interfaces are typically built with the express purpose of creating opacity levels between the user and the operating system they are using. These levels of opacity tend to conceal the true functioning of the system by exposing only the commands that the user really needs to complete its tasks. The dialectic between opacity and transparency is a classic reflection on the relationship between man and compter and who is interested in the work of Sherry Turkle and Donald Norman much food for thought in this direction. What that is interesting in this document introducing the new interface of Office 2007 is precisely the idea behind the new design. Research on the IU Office of the latter have showed that the vast majority of people totally ignores most of the advanced features offered by these software. From this point of view the consistency of the interfaces between the different versions, if a party is allowed to pass without the need for new training from Office 95 to Office 2003, is starting to show its limits. The number of features in the meantime has grown but the system of menus and sub-menu hides the more advanced options and potentially useful in terms of productivity in places too remote for the average user. Hence the idea (not a little risky) to revolutionize the operations of the Office through the menu system to that of Command Tabs.
(click to enlarge) For example, Word has a number of Command Tabs such as writing, inserting, page layout, working with references, doing mailings, and then review the documents (I predict that the location names in Italian these activities will be hard ...). Each Command Tab will have a certain set of icons that should help you focus on the task in progress and at the same time make clear the advanced features related to that activity. Ineffective when you consider how little used feature that will greatly simplify the job as a mail merge and cooperation to review the documents that you can not share at least the analysis that led to this idea. More details and several screenshots of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and Access this post to a blog kept by the developers of Office. 
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