It makes sense when you look to the future.
If you try Office 2013, you may have wondered why there’s a Full Screen view with no menus. Surely ribbon minimization was enough?
Full screen mode is available by pressing a new button on the top right of a window.
It may be useful on a laptop screen but otherwise seems out of place. When you try Office 2013 on a touch screen, suddenly its purpose is clear, to make room for the on-screen keyboard.
The on-screen keyboard for tablets (that can be a traditional keyboard, split keyboard or handwriting recognition) takes up a lot of screen space. So Office had to accommodate that intrusion into the work area.
It’s a demonstration of the core problem with Office 2013; it’s a hybrid release. It has to work for three worlds, the current world of keyboard and mouse, plus the future with touch screens added and the other future with tablets. The result looks like a version of Office that satisfies no-one. Microsoft is saying how ‘beautiful’ Office 2013 is – perhaps to distract from the interface compromises they had to make.
