The ribbon gets a lot of grief, but I think it is a step forward from conventional menus in discoverability. The secret is having multiple types and sizes of controls. If you have 3 top level menu items with 4 option each, a user can very quickly scan for what they're trying to do. If you have 6 or 8 top level categories and 10-30 items under each, it's a totally different story.
With menus, you have to use sub and even sub-sub menus for organization, and the user has to mouse over or use the keyboard to see the sub-options. Every sub(-sub) menu looks the same, maybe with a tiny icon to help find it. With the ribbon, every top level category naturally has major sub-groupings (horizontally), within which more important / commonly-used items can use larger icons, split buttons can be used to show a default action with related actions in a drop-down, and option-groups can be presented as a dropdown or expanded to show them all at once (think "view layout" in a file explorer).
I have to admit I had a negative reaction to the ribbon initially, but especially with the thoughtful integration into Windows Explorer it's really grown on me since. I'm not sure it's appropriate to replace every use of a conventional menu bar but I think it's the best fit in a lot of places.
With menus, you have to use sub and even sub-sub menus for organization, and the user has to mouse over or use the keyboard to see the sub-options. Every sub(-sub) menu looks the same, maybe with a tiny icon to help find it. With the ribbon, every top level category naturally has major sub-groupings (horizontally), within which more important / commonly-used items can use larger icons, split buttons can be used to show a default action with related actions in a drop-down, and option-groups can be presented as a dropdown or expanded to show them all at once (think "view layout" in a file explorer).
I have to admit I had a negative reaction to the ribbon initially, but especially with the thoughtful integration into Windows Explorer it's really grown on me since. I'm not sure it's appropriate to replace every use of a conventional menu bar but I think it's the best fit in a lot of places.