Ribbon Bar

A month or two ago I was browsing the Vista screenshots and I was thinking to myself, the new UI is looking pretty good; the transparent windows and simplified menus gives you a less cluttered look and feel.

Then today, I saw a screenshot of the ribbon bar that's replacing the menus and I have to say, what the heck are they thinking??


So this ribbon bar thing is suppose to be a "context sensitive menu" that presents the users with only those actions that are relevant to their current task. It is supposed to "reduce visual clutter", but they sure have a hard time convincing me with that screenshot.

That ribbon bar looks huge with those icons that are spanning 2 rows. Realistically it's probably occupies the same vertical area as a normal menu bar and 2 toolbars would, but visually those large buttons just make it looks much taller (I am not a fan of large buttons). Not to mention that the whole thing looks like a big jig-saw puzzle small buttons mixed in with large buttons mixed in with some menu items.

It just looks like one big mess.