Microsoft has released a blog post and a video in which it explains and shows off the design changes that will be coming to Office.com and Office 365.
One of the major visible changes is the new simplified Ribbon. Instead of having a large button or up to 3 smaller buttons on top of each other, the updated Ribbon contains only 1 line of command icons on each of the Ribbon tabs.
Preview of the new single line command bar in Outlook. (captured from the video linked below)
This redesign allows for a cleaner interface with the commands which matter the most and with more vertical screen space left for the actual content that you are working on.
There will also be an option to expand the Ribbon to return the “classic” three-line layout in case you don’t like the change, want to decide for yourself when you are ready to change or when you simply want to dedicate more screen space to the available commands.
Microsoft will start rolling out this new experience in Outlook for Desktop to a select amount of Insiders in July.
View: Power and simplicity – updates to the Office 365 user experience
View: Updates to the Microsoft Office user experience (video)
