Crystal Office Systems

Are you considering implement the new office ribbon in Maple Professional?
I´ve been using Word 2007 and as well as some other programs that take advantage of the new ribbon interface and i must say it´s a big step ahead compared to previous versions of those programs. It´s much more intuitive and organized and i think it will work great within Maple Professional.

Taken from Jensen Harris Blog - Group Program Manager of the Microsoft Office User Experience Team (link):
"If you choose to implement the Office UI, you sign up for the program by accepting the license terms and giving us a little bit of information about your product. There's no fee, you don't owe Microsoft any royalties, and the license is perpetual—meaning that the terms won't change."

Here´s the official Office UI license page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa973809.aspx

Regards,
Miguel B.

As you know, at this time this interface is not used widely. It the ribbon become a widely-used standard, we will implement it.

Thank you for your reply.
However i don´t agree with the statement that the interface isn´t widely used. Off course the old office 2003 interface is still heavily present. But that´s about to change soon.
Although i have suggested it because it´s much more quick and intuitive to use and allows to store several commands/features logically rather than because it´s popular or not, there´s a lot of software companies that already implemented it, including big names in the industry.
Besides Office 2007 from Microsoft, you can find the new interface in Autodesk Autocad 2009, the industry standard CAD software used worldwide; in Mindjet MindManager Pro, a business productivity software widely known and used and Sourcetec (SWF Decompiler), Codeaero (Movie Label 2009), Blumentals (Easy button & Menu Maker), Gadwin (Websnapshot) just to name a few more from different types of software programs and companies. And a lot more are probably working to implement it.

But the main reason for my suggestion is that i think it would benefit the program a lot since it´s starting looking too cluttered. It has 56 buttons visible at the same time in the default installed state and there´s some more functions available only trough the 11 menus like merge cells/split cells for example or the style manager that could benefit a lot from visual previews (a la office 2007) and a dedicated tab (in the new office ui style).
Those are just a few reasons i think you should consider it.

Thanks for reading,
regards,
Miguel B.

Personally I despise the ribbon and will not use an application that forces it on me. I hope that if/when it is implemented for Maple Pro that we will be given the option of using it or not. I am always for options.