Using the Ribbon interface to create your own task-oriented applications is a big win for everyone and lowers the support costs of the resulting application. 

Anyone who’s seen the Ribbon (also known as the Office Fluent User Interface) in Office knows that it’s completely different from the menu and toolbar interface used by applications in the past. After using it for a few hours, you may have even decided that the Ribbon was just a passing fancy and it isn’t worth your time to learn. It wasn’t until I started creating task-oriented applications that I began to understand the true power of the Ribbon. (I prefer the term Ribbon for the Office Fluent User Interface since Microsoft’s new term seems to leave out many other uses for a perfectly usable interface.) This interface isn’t for power users; it’s for the average user, the one that demands the most from your organization in support and still ends up getting things wrong. By creating an application with a view toward simplification and task-orientation, you can STRIDE toward better applications:

• Significantly reduce support costs
• Thwart policy problems when users innovate in unexpected ways
• Reduce user frustration
• Improve application reliability
• Define easily recognized procedures for accomplishing tasks
• Enhance user productivity

Of course, most of us are used to Microsoft holding so hard onto its intellectual material as to make it impossible to innovate in any appreciable manner. Sure, you can build applications that use a technology, but only within the framework that Microsoft provides. In fact, the Ribbon seems to reduce flexibility by tying up the user interface in new and terrifying ways (just try to run that old VBA code). In a surprise move, however, Microsoft is actually licensing the Ribbon technology for non-Microsoft applications. You can read about it at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa973809.aspx. This license is free, which means that you can create a task-oriented application that relies on the Ribbon found in Office without relying on Office to do it. This article provides you with the essentials you need to create your own task-oriented application that relies on Ribbon technology outside of the Office environment.