At the heart of Office 2007’s results-oriented interface is the Ribbon. The Ribbon is the area above the document workspace, as shown in the example from Word 2007 (Figure 2-4). Technically, I suppose, the Ribbon is just the area below the tabs for Home, Insert, and so on. Clicking a tab with Home, Insert, Page Layout, and so on controls which Ribbon tab is displayed.

Exactly what you see in any given Ribbon tab is determined by a number of factors, including the size of your monitor, your screen resolution, the size of the current Office program window, as well as whether you’re using Windows’ display settings to accommodate low vision. Hence, what you see might not always be what you see pictured in this book. If you have a very large monitor operating at comparatively high resolution, you will see many more of the available options, such as on the Word Home tab shown in Figure 2-5.

Title bar
The top bar of the current Office application window is called the title bar, exhibited in Figure 2-6. Doubleclicking the title bar toggles the Office application between maximized and restored states. It’s the equivalent of alternately clicking the Maximize and Restore buttons at the right end of the title bar.

The title bar contains the Quick Access Toolbar (optionally), the name of the document in the current application window, and buttons for controlling the application window. If you’ve turned off the “Show all windows in the Taskbar” option (Office Button?Program Name Options?Advanced?Display section), then these buttons control all of the application, rather than just the current document window. In your own installation, the title bar might contain other elements as well, such as items placed there by various Office and Windows add-ins.

The tab row
Shown below the title bar in Figure 2-6 is a row with the Ribbon tabs. I’m not sure if it has an official name, so I’ll use “tab row” here. In addition to the tabs themselves, which control which Ribbon is displayed, this line contains the Help button (which replaces Help?Microsoft Application Name Help from Office 2003 and earlier). If you’ve turned off the “Show all windows in the Taskbar” option (Office Button?Program Name Options?Advanced?Display section), addition document and window control buttons will be present.

You can select a Ribbon tab using the mouse or using hot keys. Unlike in previous versions of the Office applications, however, there are no underlined letters showing you the hot keys. As noted earlier, double-clicking the currently selected tab hides the Ribbon. Double-click any tab to unhide it. Ctrl+F1 toggles the Ribbons on and off as well.

Once the Ribbon has been turned off, you can temporarily turn it back on by clicking a tab (or pressing its hot key). Once you’ve used a tool in that tab,
the Ribbons automatically go back into hiding.

Key Tips
If there are no underlined letters, then how do you know which keys to press? Tap the Alt key. As shown in Figure 2-7, when you tap the Alt key, shortcut keys that work in the current context are displayed. “In the current context” might seem like an odd way to phrase it. Why context is relevant will become clear when we talk more about the Ribbon (described in the following section). For now, however, if you’re working in a Word document, pressing Alt+H will display the Home Ribbon, Alt+N displays the Insert Ribbon, and so on.

Note that I’ve added some additional tools to the QAT shown in Figure 2-7, and that numbered hot keys are associated with them. In addition to the first nine being accessible using Alt+1 through Alt+9, the last three are accessible using Alt+09, Alt+08, and Alt+07.

Ribbon
The Ribbon is divided into a number of different tabs that ostensibly correspond to each application’s former menus. Unlike 2003’s menus, however, there are no expanded drop-down lists under each main menu item. Instead, each tab exposes a different set of command buttons. Note that in Figure 2-4, the Home tab’s choices are exposed. Contrast that with Figure 2-8, which displays the Insert tab of the Ribbon.

Note that the number of Ribbon tabs you see also varies according to user settings. In Figure 2-8 you can see the Developer tab. On your own setup, that tab might not appear.

Contextual tools
In addition to the default set of main tabs, additional context-sensitive or contextual tabs appear depending on what kind of document part or object is selected. For example, if you choose Insert?Header and insert a header from the Header gallery in Word, the Design tab displays contextual Header &Footer tools, as shown in Figure 2-9.

Notice that because this particular header format is enclosed in a table, the Table Tools tab is also exposed. The Table Tools tab has Design and Layout subtabs, each of which is also available in the current view.

Quick Access Toolbar
If you are a veteran Office user, you might be asking, “Where have all the toolbars gone?” If you’re a longtime veteran, in fact, you might be screaming that question at the top of your lungs, perhaps adding a colorful expletive or two. All of the toolbars have been collapsed into the single and less flexible Quick Access Toolbar, or QAT, as it is rapidly becoming known (the exact pronunciation is still under negotiation).

Shown above the Ribbon in Figure 2-10, the QAT can also be placed below the Ribbon, where there is more room.

Live Preview
Live Preview is a brand-new feature in Office 2007. This feature applies the highlighted gallery formatting to the selection in the current document, enabling you to instantly see the results without actually having to apply that formatting, as shown in Figure 2-11. As the mouse pointer moves among the different gallery options, the formatting displayed in the body of the document instantly changes.

Note that not all galleries and formatting options produce Live Preview results. For example, in the Page Layout tab in Word, none of the Page Setup items produce Live Previews, nor do the paragraph settings on that tab.

Another time you won’t see Live Preview is when working with dialog boxes, such as the Paragraph dialog box in Word. Many of those offer internal Preview sections but do not take advantage of Office 2007’s new Live Preview capability. A gotcha in all this newfangled functionality is that sometimes the gallery itself covers up all or part of the Live Preview. This gets old quickly, and can negate much of the functionality, unless you’re blessed with unlimited screen real estate. Maybe that 52-inch monitor isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Fortunately, some galleries and controls have draggable borders that enable you to see more of what you’re trying to preview, as shown in Figure 2-12. If a control’s border is draggable, this is indicated by three dots. Notice the three dots in the lower-right corner of the Styles Gallery in Figure 2-11, and in the bottom border of Theme Fonts in Figure 2-12. On the lower-right corner, the three dots indicate that the border can be rolled up and to the left. On the bottom, the three dots indicate that the border can be rolled up.

Sometimes, however, it’s easiest simply to go ahead and apply the formatting, rather than jump through hoops. If necessary, you can always use the venerable Ctrl+Z (Undo) if you don’t like the result.

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