like creating named cell styles are now only reachable by clicking through several layers of unintuitive unlabeled mini-buttons tacked on as an afterthought. Yes, I have the muscle memory for remembering half a dozen triple-chord keyboard shortcuts like Alt-D-F-F, but nobody who didn't use Office 2002 will be able to use the new version at anything approaching full speed - that is exactly the opposite of UI discoverability.