"Nick Hodge" wrote...
. . . I just feel that many of the features on old toolbars were
not discoverable, there's many I've not found/used surely. Now
whether they're more discoverable now is questionable?? For the
average to power user, it's probably a backward step . . .

One big example: I have the Forms toolbar docked on the right hand
side of my Excel 2003 window and the Drawing toolbar docked on the
bottom of it. Not trivial at all to get both on screen at the same
time in Excel 2007.

Now there were/are some thoroughly pointless built-in toolbars, such
as the Borders toolbar, that's a much, much bigger PITA to use that
the Border tab in the Format Cells dialog. Getting rid of them is
definitely a good thing. Unfortunately, MSFT got rid of the useful
ones too.

. . . and MS 'claim' to have used data collected from the 'User
Experience' program, which most experienced people 'turn off'
....

I believe they did, but I also believe the people who opted in were
disproportionately nonbusiness users using few if any of the more
important business features. How many home users are fetching data
from ODBC data sources? How many are running pivot table reports on
OLAP cubes? How many are using more than 20 different worksheet
functions in their home budgets? On the flip side, how many business
users are allowed to use bandwidth to participate in the program?

for example the ribbon is now 'owned' by another group. The
officeMenu (RibbonX element) is owned by the UI team across apps
and even the charting (and shapes) is partly controlled by an
OfficeArt team. . . .
....

Nothing new. Excel has suffered from ever closer integration since
Excel 5 when the first major menu overhaul happened.

. . . (Take the dictator app from the other day...no issue in 2007) . . .

Really? It's possible for the ribbon not to appear at all? That means
not even the row of tabs.

It's possible to hide the QAT and the Office logo which gives access
to file system/printer commands and Excel settings?

BTW, how does one leave the ribbon, QAT and Office logo in place but
disable file system/printer commands as was possible in earlier
versions by disabling but not hiding specific menu items? That is,
does RibbonX allow modification of the Office logo menu?