What's the ribbon do?

[projecttoday]

I don't have Access 2007 on my computer and I was wondering if someone could explain to me what the ribbon does.

 

[jrbarnett]

The ribbon is a replacement for the menu bar under earlier versions.
It is customisable, so that as an application developer you can set up something useful for your own application.

John

 

[genomon]

And if you ever do get to 2007, don't forget to click on the Office button to see the rest of the functionality not present in the ribbon. The ribbon was created to make it "easier" for first-time users to navigate, and to make experienced developers create new profanities to describe Microsoft Office.

If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?

 

[lameid]

I don't have Access 2007 but do have office standard 2007.

Instead of having the root menu type features the ribbon has tabs. Some of the content is rearranged in tabs/menus(at least in Excel). Each tab has all the features that would be in that 'menu'. Since you are likely to use the same type of features at once, this keeps you from having to go to the menu each time (hence the rearranging as like features have been put together). There are still alt+ shortcuts to. When you hold in ALT it shows you the letter over the feature you can press. Giving it a fair chance, I mostly like it. But then again I haven't used it in Access where I really know where everything is. There is also a bit of a steep learning curve at first. Don't expect to be productive right out of the gate... having made things easier to learn, they also moved the advanced stuff which is where the learning curve comes in.

 

[jrbarnett]

A disadvantage (over the old menu screen) is that the ribbon take up far more screen real estate, so if you have large forms or reports on a low resolution (1024 x 768 or less) screen, you will need to scroll to navigate around.

You can minimize the ribbon so it only shows the top level items, but you then don't get the benefits of the items being easily at hand.

Lameid - your comments about Excel 2007 are true for Access as well. Our general experience (amongst the IT teams here) is that those who go to it with an open mind can generally get used to it within 3-4 working days (across all applications), but if you go in with an "I don't like change and will never like the ribbon" attitude, then you won't like it.
We've got about a 50% takeup on Office 2007 here (over Office XP, the previous system we deployed).

John