the enchanted office

Unless you live under a rock, if you work in IT you know that the next version of Office is introducing a revolutionary new user interface called the Ribbon. The Ribbon aims to make it easy for users to access the hundreds and thousands of commands available in Office programs by using context sensitive Ribbon Groups instead of the buried menu system in current Office versions.

Last month telerik announced (and I covered) that they would be participating in the official Microsoft Office 2007 UI licensing program. As part of that program telerik will deliver UI components that implement a well defined set of UI rules, such as RibbonBar components for WinForms and ASP.NET.

This is all fine and dandy if you're in love with the new Office UI and everyone in your organization is ready to embrace the significant change to their favorite little productivity app. If you don't fall into that camp, though, you may need to do some more convincing to get people in your organization (maybe you?) to buy in to the new Ribbon concept.

Have no fear, Microsoft has come to your rescue with a new 8-page comic titled "The Enchanted Office: Once Upon a User Interface". The comic tries to extol the values of the new Ribbon UI in lighthearted tale and it even has some humorous moments (such as the tale's princess killing the old Office '97 Clippy). Check it out if you still on the Ribbon fence...or if you're just interested in seeing Microsoft mock their old annoying Office assistant!