Programming Windows: Ribbonized (Premium)

While Microsoft struggled to make sense of Windows Longhorn in 2005/6, the Office team was busy doing what it always did: shipping the next version of its flagship productivity suite right on schedule. The key to this Mussolini-like efficiency was a Mussolini-like autocrat named Steven Sinofsky, who had come up through the ranks at Microsoft after serving as Bill Gates’ technical assistant in the early 1990s.

Sinofsky had tried but failed to convince Gates of the importance of the Internet in late 1993, and in April 1994 he joined the newly established Office Product Unit as the director of program management, where he led the design of shared technologies in Office 95 and Office 97. He went on to lead the Office group, and he was eventually elevated to senior vice president as he oversaw the development of Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, and then Office 12/2007.

Sinofsky was always, in a word, divisive. A twitchy little man who bore a notable resemblance to JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Sinofsky was hated by many at Microsoft but tolerated by CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, in turn, because of his ruthless efficiency. He was likewise respected and admired by those whose careers he advanced, most notably key lieutenant Julie Larson Green. Sinofsky and Green had worked together previously on Visual C++ and the horrific Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), which should have been a warning to everyone involved. And during their years working on Office, Green had overseen the UI designs of Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 12/2007.

Sinofsky’s ability to ship major new Office versions on a regular cadence isn’t all that impressive in hindsight: Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 were all iterative updates that had two major and unintended side-effects on the product family. First, customers had stopped upgrading because the new versions didn’t offer much in the way of new features. And second, the Office team was forced to arbitrarily change the UI of each version because they otherwise looked identical. This process was referred to internally as “putting lipstick on a pig.”

The UI enhancements in each new version were particularly minor. Office 2000, for example, featured controversial personalized menus and toolbars, where features one didn’t use would disappear to make the interface cleaner, but would also hide functionality. Office XP saw the debut of Smart Tags and task panes. And Office 2003’s biggest claim to fame was that Microsoft successfully split the suite into more product editions, a strategy it would later emulate in Windows Vista because customers gravitated to the more premium---and more expensive---editions.

For the next major version of Office, Microsoft planned to make some big changes by supporting key Longhorn/Windows Vista technologies and releasing the two products together. And it would finally take the painful step of thoroughly overhauling the Office user interface for the...

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